These Christmas tree ornaments are so easy to make I couldn’t resist posting a little how to.
You’ll need:
Pencil
Thick Cardboard or Mountboard
Scissors or Craft Knife
Old Book Pages
Paintbrush
PVA/White Glue
White Acrylic Paint
Water
Glitter
UHU Glue
Button
Embroidery Needle
Thread
What to do:
Using your pencil, draw a five point star shape onto your cardboard and cut out around the line. It really doesn’t matter that it’s perfect or that you cut on the line – these are meant to be a bit rustic.
Tear your book page into smallish squares – again it doesn’t need to be perfect.
Paint one side of the star with watered down PVA/white glue and stick the bits of book page to it all higgeldy piggeldy.
Wait for the star to dry – I didn’t because I am very impatient and I got in a terrible mess.
Turn the star over and trim the overhanging bits of book page. Now paint the blank side with glue and stick your squares of book page but wrap them around the shape to cover the sides…this might make more sense when you have the star shape in front of you. Basically you want to have a nice wrapped shape when you’ve finished.
Prop the start against something to dry.
Mix your acrylic paint with around around 50% water and paint over one side of the star. Leave to dry and repeat with the other side.
Paint one side of the star with PVA/white glue and sprinkle glitter over it…less is more here. Wait for it to dry, turn over and do the same on the other side. It looks really good when the light shines on it so I recommend not skipping this step.
Using UHU or superglue, glue your button to the middle of the star.
Use a needle push a hole through the star at the top of one point. Thread the needle with a few strands of thread and make a loop through the hole you’ve just made.
You’re done. Find a rather attractive pumpkin and take some pictures.
These are really easy to make. I made 5 of them in one morning for a swap and I might just make some more for our own tree.
I’ve been meaning to try book binding for a long time now. The process and results fascinate me…I think it’s the old fashioned feeling of making something that doesn’t use glue or plastic.
In my seemingly never ending search for an easy detailed tutorial I came across this one from Shelly, which I think is one of the most detailed tutorials on this subject available online for free. Shelly calls her method single needle chain stitch and it’s not strictly speaking Coptic stitch but it’s pretty close.
This is Shelly’s book – I don’t have a picture of the stitching on my book – it looks like this except it’s hot pink.
The binding itself doesn’t take long once you get going, it’s all the cutting and making sure that everything lines up that takes the time and then, in my case realising that I should have decorated the covers before binding and having a few days of blind panic while I figured out a workaround. I’m pleased with my attempt (I have to admit though that this is the fourth time I’ve tried book binding – it takes a bit of practice).
For my book covers I used some offcuts of artists mount board, double thickness, glued together with PVA. I cut my pages roughly to size and trimmed them after the book was bound. The only problem I had with this was the when I got to the last pages there was nothing underneath them…with hindsight I would have put double thickness of mount board under them for support! I would recommend covering the book covers prior to binding but it was my intention to make a cloth cover so I didn’t bother and then when the cloth cover went all wrong I had to improvise with mulberry paper. I don’t think anyone would notice if I didn’t say anything!
Completed book – sent to the lovely Jenny for a SwapBot swap
A while ago now onecrazywoman contacted me with the proposition to swap dotee dolls. She is making me a dotee doll with a Texan theme and I am making her a dotee doll with a Scottish theme. I’ve been making this doll on and off now for the past month and finally last night I finished.
This is Morag – she is a traditional highland Scot but a bit kooky at heart which is why she wears a traditional plaid outfit but it’s pink! She her unruly hair – she never brushes it and the wild Scottish winds have whipped it into a bit of a bird’s nest!
She’ll be on her way to join onecrazywoman’s dotee collection in Texas next week.
~ You can also find onecrazywoman as lovetoquilt2 on SwapBot.
Sometimes inspiration comes from the strangest of places…no, I wasn’t sitting on the loo thinking about art; I spotted the toilet paper ATC swap on SwapBot (did I mention I’m addicted to that place) and decided to give it a go.
toilet paper, wire, watercolour paints, pva glue
Here’s what I did:
Painted the background with black watercolour paint and let it dry, rolled toilet paper around a piece of wire and coloured it with watercolours (mainly red), curved the wire and glued it to the background. I then wet sheets of toilet paper and pushed them down over the wire, painted then while they were wet with watercolours and spread PVA glue liberally over the top. I painted more layers of glue over the top when that was dry to give them a sheen and to seal the toilet paper.
I think they look ok. I think the colours are a bit bright for my liking and the medium isn’t one I’ll be using again in a hurry, but I’m pretty pleased with the finish.
Gosh! We’ve been so busy recently, it’s hard to know what to talk about. I’ve been feeling pretty ill this weekend so haven’t yet managed to put together the pattern for the owl brooches. It’ll come later this week as I start to feel more like my old self again…that along with some instructions for turning magazines into paper bags, which is what we’ve done instead of buying paper bags for the upcoming craft fair we’re getting involved with. We are so busy here that our house is starting to feel like a two man factory!
Today, I offer you the ATCs I made for the ATC Challenge Swap at SwapBot…
I know it’s an odd combination, but it’s what I’ve been keeping busy with over the past week or so.
Inchies
Inchies are 1″x1″ pieces of art. The challenge is definitely in getting something interesting on a small piece of board. In this instance I created some 101 Dalmation inchies for a user on swapbot who wanted to give them as a parting gift to her friend. These have gone all the way to Singapore!
I wouldn’t really class these as art, I had fun making them nonetheless.
Skinnies
Second is the Skinny I made for the Simple Skinny swap, again via swapbot. Skinnies are 3″ x 5″ pieces of art. I have been meaning to have a go at the one stroke painting technique for a long time now and while this isn’t a particularly good example of the artform it’s something I am very proud of. I sewed on some seed beads to bring out the centre of the flowers. It really is much better in the flesh as it were. I hope the recipient likes it…it’s gone to America.
Clearly I need to practice stems a lot more. Or, maybe I just need new paint brushes!
Kittens
Most excitingly is the news of Beryl, our cat, giving birth to two kittens four weeks ago. Sadly one of them died and we have been hand rearing the other due to Beryl not producing enough milk. He’s doing exceptionally well now and we have finally felt able to name him today…meet Kipper (named by a three year old, can you tell!)
I love this picture, taken by Alasdair. He’s a nightmare to get food into but he is good fun for the rest of the time.
Owls
A sneaky preview at something that will hopefully be coming soon to the patterns page of the site. I’ve been making felt brooches and love the quickness of the craft. This owl was sent to a swapper in Israel and I will, with a bit of luck and time be adding the pattern for this and a couple of other brooches in the next few weeks…keep checking back, they are really simple to make and require very few materials.
Last piece of news is that we are preparing for our first craft fayre next month so are very busy and very excited at the same time. May it be the first of many, eh?
Alasdair has just finished another carving, this time the wood is from a Cherry tree. He should be letting you see it very soon. Also I’ve made some more felt birds, this time I’ve made one from cotton fabric so it has a frayed edge. I like the effect. We need some sunshine for optimum photography though…I thought it was summer!
I made this lion dotee doll for a swapbot tag. I’m having trouble parting with this one.
It’s felt with embroidery thread and seed bead detail…quite simple really. It was really windy when I took this picture so I had to hold onto the tail to keep it steady…it’s a basic tassel.
Both are painted with black acrylic paint before being embellished. The first set used dictionary pages handcut into letters that were then coloured with crayons and outlined with gold pen. The second set used the packing tape transfer method again with various backgrounds (vintage book page, painted baby wipe, painting with kids poster paints, newspaper).
I’ve decided to start swapping again. The first of the swaps I tackled this week was to create two Vintage Fashion ATCs. Here’s my interpretation and a bit of a how to.
I love this effect and it’s really quick and easy to acheive.
First find an old dressmaking pattern that you are done with or don’t mind never using again. For my purposes I have a huge box of vintage patterns for size 10 clothing…even with the best will in the world I’ll never fit into these so they’re perfect for other crafts. The background I used actually has two patterns stuck to it as the one I had with words on it didn’t look old enough for the effect I was trying to acheive.
Using a glue stick, stick the pattern pieces to a plain postcard. Wait for these to dry before the next part, otherwise they will tear and the whole thing will be a mess.
The figures were applied using the packing tape transfer method shown in the video below. Pay particular attention to removing all of the white bits, unlike me who did this in a poorly lit room and missed bits!
I photocopied the pattern packaging and coloured in the figures with crayon and coloured pencil before sticking it to my “packing tape”. The green one is crayon and the red one is coloured pencil. Crayon gives a more vibrant finish, although I prefer the washed out appearance from the coloured pencil. I guess anything would work as long as it’s waterproof.
The cool thing about this method of transfer is that ech time I’ve done it, the packing tape (or sticky backed plastic in my case) stays sticky even though it’s been wet, which is perfect for finishing the ATCs. I just smoothed it on and rubbed my scissor handles over it to get a really good contact between the transfer and the patterned postcard.
The back is finished with another plain postcard for neatness.
christmas, craft, instructions, ornament, paper, papier mache, swapbot | Jolene | 
22 October, 2009 9:00 am | 
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