Here's what I'm up to today...

I love quilting or rather the idea of quilting, the look of quilting, but facing facts, I am the last person that needs to rack up another hobby.

As an homage to quilting, however, I decided to make a paper quilt to hang on the wall.

I'm working on it today.

I purchased a few sheets of coordinating patterned paper from the scrapbook section of Roberts Craft and I've been creating squares using a Marvy Uchida paper punch (it's about 1"x1") I'm using a variety of paper brands including: Rusty Pickle, Chatterbox, Crate Paper, DCWV and My Mind's Eye. I'm using a large stretched canvas that I picked up at Tuesday Morning over a year ago. For my adhesive I'm using good old Elmer's Glue.

I'm really excited to see how it all turns out. I'm going to be using strips of paper to 'bind' it around the edges.

I'll post the finished work in the next day or two along with one of my other posts.

--C

My Latest Scrapbook Project

I am a chronological scrapbooker. This essentially means that I have a large binders in which to put a record of my family's life. It also means that there is no real end to the project that is scrapbooking. That is precisely why this mini-album of my trip to New York was so much fun to make! I made it for my husband for Father's Day. This was the first visit to New York for both of us. I started with a post-bound album from the Target dollar aisle. It already had a 'window' in the cover and I applied Making Memories rub-ons for "New York." Cover page.

The paper used throughout the book is from an 8x8 Cosmo Cricket Paper Pad called "Hello Sunshine." It included a several of the sayings I used here.

There's still some journaling to complete, but I want my husband's help. Husbands are not easy to pin down for crafting time.

When I ran out of pages in the album, I just cut some creme colored cardstock to size, punched holes, unscrewed the posts and added the pages. On the final page, I used put a photo on the back cover to utilize all available space. Most photos were 4x6 but I did have a few printed as 5x7s.

I think cropping my photos first helped make this a really quick project and using items I already had on hand (I only bought my photo prints) made it very inexpensive.

The best part? My husband loves it. That quick turn around from the experience to the recorded memories really worked for him (I made it within two weeks of returning from New York). He's taken it on all his recent business trips to show his co-workers and it's going with him this very day to Seattle. He's having dinner with his sisters and wanted to show them too.

--C

Inspiration Everywhere

A few months ago I thought I'd take a page out of Anisa's book and use home decor catalogues as crafting inspiration. Well, I found a great one, just my style in CHiASSO. Now finally, I have taken the first item of inspiration and done something with it! This is a clock made of resin, but as soon as I saw it I knew I could recreate it in paper. This is made up of 48 strips attached strategically to create this wavy design. I cut 36 strips, one inch wide and twelve inches long. At first I thought I would use brads for the attachment, but I didn't like that there would be the ugly side of the brad showing. Taking a second glance at the catalogue I could see the answer: Glue Dots!

I started by attaching two strips at a time at one end (here after known as 'the top'). I completed this with all the strips for a total of 18 joined pieces.

Next I lined the strips up on a square inch grid, with the top on the left side of the grid. I put another glue dot on the inside of the strip at the seventh inch and at the right end (see purple indicators). I repeated this with the rest of the seventeen strips. Next, I took one of the joined pieces, placing a Glue Dot on the outside of the strip at the 3 1/2" mark and the 9 1/2" mark (see red indicators) and stacked the next piece on top. I repeated this with the rest of the pieces.

See how it's coming together?After all it's all stacked in a row, it'll look like this.

The unstuck ends now need to be attached.

Once these are glued you can spread out the medalion and it looks like this: I like this in it's simplicity but it could be embelleshed in a lot of fun ways. It could probably also be made into a clock if you added another twelve strips, opening the center more.

I plan to hang this on a wall. To combat the weakness of the paper and its tendency to droop, I'm going to use fine pointed pins in several places to hold it up instead of hanging it by one point. --C

Blog Hijacking!!!

For the month of July, Cami, Anisa and Angie are each taking over an entire week each on Twiddle-Thumbs! Stay tuned for all the ideas and fun!