October 14th, 2011
Hey everyone! Today I have a fun and easy craft project for you. I’m calling it a Jewelry Shadowbox with Fabric. I’m creative with names like that, yo.
When I was younger, I seriously would wear the SAME jewelry every day. Literally day in and day out, I’d wear small gold hoop earrings, a gold necklace with one charm, and one of my sister’s (stolen borrowed) rings. Once every few years I’d get something special, like a new charm or my high school ring, but pretty much it was the same jewelry all the time. Let me ask you – why on Earth was I limiting myself????
Since then, I have opened myself up to the world of jewelry! This has a lot to do with the fact that both of my bffs are now jewelry reps for home-party companies (though two separate companies). So I’ve had a few parties for them and it has been great fun! However, it has created a need for storing all this new jewelry I’ve acquired.
For Christmas last year, my husband bought me this wonderful large jewelry box that I keep in our master closet. But in the mornings, I’m not always completely awake and that can make picking the necklace I want quite a challenge. So I went to the power of the interwebs and searched around for a solution. Enter the Jewelry Shadowbox with Fabric.
Here’s how I did it:
I started with a plain shadowbox from A.C. Moore. I used a 40% coupon. I got the 11×14 size, because I wanted it to be a little bit on the larger side. I also used Krylon aluminum spray paint (purchased at Walmart). I also sent my husband to Lowe’s to get some of these hooks to screw into the top of the frame. I screwed them in every inch and a half or so. I actually enlisted my husband’s help again, because my hand was starting to hurt after like three hooks (I’m a wimp!).
I took out the guts and the glass of the shadowbox and went to spraying. I am not at all a pro spray painter, but it’s pretty much fool proof. I did about 3 light coats of paint and just touched up as needed. My grass also got a fancy makeover in the process. Doesn’t that leaf look kinda cool as aluminum??
The hooks obviously got a makeover from gold to matte aluminum in this process as well.
Once the spray paint dries (read the bottle for specifics), time to take it inside to make-over the guts! Here are my supplies:
Spray adhesive, quilt batting, and the Riley Blake Designs Lost & Found by Jen Allyson for My Mind’s Eye Black – Main fabric.
I started by adhering one layer of batting to the shadowbox backing. I felt it wasn’t ‘cushy’ enough, so I spray adhered another layer of batting on top of the first. This is the front of the backing with the first layer of batting cut close.
Then there’s the back. The good part about the back? NO ONE SEES IT!
I used my good pal Scor-Tape to adhere the batting to the back of the backing. I made it tight, but not too tight because I wanted the backing to be able to bend a bit to fit inside the shadowbox snugly.
Then I spray adhered a layer of fabric to the front of the batting and used Scor-Tape again on the back. I tried to use the ‘wrap the corners like a present’ technique. Remember what I said about no one seeing the back???
Here is the finished backing put into the shadowbox! You can see the sides and the bottom were able to bend enough to fit snugly into the frame.
And here it is in it’s new home, holding some of my favorite necklaces.
Now my necklaces are sitting right on my dresser where I can see and grab them easily in the morning. It’s fun to decorate your house with the same things you use to decorate your clothes!
Have a great weekend everyone!
October 12th, 2011
Well hello there! My name is Angie Hinksman and it’s my turn to share some crafty goodness here at The Project Girl’s Blog. Thank you so much Jen for having me ! For my first post I thought I’d share with you my ideas for creating a simple way of keeping track of those discount coupons and vouchers. I’ll show you how to make a two printable Coupon Organizers.
There are two ways you can create these Coupon Organizers. If you have either photoshop or photoshop elements and are experienced with working with layered templates, I have included layered psd files that you can use to clip your digi-papers into and print out. I have also included pdf versions that you can use as templates for your traditional scrapbooking papers; either by printing them onto white card and then using as traditional templates or you can print these straight onto your scrapbooking paper. You can download these templates here.
You will need the following supplies:
- Your printed Coupon Organizer Documents, printed onto white card – The larger organizer; 1 center/main part and 2 accordion sides. For the small organizer, just one all-in-one document. I’ve used Jen’s Nostalgia 2 papers, available at Design House Digital.
- For the large Organizer, 1 piece of 12×12 inch card stock (for the dividers and lining)
- For the small organizer 1 piece of card stock (I’ve used 1 piece of A4 white cardstock)
- Glue or double sided sticky tape
- Velcro or magnetic tape (to keep your organizers closed)
- Scissors, Craft knife or rotary cutter
- Rolling pin to help your glue stick good and tight!
- Embossing tool, Ruler or Blunt butter Knife (to score folded edges)
I have set up the psd files so that you can easily ‘clip’ your digi-paper straight into the. Once you have prepared your digi prints you can just print the finished documents onto white cardstock. Alternatively you can print the pdf versions onto traditional scrapbook paper by first trimming your paper to fit a standard A4 sized page.
Now you are ready to assemble your Coupon Organizer. First, cut out all of your pieces. Using the center, patterned piece as a guide, cut out another center piece from your cardstock. This will be the lining of your organizer. Cut the remaining card stock into 3 6 x 3 ¼ inch pieces. These will be the ‘dividers’.
Next fold the ‘accordion sides’ as illustrated in the images below. I’ve included a ‘Black & White’ version to help illustrate this.
Next, glue the sides of 2 accordion pieces to the sides of the main piece as shown below. Leave this to dry and then glue the lining to the other side.
Once the whole thing is completely dry (I’d give it an hour or so), fold up your organizer as shown and add the either your Velcro or magnetic tape, as shown. Finally add your dividers. You can secure the sides with a little glue at the accordion edges if you like but it’s really not necessary!
The smaller organizer is even quicker. Simply printout the all-in-on sheet, assemble in a similar way to the large organizer (folding at the dotted lines). Cut out 3 5×2 ¾ inch rectangles from your white cardstock. No need to line this one just fold, glue, insert your dividers and your good to go!
And there you have two easy ways to keep track of those oh-so-useful vouchers and coupons!
Have a great day !
October 4th, 2011
I’m sure there are lots of ways to do this. And it’s probably REALLY easy if you drink coffee. But I don’t, and I don’t have a coffee machine, So I did it the quick & cheap way!
First I grabbed some supplies:
Paper towels
Water
Instant Coffee
Spoon
Tray
Doilies** – Do not use the grease-resistant doilies that are sold by Wilton or other cake supply companies. They will not dye well.
Then I mixed the coffee in COLD water. You can mix it in hot water, and it probably does better, however, you should wait until the coffee cools before doing the dye process. I was too lazy to wait for coffee to cool down so I used room temperature water. You can also use coffee filters to filter out the granuals, this will make your process a bit easier than mine. I couldn’t find my coffee filters though (the kitchen is still packed up), so I used paper towels.
I mixed the coffee and water:
And then realized I had granules to contend with! Being a coffee noob, I thought it would all dissolve :p. So I put paper towels over the granules as a way of filtering out the coffee-water from the crystals.Then I just put the doily on top of the paper towel, and pushed it down to get a lot of the coffee-water soaked into it.
I let the doily soak for maybe a minute, and then place it on a paper towel to get off excess moisture:
You can see here the difference between the dyed and un-dyed doily. Then I set up a make-shift “clothes-line” across my craft room, and draped the doilies on it to dry:
I wasn’t happy with the depth of color the first time around, so as each doily dried, I repeated the process. If you do this, make sure that your doily is mostly dry before re-dying or else it will fall apart!
I was really happy once they were dyed a second time.
I used this batch of doilies on my Halloween banner:
The color was just perfect for the antique look I was going for.
During the process I did have one doily fall apart on me. I ended up with just the “lacy” part around the edge, so I punched a circle with my 2″ circle punch, and then glued the doily around the edge:
Here is a view of the back:
Then I cut out a skull & bones, and put it on the front:
You could put any sort of element or letter in the center. It definitely makes a cute and easy element!
Hopefully this quick tutorial helps you create this same effect on your doily projects! I’m sure you could use it to dye all sorts of items as well. Happy Crafting!
October 1st, 2011
How many parts will there be? That I am not sure yet! But I do know that I’ve been having so much fun decorating!
TA DA! My fireplace is almost done being decorated. I stayed up way too late last night getting my eclectic halloween banner finished. I do have a few things still left to do – the chalkboard will have a creepy recipe or saying on it, and the burlap frame will have some sort of art pined to it, but really it’s ALMOST done, and it looks fantastic. I am so happy with how it’s turned out.
If you would like a detailed step-by-step tutorial on the banner, visit my halloween banner tutorial blog post at Design House Digital. I didn’t want it to get too wordy over there so I saved a few things for my blog. First thing was that I used burlap ribbon for the base-layer. I took this bolt of ribbon that I had (bought it clearance from Ballard designs last year for like $6), and basically hand pleated and fed it through my machine in a very sloppy manner. I wanted the whole thing to look spooky and unkempt.
Once I had a bunch of it pleated, I hung it on my mantle to make sure it was a good length.
Once I was happy with the length and draping, I cut it to size and then started building my flags.
You can read a bit more about that process on the Design House Digital blog. But basically I used my new Vintage Findings Halloween digital papers, printed them out and made some super cute flags using the printed out papers, plus some doilies, ribbons, and My Mind’s Eye brads. I did take some pictures about the process of staining the doilies, but I’ll post about that later next week.
What I wanted to share with all my readers is an awesome free download of the .SVG files (cutting files for digital cutters) for the banner shapes and the letters for this project (If you don’t have a cutter that will cut SVG files, I’ve also included a template that you can print out and use to cut your shapes by hand).
Click image below to being downloading zip file.
Click on the image above to download a PDF and SVG version of my printable banner project . The downloadable files in this article (and across my entire site) are free for personal use only. If you would like to blog about this free download, please accompany and images from my site with a credit and link back to this article. As a courtesy please do not link directly to a downloadable file but rather to this page.
September 29th, 2011
I came across a great blog a few weeks ago titled A Thousand Words and there were some really adorable projects including this awesome tutorial on creating royal icing shapes for cupcakes:
I cannot wait to try this out! Not that I need to be making cupcakes anytime soon. But check out the link for step-by-step instructions.
And then there is the super awesome Birthday Hamper that she made “on the cheap” for a good friend’s birthday gift. It turned out to be the cutest home-made gift ever known to man:
Anyway if you have some blog browsing time, I highly suggest A Thousand Words for a good read and some great inspiration!
