Paper Engineering, Part 2....

I recently started to follow Phiona Richards (@rarenotions) on Twitter (quick question - what did we do with our time before we tweeted? lol - don't bother answering...) who made/showed something that reminded me of an origami flower ball that an NCFE Student at SACC made a few years ago and it prompted me to make one (it was on a 'must try that when I get 5 minutes' list that was tucked away in the recesses of my brain), and here it is in all its origami-button-embellished loveliness.. really happy with how it looks - all 12 flowers, 60 petals of it!
Phew thats a lot of folding and sticking!

Loved making this - great project for making while you're sitting in front of the tv, folding & sticking, folding & sticking...

I really like the button centres....

This flower ball is made from 4in squares of paper, I'm currently working on one where petals are made from 2in squares - teeny tiny - I'll post a picture when its done. ;o)
On twitter, where I posted the pictures yesterday, people asked for instructions (waving at you Jean!)- the flower ball is not my design and I found the instructions on the web - there are lots of them out there - this is the one I used:
http://folio-love.com/diy-2/diy-paper-flower-tutorial/  This is the instructions for the flowers and then I guessed/played/looked at photos of how to stick all the flowers together to form a ball - which is quite easy to work out (or there may be another tutorial out there for that.

Paper Engineering, Part 1: Me, Martha & some sheets of paper....

I love a bit of paper engineering - I find it relaxing (when it works!) - the methodical manner in which the pieces are cut and pieced together..
a couple of weeks ago I tweeted this:

I made it using the Martha Stewart 'party crafting template' a great tool which gives guides for cutting the individual pieces - no measuring - LOVE tools like that - its not that I'm a lazy crafter but if there's a tool that makes life/crafting easier then I'm interested!
This star was cut from one of my favourite papers - My Minds Eye - spots on one side and typed text on the reverse - LOVE! and I love how the star turned out - much nicer than the similar star that turned up on the front of 'Making' magazine the following week! lol (in my opinion anyway! lol)
The star measures 16inches top to bottom - I'm going to make some in a single colour to go on the christmas tree - I know 16inches sounds big for a tree decoration but the tree is 7ft tall, and it'll look great with these wooden snowlake decorations that we already have:

I think they're about 8-10inches - I really like big ornaments on a tree (as well as the little ones) statement pieces!

A this'n'that catch up.... Part 1

... so lots of little bits and pieces going on & being made/created and I've been a bad blogger and only been putting things up on Twitter - cos its so quick! 140 characters and its done... but that makes my blog a bit dull for you lovely peeps out there who aren't on twitter and so stop by this blog (and to be honest with you I'd get more done if I wasn't on twitter lol) - and I'm very grateful to you for popping in.  :o)

Right here's the this'n'that round up:

It was my lovely god-daughters birthday last month so I made her a bunting banner with her name on it..
It started off life like this - a lovely little dress that I bought at the charity shop (reduce, reuse, recycle!), washed and ......

 

....ta-daaa!!  its now very cute bunting for a very cute girlie. Her favourite colour? yep- pink! of course! lol

----------------------

I've started teaching a few classes at Hobbycraft in Chelmsford, only a few, its good fun... different style and products to the other classes I do.
First class was a 'Die-Cutting' class aimed at people considering buying a machine or who had one but wanted to know more.  It was a mix of demo'ing the machines (cuttlebug & bigshot) and teaching.  2 hours of fun. Lovely ladies who went home happy (and inspired) - job done!
Here are a couple of the cards we made:

I'll be doing a couple more classes soon - I'll keep you posted.

---------------------------

I haven't bought stamps for a while but in the past few weeks I seem to have bought loads a few - some I've bought just because they're soooo useful - like these from Papermania - big numbers.. You don't get plain numbers like these very often do you? they're about 3 inches tall - really versatile - just the outline - great for journaling, paper piecing etc. I bought all of them (£2.00 each and buy 2 get 3rd free! kerching! love bargains like that)

so i settled down on the sofa and just doodled inside the numbers - just to see how it felt, how easy it would be to fill the numbers with just black ink. like these a lot - just good simple BIG numbers.  I'm sure there are lots of other filler patterns but they're for another day....

Thats all for now - thanks for stopping by - please 'follow' the blog - its nice to know who pops by & it'd be nice to visit your little corner of www.

xx

Attacking the Stash!!...part 2!!

Oh yes - the stash busting continues...
Mainly by creating rosettes using the Tim Holtz dies {love}.  I showed a picture of my desk on Wednesday of the rosettes in progress and people asked what I was doing with them. 
I think making these might get a bit obsessive - 50 and counting - I'm just making the basic rosette (different sizes), putting them in a box and saving them for later... its all in the planning lol (its a sitting in front of the TV sort of job)

Here's batch 1... I started laying them out to look at them and think about what I was going do with them - it became a great way to see how different colour combo's worked together:

Waaaaaaaay back in June 2007 I posted this picture...

..showing how I'd cut a strip of all my sheets of 12x12 so I could flip through and see what I had instead of going through the stash.. seemed like a good idea at the time... but did I do that? ...did I heck! ...no it just hung on the wall looking pretty (at the studio)... so as part of the big studio-clear-out and the reduce, reuse, recycle plan I've use those to make these:

(OK these don't even dent the pile of paper strips but a)the others are going to be used for punching borders & b) you've got to start somewhere! lol)

 

OK, I think thats quite enough rosettes for one day - but I'll just show you a few pics of what I've done with them so far:

Also I colour the mountain folds of the rosettes to disguise the white core of the card/paper thats revealed when folded - love how that looks

(I'm also thinking that rubbing over it with versamark ink and then brushing with Perfect Pearls would look v pretty.. but thats for another time....)

A little compare and contrast for you: left rosette plain... right rosette with colouring of the mountain folds - nice isn't it! (and gives you another colour to match with background papers and images..

There's more on the desk with all the elements laid out but not stuck down - they're for another day.

Attacking the Stash!!...part 1

 ... its an ongoing task - to attack/use the stash I've accumulated (all part of 'reduce, reuse, recycle') - and over at Banana Frog today I've created some 'scrappy' cards

Thanks for stopping by

A little bit of sewing does you good...

... don't you think? I find it really calming: sitting and sewing - whether its mending or something creative...
I'm teaching a 4 week class sewing class at the moment with a 'reduce, reuse, recycle' theme - and so have been playing around with this and that ....

This isn't something we'll be doing in class (all though if they want to we can), it was just something that I'd been wanting to try for a while - a simple twisted rag flower.. cute.. and following the theme of upcycling things this one has been made from an old skirt of mine - one I wore on my honeymoon - and its nice because everytime I look at it I think of our honeymoon, and in my head I can see the picture of M&I where I'm wearing the skirt.  Its important to keep memories like that and why its nice to create something that prompts (and preserves) the memory - whatever the 'something' is - a scrapbook page, minibook, patchwork.....

I'm off to play with fabric, interfacing, bondaweb and buttons - not necessarily in that order! (because I have to find at least 2 of those items before I can use them!  They're in a box somewhere......)

Whatever you're up to today have a good one!