Roses Are Blue...

Voulez-vous decoupage avec moi, ce soir?

Faux bois and woodland themes were everywhere this Christmas. Everything from ornaments to wrapping paper was showing up in woodgrain. This red woodgrain tissue paper that I found at Target was especially lovely. I bought a ton when it went on clearance, knowing I would use it for something soon. Voilà! 

I decoupaged the tissue paper onto a posterboard heart cutout that I had on hand and then stamped the letters on after it dried. I pasted another heart cutout on the back to cover the mess and have a place to write some purple prose. It was super simple - the hardest part was getting the Mod Podge out of the bottle. (Is there a phrase "Slow as Mod Podge in January"? There should be.) All the romance of carving intials into a tree without doing any damage. 

Honeycomb Cherry Blossom Tree Tutorial

I made these cherry blossom branches a week or so back to satisfy some spring fever and do something new with the honeycomb tissue paper I had recently bought. It turned out so well that I decided to make a tutorial for anyone that is interested. 

Honeycomb tissue paper made beautiful, showy blossoms - exactly what I was looking for. I used sheets of paper that I ordered online but you could totally re-purpose a dollar-store holiday or party honeycomb decoration for this project. Just make sure that the cells of the opened paper are on the smaller size. You can check this by looking at the lines where the paper is glued when the shape is collapsed. The space between these lines should be a 1/2 inch or less to make blossoms with the effect I got. 

Materials    

Small-celled (1/2 inch or less) honeycomb tissue paper (either a sheet or a decoration to re-purpose)
Double-sided tape
Scissors
Branches (I used Rose of Sharon bush branches from my yard)

Steps

1. Prepare your honeycomb tissue paper. I cut my sheets into smaller squares, 2-3 inches across. If you use a re-purposed decoration, do the same. The lines in the collapsed paper are where the sheets of tissue are glued together to make the honeycomb effect. You want to set up your square for cutting the blossom shape with the glue lines oriented vertically.

2. Cut out your blossom shape. I used an elongated half-circle as the silhouette. You can cut any size blossom, but the most important part is to cut so there is a glue line inside the shape on both ends. This creates the celled effect. My blossoms either had one, two, or three cells and were anywhere from about a half-inch to an inch-and-a-half long. Getting your blossoms how you like them might take a little trial-and-error, so practicing on some extra paper or decoration definitely wouldn't hurt.  

3. Once your shape is cut out put a square of double-sided tape on one end.

4. Open the blossom carefully and match up the ends. Press them together so the tape sticks and creates the blossom shape. This part is a tricky because the paper can get a little floppy. You want the straight edge of the shape to be the center of the blossom and the curved to be the outside.

5. After making your blossom, set it aside and prepare your branch. Wrap a generous piece of double-sided tape around the end of your branch where you want to place the blossom.

6. Gently pull the sides of the blossom with both hands to make a small opening in the center and slide it over the taped branch like you would a doughnut. You slide doughnuts onto tree branches, right? (Tutorials are hard, folks.)

7. Cup the blossom with both hands and press gently towards the center  to adhere all the tissue layers onto the tape. 

8. Repeat! Until you have a bunch of beautiful blossoming branches. Once you get the hang of working with the paper it is fun, quick, and totally satisfying.

Working with the tissue was so awesome that I want to keep experimenting. My kids also loved playing with it so save your scraps for a rainy day if you want a fun kid-project. If you do make anything, definitely share in the comments. I think I might set up a Pinterest board just for cool honeycomb tissue uses. 

Love Scopes!

I recently blogged about making these for my kids at Letter B. I thought I'd post a tutorial here for anyone who wants to make some. They are super-easy to put together. Little ones might need a hand with the folding but other than that it's a fun Valentine's Day craft for any age.

Love 'Nocs

Materials: Two toilet paper tubes or one paper-towel roll cut in half
                     Glue and colored paper and/or paint or markers 
                     Stapler
                     Hole punch and yarn or ribbon for strap 
                     Optional: Post-it Lables, silver paint pen 

1. Decorate your tubes however you like. I used glue stick and covered them in construction paper.  I used some Post-it Lables (which are really awesome - basically post-its but the entire back is sticky) to create the lens-like stripe at the end. Then I used a silver Sharpie to outline the stripes. But you could paint them, use markers, or even leave them plain. You will be bending the tubes pretty vigorously so keep that in mind with whatever you choose.

2. Pinch the tube at one end until it's completely closed and then flatten the tube all the way down with your fingers. Then put it on a surface and crease both folds well. Tube should be completely flat.

3. Squeeze tube from flattened shape until it's a pointy oval shape. Push the top crease down until it's inverted and you get a heart shape. This takes a little time, shaping with your fingers and recreasing, but with a little patience you'll get a heart-shaped tube. 

4. Repeat with other tube.

5. Staple tubes together at both ends. If you like, punch holes at one end and tie on some yarn or ribbon for a strap.

6. Start looking for love.

Spyglass Love Scope

Follow Love 'Nocs steps 1-3 using a paper towel tube. And then take your awesome piratey love scope and follow step 6.

Thank you, Austin! Goodnight!

Is that line getting old? You'd tell me, right? Like if I had a poppy seed in my teeth or toilet paper on my shoe? I hope so. Anyway, phew, Renegade Austin was FUN. I could go on for hours so I'll try to spare you and just stick to the highlights. And obviously the biggest highlight was the stuff! The crafts were so stinkin' cool. These are some of the goodies I bought (minus the super awesome prints that are still en route in their safe, flat packaging):

Another highlight was Austin's Minor Mishap Marching Band marching up and down the aisles. I love marching bands and this one was awesome. They even had a little hula hooper! But the aisles were too narrow so she was just marching and bouncing her hoop. Sadly the photos all came out blurry so you'll have to use your imagination. Here's a picture of a screaming guitar kid instead:

Speaking of guitar kids, my favorite customer was an adorable little 2 yr-old boy named Shane. His super cool parents let him pick out one of my kid's guitar straps for his guitar which they said he actually plays. I can only imagine how cute that must be... He picked the green guitar. My favorite.

The last-but-not-least highlight was meeting Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching (she's the embroidery guru for those of you who don't know). AND having her ask to photograph my embroidered sign! I tried to be cool and not get all fan girl on her but I doubt it worked. It did help that I didn't recognize her when she actually asked about the sign and didn't find out it was her until I stopped by her booth to introduce myself and she assured me that we had, in fact, met the day before...way to go, huh? Back to my rookie moves again.

Anyway, there was so much more...amazing tattoos, adorable babies, adorable dogs, bands, dj's, crafting booths, raffles...it was a fun, fun weekend. Thank you to everyone who came by the booth to say hi and to all of my new customers! And a super-huge extra-special thank you to my awesome friend, Heather, who made the trip with me and was indispensable. And quite the two-stepper although she likes to be coy about it.

Yippee ay oh ki yay! Renegade Austin!

 

Ok, that's the news kids! I will be a vendor at the first ever Renegade Austin and I am beyond excited about it. First, I'm excited because it's Renegade and I get to participate again. And second, it's in Austin! I love Austin! I want to move to Austin! Even though I've never been there...but I really think I will love it.

Since this fair is going to involve air travel I had to come up with new ways to display my wares that are lightweight, collapsible, portable, etc. I like to use what I have so I looked all around my studio to see what materials I already had on hand and I happened to have a lot of second hand paper, gently-used posterboard and foam core board. I started playing around with it all and what I ended up with were foldable, slipcovered foam core shelves and Cone People...

This is the felt slipcover for one of the shelves before I stitched it up.

These are the cone people bodies getting a coat of spray paint.

And here are some of the faces and hands...

All together they look like this:

Cute! So this little lady is a medium sized Cone Person but the larger ones are big enough to model the Joey Bags. Unfortunately they are already packed up in their box ready to head to Austin so again, you'll have to take my word for it. But don't worry, I promise to take photos of the entire display once I get it all up. I'm trying to keep the rookie moves to a minimum this time...

How I spend my free time...

What? Are you going to try to tell me you don't make roach dioramas when you are bored? Because I'm not buying it...

So it was just Alana's 40th birthday. You might remember Alana, my sister...we, ahem, share this blog. She last posted back in 2008. That sweet little baby is 2 now... Anyway, although you wouldn't know it here, Alana is pretty big into the blogging world  (Letter B and Momku) so for her birthday Matthew, her husband, started a secret birthday blog where her family and friends could all post videos, photos, letters, haikus and what not. So, because Alana hates roaches and I am her little sister, my idea was to make a video of a roach birthday party with a roach jumping out of a cake. Actually, my original ideas was to use Peeps Bunnies but then I found my pack of rubber roaches in my sock drawer (what?) and had this minor stroke of genius...I have since made a full recovery, thanks for asking. See the cute little puppy? I'm not all bad.

Another stop on the trip...

Have I ever mentioned how much amazing stuff my stepmother finds when she goes thrifting?  She has the best luck.  And she is incredibly generous with her finds which makes me lucky too.  So when we got to Chicago there was a stack of goodies waiting in the guest room for me.  She found all of these hoops (and this is only half!) for one dollar.  I don't think I've ever even seen a hoop at my local thrift shop...  I am going to make some wall hangings with them a la Purl Bee, although I think I will add some embroidery.  As if all of this wasn't enough, my stepsister (who has apparently inherited the thrifting gene) also left me a box full of this amazing paper.  I think she's crazy to give this all away but I am thrilled to be the recipient.  The first project will have to be a stack of thank you cards.

The Pinwheel Mobile Goes Round And Round

Pinwheel Mobile, originally uploaded by Alana.

About a hundred years ago I got married. (It was actually less than 5 years ago, but man, it seems a lot longer.) We decided to have pinwheels as our wedding favor. We were getting married at my mom's house up on a hill where it was always very windy and it seemed like the perfect little thing. I got excited about the idea but I couldn't find any pinwheels on the market that were right. Kara then got the idea to make them out of origami paper, pins, and wooden dowels. It was a good idea except for the fact that they were VERY labor-intensive. She ended up making every single one herself. Like 125 of them. Each one more beautiful than the last. It was the most lovingly insane thing she has ever done for me.

Fast forward a couple years. While I was flipping through a back issue of Martha Stewart's Baby magazine I saw an article on making baby mobiles out of paper. It included an adorable one made out of pinwheels. I was a little sad because my son was already well past mobile stage and it would have been so perfect and at that point we were not sure about having another baby. Well we did. And from the second  "pregnant" showed up on the digital test screen I started thinking about making this mobile. Being the procrastinator that I am I left it until right before my due date. Willa decided to show up a week early so it didn't get done. When Kara came up for Christmas this year she not  only distracted my kids (and hers) so I would have a solid hour to work on it, she also gave me a self-healing cutting mat and a rotary cutter as a present. (Score!) And now Willa has a little pinwheel mobile above her crib.  And all is well.