All The Pretty Little Boxes!

Wow - I can't believe it's been almost a week since my last post!! This summer has been super busy and it still is. I can't complain, of course, because I'm having the best time EVER - but it does mean that I really have to start allocating specific days/times to updating my blog! :)

A little while back, I bought a scoring board. I never really scored anything before, so it was a bit of a random purchase. I used to not really be that interested in making cards, and there's not a lot of scoring to be done in scrapbooking - at least not the way I've done it. But I've made a few cards here and there, and with the new stamp sets I've been getting, it was so much more fun to do cards too!

But this post isn't about cards - it's about something cute & fun that also happens to be very practical: my pretty little boxes! Here's what happened. After I bought the score board, which has a little compartment on one side to keep the bone folder inside, I realized that there were a couple of instructions listed inside the lid. So I decided to try it and made this tiny little box - which I then, of course, had no idea what to do with because it was so tiny.

After this little experiment, I quickly realized just how easy it is to assemble these boxes - and make them in any size whatsoever! I played around with some cardstock I have from years and years ago and came up with what I think is just so fun & practical: little storage boxes for my small clear/acrylic stamp sets. Up until now, they'd just been sitting in a container in a closet - and because I couldn't really see them all and they were stored in a somewhat impractical way & place, I never got around to using them.

Now, they're both decorative and useful on my desk - and the bonus is that they're right within my reach, so I see them every day and can play around with them when the mood strikes without having to look for a particular set, dig it out, and so on.

Of course YOU can make these cute, fun boxes too! They're perfect as gifts too, to hold candy or other treats, little surprises for kids or friends, and much more :) Here's an easy guideline for making them:

(1) Start out with a SQUARE piece of cardstock. You can use paper if you want or don't have any cardstock on hand, but the box will be a lot more flimsy and may not hold the contents well or properly. The size of the cardstock/paper is up to you - it really depends on how big a box you want to make, or how tall/high you want it to be.

(2) Score the cardstock at the same level on all 4 sides. To use an example, let's start with an 8"x8" piece of cardstock. Score at 3 1/2"; turn by 90 degrees; repeat until all sides are scored. The scored lines will create a center square - this will be the bottom of your box. Fold all scored lines and flatten cardstock again.

(3) On one side, cut along the scored lines up until the point of the scored line that's at 90 degrees to the line you're cutting or right up to the square in the middle. Repeat with the second score line on the same side. DO NOT CUT INTO THE CENTER SQUARE.

(4) Turn the cardstock by 180 degrees. You should now be looking at the side directly opposite to the one where you just cut the two scored lines. Repeat step (3). You should now have cut 4 scored lines, two on each of the opposing sides.

(5) Put glue or scrapbooking adhesive on the little flaps that you now have on the two opposing sides WITHOUT cut lines and assemble box.

(6) Embellish as desired. I adhered ribbon around one box and fastened a matching bow with a brad. Another box got a fun 3D label with the word "STAMPS" adhered to the front, and a smaller one just says "CREATE!" on the front. How fun is that? :)

Presto-change-o! You've got yourself a super cute box!!

On My Wall...

I've been working on a ton of different projects but haven't actually put everything together and taken pictures to put up here. I know I still need to "learn" how to do video tutorials - it's just so much easier when you can watch a video rather than scrolling for what seems to be an eternity.

So I decided to share one of my other creative outlets. Ever since I was a teenager, I've loved memo boards - especially cork boards because, of course, you can stick just about anything on there with a pushpin. I like to put some artwork on there but also things that inspire me - whether it's a postcard or a gift from a friend, sometimes even something torn out of a magazine, a recipe card or a receipt.

The funny thing is that, on the one hand, I think it must seem kind of random to someone who doesn't know me well - but for me, looking at my pinboard is like looking in the mirror. I can see how all the elements come together and what they mean or meant to me, what they represent and what I like about them.

This is only one of many, many memo boards I've "assembled" over the years. Some of the projects on there are sort of experiments - like when I first started dabbling in ATCs or trying different techniques for staining papers & other fibers. Sometimes I think I should just clear it all off, start from scratch with things that are relevant or important to me right now - but then I just like looking at what's on there every time I walk past it... :)

"Cute As Can Bee" gift box

You know how sometimes you start on a project and you think you know where it's going, or where it's supposed to go - but then it takes a few twists and turns before you end up somewhere totally different? Something like that happened to me a few days ago.

A couple of months ago, I bought a scoring board - you know, one of those 12x12 hard plastic trays that have a ton of little lines to allowe you to score paper and cardstock for cards, envelopes etc. Said item had been sitting in a corner since the day of purchase, until I decided it was finally time to brave the "newbie" and figure out what I could do with it.

Well, fast-forward a couple of weeks and I'm just completely obsessed with it! LOL I've found that, within about 10 minutes or so, I can turn almost any piece of cardstock into a box (although I have to make the lid separately - and me being the not-so-organized artist that I am, it's no big surprise that I have as yet to actually remember that I need to write down what I'm doing as I do it in, order to be able to remember it later).

I've made quite a few different ones and I'm still tinkering around with the process, but one of the boxes I made yesterday turned out so cute that I just had to share!!

I used retired yellow Stampin' Up! cardstock and scored it, cut it, and stamped little bees all over what would be the exterior of the box. Once assembled, I added a little handle cut from the same cardstock with shaper scissors - first with some scrapbooking adhesive and then with a brad to keep it firmly in place. Last but not least, I took a pretty napkin and separated the layers until I had only the patterned one left (admittedly this was a measure borne out of desperation because I couldn't find any tissue paper in my room! LOL) and filled the little box with gorgeous Molton Brown toiletries. A cherry red ribbon to pick out the roses in the napkin-come-tissue-paper, tied in a little bow, and it's ready to be given as a gift. How cute is that??

Coming Soon...

I know it's been quite a while since my last post, so I do apologize! I've had a pretty busy couple of weeks but am also working on new projects & other things for my blog.

After some consideration, I decided to split my blog and devote this one mostly to more traditional projects like scrapbook pages, ATCs, cards and so on made with Stampin' Up! products. I've created a new blog, ARTfully ReCYCLEd, that will have only projects made with or from recycled materials.

With everything that's been going on, I haven't even had a chance to post a big OMG!! when I got my first Stampin' Up! demo order, which included my very own Big Shot! I'm totally psyched and already went to town with it, so watch this space for some super cute & fun projects by the beginning of next week.

Recycled Chipboard Packaging

Ok so today I'm going to show you another project that I made to recycle something. Yesterday, I went to a nearby town for some coffee & shopping with a friend. We went to an arts & crafts store, where I bought a chipboard album (I'll get around to posting a project for that down the line :). Well, as I've said before, I like to try and find new uses for old things - or things you'd normally just throw in the trash or recycling bin. The way I see it, not only is it a personal challenge to my creativity, but it also means that it's one less thing going to waste.

What I particularly loved with this project is that I discovered, after opening the packaging, that it actually said PLEASE RECYCLE under the chipboard album - how fabulous is that??

So you know, I can't resist experimenting with things, and it was like the challenge was staring me right in the face: so, HOW are you going to recycle me??

I started out with more or less the same process I used when I did the Recycled Art Tag in my last post by sanding down the advertising I didn't want, distressing the edges and center that I would cover up anyway, and sanding the clear plastic window where it had been glued down so that it would be easier to glue back down later.

This is what I started with:

And this is what I ended up with! How totally awesome is that? Not only did I save something from being thrown out and turned it into a piece of artwork I can now display - but on top of that, the plastic window works as a kind of shadow box. I would've loved to have had some piece of three-dimensional memorabilia to put into the "shadow box", but I still think this is pretty cool. :)

RE-cycled Art Tag

I think most of us like to do something "green" - it seems to be a bit of an "IT" thing to do these days (I blame Anya Hindmarsh's I'm Not A Plastic Bag tote, which btw is a total rip-off of the iconically antithetic statements pioneered by Rene Magritte (for those of you who don't understand French, the writing in the poster I've linked to the artist's name reads "this is not a pipe") ... but then you already knew that I'm sure :)

But what happens after we dutifully put our recycling in the appropriate receptacles? It still has to be processed, sorted - and really? I wonder how much of it actually DOES get turned into post-consumables...

SO...as an artist, I'm always looking for new ways with old things. Of course I love anything vintage (which, technically, is the purest form of recycling because that means you're using things that have already been around for ages), but I'm a firm believer in the idea that recycling starts with keeping things OUT of the recycling bin in the first place (as it were, actually RE-using something).

The easiest and most straight-forward item to recycle into artwork are merchandise tags. There's no end to how many cool things you can do with those - but I'll save that for another post. Today, I want to share something fun that I did last week but haven't gotten around to posting yet: a Recycled Art Tag. This is so easy, even your kids could do it - and what a great way to get them started on eco-friendly art! :)

For my project, I used the packaging from some metal scrapbooking tags - but you could use almost any packaging. The size is really up to you, this just happened to be something I had floating around, but you could go smaller or bigger. The key to making something out of this kind of packaging is to gently pry off the plastic window in which the items are housed - if you rip it off, chances are you'll rip the cardstock and lose the fun graphics that were already on the box.



RECYCLED ART TAG - INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Gently pry plastic window from backing. To do this, peel off one corner with your finger nails, then insert finger under window and carefully run along edges. Window should come off fairly easily and without great damage to packaging.

2. Set aside window. Sand cardboard all around to smooth edges, create a better surface to adhere elements to and give a slightly distressed look. You can use a sanding block from a craft company like Stampin' Up! or you can just use sanding paper, a sanding block or even an emory board - whatever happens to be handy. Use your judgment to determine how much you want to sand off.

3. Run an ink pad along the edges of the cardstock, making sure to slightly overlap so that some of the ink transfers onto the front. You can use mini ink pads or regular sized ones; I used a multicolored one to add some fun to the project. You can use dye-based inks but craft/pigment ink will give you a stronger color. In this case, craft inks are also better because they will actually stick to the slightly smooth/shiny paper.

4. I lightly dabbed the whole surface of the cardstock with the entire ink pad, but you don't need to do that - the reason for that is that I wanted to have a little bit of a mixture of colors. Other options include patterned doodles with ballpoint pen or marker; single-color ink pads; stickers etc.

5. When you look at the cardstock and the window on the top left picture, you can see that removing the window left areas where the paper was removed from the cardstock. In this case, it's actually not a bad thing - it means that the areas where I wanted to put the pictures in were more clearly defined.
Measure the areas where your pictures will go. You don't have to be precise, but it will look nicer if the size & shape of your pictures correspond to the areas marked by the window.

6. If you don't want to just put pictures on the tag, you can do what I did. I cropped the pieces of photographs I wanted to use - first with a paper trimmer, and then with craft scissors (you can find those in most craft stores or online, and they come in more designs than I can count! :) to give them a fun shape. As you can see, I wanted to mount the pictures on some patterned paper, so I cut the PAPER the size of the windows, and the pictures slightly smaller to reveal the paper underneath.

7. PAPER: The paper I used under the pictures comes from pages of an old French dictionary that I "aged". To give just about any and all paper products an older, aged or antique look, you have a few different options:

* crinkle paper, bunch it up as much and tightly as possible. unfold and repeat as necessary. gently unfold and softly dab brown/black ink pad over entire surface. this should bring out the folds, as the ink will adhere more or less in different parts of the paper. presto-change-o! antiqued paper :)

* you can also use a variety of dying options. both tea and coffee make excellent paper dyes - the less diluted, the darker the resolution. if that's too time-consuming, you can buy a variety of staining inks, such as Walnut Ink or alcohol inks.

I like to combine several of these different techniques to give my paper a "genuine" look: if you just spray or blot a bunch of ink on your paper, it's not going to get the same result.


8. Adhere cropped picture to aged paper. Here you can decide whether or not to use pop-ups/dimensionals (these are little foam pads that are self-adhesive on both sides and raise an element off of the surface - very cool!). In this case, I didn't use any dimensionals and basically just glued the picture to the paper and the whole thing to the cardstock.

9. Using a Zig Pen (this is basically like a ballpoint pen, but instead of ink it's filled with glue - awesome for reaching tiny areas, getting in between pieces etc), make random squiggles all over the project area. Really! I just ran the glue pen all over in random lines. If you don't have a Zig Pen, you can use just about any liquid glue. The benefit of having a glue pen is that the lines are very fine and don't take a long time to dry - using other types of liquid glue will also work, but with different results. If using regular glue, you can either squeeze it directly onto the areas that you want to embellish, or you can squeeze out a small quantity on a piece of scrap paper and use a tooth pick to draw lines on your project.

10. Sprinkle generously with glitter! Now, I absolutely LOVE glitter, but it's also very messy to work with - so I highly recommend putting either a piece of paper or cloth under your project so that you can collect the excess glitter afterwards. Once all the glued parts are covered in glitter (and I like to cover the whole area to make sure I get all the sticky bits), lift project slightly up and gently tap on your work area. This will shake off any glitter that isn't stuck on the paper with glue.

11. Add 3-dimensional embellishments. I added a seashell to go with the Great Escape theme and to tie in with my pictures. I also added a bird sticker on the top left, which I popped up using dimensionals.


AND VOILA! You've just saved a piece of cardstock from the trash or recycling bin, and created a wonderful piece of artwork! :)

I made this tag just for fun, to see what I could come up with - but besides having a decorative value, you can turn this kind of tag into a gift tag, scrapbooking embellishment, add to a greeting card or even frame with a favorite photograph.

If you have any questions about this project or anything else, feel free to contact me! :)

Love Is...Never Having To Give Up On Your Dreams

Wow...it's been one of those days. I had a pretty good time crafting & chatting with a friend. We plotted our plan to take over the world with our fabulous Stampin' Up! goodies and crafty genius, laughed about everything under the sun - and punched out WAY too many cardstock tags. But later in the day it all went very, very wrong.

I was feeling bored with my blog - the layout and design wasn't really representative of my creative personality, and I'd gotten to the point where I thought: what's the point? Enter a new Blogger feature, which immediately got my attention. And being a little trigger happy, I clicked before I thought it through...and my entire blog layout was messed up! I was tried to change it back and couldn't easily revert it to the previous format - so, having already felt a little frustrated, I stupidly decided that I would just delete this thread and start with a new template. Not realizing, at the time, that deleting the thread meant deleting the entire NAME of the blog!! In the split second it took me to realize the fallout, my surprisingly fast browser had already processed my action. My blog was completely gone. I was devastated. I'm so new at this and still trying to find my way, still trying to upload pictures and turn this page into something that represents me as an artist and as a person.
So I tried to retype the blog address - which of course came up with something along the lines of "blog not found". I then decided I would just start a new blog thread with the same name - but it wouldn't let me do that. EEK!

Fast-forward a few hours and my husband called me to say that he was coming home from work. I told him about my mishap, and he said it was no big deal, that he could figure out how to retrieve it - but I wasn't buying it. So imagine my surprise and delight when, simply clicking on a button on my Blogger dashboard, revealed the magic words that turned my whole evening around: UNDELETE THIS BLOG.

It's strange how something so seemingly insignificant can be so important on a particular day...Either way, I'm so happy that I was able to recover my blog, so I'm going to make an effort to post more regularly and start putting my artwork on here so that, hopefully, I can turn this blog into something fun, creative and inspirational! :)

Friendship Cards

I had a bit of an AHA! lightbulb moment a few days ago. I kept trying to figure out how to add pictures to my post and feeling a bit dense. I kept thinking, wait a minute - there's like a million bloggers out there, ranging from tweens to octagenerians, you'd think I could figure out how to add some pics! But because I was adding some YouTube videos, I kept writing my posts under the "Edit HTML" tab - hence complete missing the picture button right in the middle of the screen under the "Compose" tab. D'OH!

So, without further ado, my blog is now actually going to have some pictures - YAY! This being my first picture, I wanted to post the very first thing I made with my Stampin' Up! starter kit. Now, I don't really have a lot of experience with card-making, and I was trying to make sure I used only Stampin' Up! products so that I could, if I wanted to, put them on my demo website. I love the way the leaves came out, that color is definitely one of my favorites from the still-current range. I love mostly colors that have a bit of a vintage or retro feel, and this card definitely has a bit of a retro feel to me. I got the Vintage Vogue set in my starter kit because I loved how different elements had a pattern within them - so that the stamped image is a little more interesting than just a plain letter or floral design. The flower in the card is actually double-layered with dimensionals between the second and third petals. I love love LOVE using dimensionals - it makes everything more fun! :)

I also made another, simpler card using the Vintage Vogue set more prominently and stamping one of the bigger blooms from the Petal Pizzazz set as a background image. I got the VV set in a clear-mount to fit with the price range in my kit. Initially I was definitely apprehensive about the clear-mount stamps. I've found that acrylic stamps, to me, don't get quite the same image resolution at times as rubber stamps do - especially with craft/pigment inks, which you really just have to get the exact right amount on there. But I was very pleasantly surprised - the clear-mount stamps are easy to use, and since they're still made of rubber instead of acrylic, they give you the same resolution - but take up much less space because they're housed in a DVD case.

All She Wants To Do Is STAMP, STAMP, STAMP!!

Ok so you know how I was talking about the inspiration artists get from music, and I got on here thinking of what I could name today's post - and it just came to me as this Don Henley song immediately played in my mind:



It's so funny because my fingers were poised over the keys and I thought, All she wants to do is STAMP STAMP STAMP! as the chorus.

Today was a pretty hot day & I had a really awesome time running errands, having coffee with two fellow spouses that I'm hoping to get to now better in the weeks to come - and planning some projects to work on and share. The mailbox was generous once more and revealed another package of retired Stampin'Up sets - all about putting your own stamp on projects. I love being able to add a little element somewhere that I can date, sign or otherwise "authenticate" my artwork. Hey, you never know where your art might end up one day! :)

I've got lots to do this weekend with tidying and organizing the house so that I can get that out of the way and focus on my artwork next week. I'm itching to get all my inks and paints out, especially because I also want to try some projects from the many magazines that are threatening to take over my office.

Here's to warm sunny days, great coffee & even better company. It's in those little mundane, everyday events that you can find beauty and excitement to pour, in my case, into creative endeavors...

Imagination vs Knowledge

I've been browsing the internet for hours, trying to learn a few more things about this whole blogging business. You see, the writing isn't an issue for me - it's the formating that I'm struggling with. I mean, I know the basics - but then I come across these amazing blogs that just make you want to weep for all the accomplished polish they boast. Buttons! Links! Hyperlinks! Shopping carts! ARRGGHHH!!!

So when I came across this fun picture just now, I knew I had to share it - it made me a feel a little better just now: