March 5th, 2009
I have the cutest little pantry in my kitchen. It is about 4.5 feet tall and has a little glass door and a nice wide ledge. Ever since I moved here, I have been wanting some fabulous and large glass canisters to put on top. I was so happy a few weeks ago, when I found these beautiful 2.5 gallon canisters at Amazon:
My birthday just happened to be this week, and I asked for three of these puppies (I put a few more on my wedding registry because I love them so much. I want to do one for Rice and one for Bread Flour).
As soon as I got them, I filled them up with flour, sugar, and rolled oats. But what I really couldn’t wait to do, was to make labels for them! Here they are looking adorable on my pantry:
The glass on these jars is a little wavy and imperfect, and I love the dark lids – they definitely have an antique feel. So I made some cute distressed labels (available for download at the end of this post). I printed and cut them out and they were super cute…
… but I really wanted them to have an older feel than just flat printed paper. So I pulled out some supplies:
> a moist/wet paper towel
> distressing ink – Tim Holtz Antique Linen & vintage photo
> emry board – fine sand paper will do
> A flat clean work surface that can get wet/messy.
I printed my labels on regular bond paper. I recommend testing your distressing process on some test paper before going at the printed items. Also if you get water on an inkjet print, it will run, so if you want to get really down and dirty, print your labels with a laser printer. I didn’t worry about the ink running on the lighter parts of the design, but I did try and keep the paper away from the letters since they are so dark.
Step 1: Crinkle your labels. I recommend bigger, deeper folds and creases. As long as the paper is dry, you can be pretty rough with it. I bent and tore and creased quite a bit so that the ink would have a lot of fun detail to hold onto:
Step 2: Wet your labels. I used a wet paper towel to dab water around the edges. You definitely want the paper soaked, but not so much that it tears or bleeds into the center. You have to work fast at this point because it needs to be pretty wet for the next step. You may want to do step 2 & step 3 to one side at a time to keep your paper from drying too fast.
Step 3: Once you have a wet edge, go ahead and use the lighter ink on the wet parts. The ink should bleed as soon as it hits the water and create a “dying” effect as opposed to an “inking” effect. This will make it look aged and not just inked. After a little light inking, I applied just a tiny bit of dark inking on some of the edges:
At this point your paper will be pretty wet and your wrinkles will have disappeared, but they will come back. Just finish each label and set them aside to dry. I let mine dry about 30 minutes. Here is how they looked after I let them sit for a bit:
I love how aged they look and how stiff they feel after drying. I will definitely use this technique on more projects in the future.
If I had printed them on a laser printer, I would have made the entire label more “dyed” looking, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.
Attaching the labels was really easy, I used a large glue-dot in each corner. I don’t recommend this if you have a lot of people accessing your canisters, but I know its enough adhesive for my uses with the upside being that I can change them out pretty easy when I get bored of the look. You could use spray adhesive or run them through a larger xyron after they have dryed completely. If you printed on a laser printer, I imagine you could use Mod Podge, just test it on the glass first to see if it drys clear enough.
Here is a before & after shot. I really should have taken a before shot when the pantry was covered in half-empty flour and sugar bags, paper plates & food boxes.
I love how they look, how big the labels are, and just the overall vintage styling with the large black lids + the aged labels. So yummy.
You can really see the variety in the glass from this photo. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out!
As promised, here is the label file. I did have to make it just a smidge smaller than the one I used in order to fit all the labels on one 8.5×11.
Download this label file and enjoy (for personal use only ). Please tell your friends to come visit the site and download their own labels. I would love a comment if you do download!
Each of these files are a 8.5″x11″ PDF. Use Acrobat Reader to open the file and print as many as you like! Happy project-ing!
If you are another blog or crafting site and would like to link this project to your site, please contact me. Thanks!
xoxo Jen Allyson
February 13th, 2009
This week’s featured blog is an awesome handmade art site with really great tutorials. I know you all will love it. Balzer Designs, a blog authored by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, has a lot of great ideas, techniques and eye candy.
Here are a few inspiring images of the great thing’s going on over there:
Really amazing paper-crafted flower
You have to see this tutorial -- I love the whole "diamond glaze" craze
What is better than dangly hearts?!
Julie’s projects are sure are beautiful to look at. I love her unique, slightly grungy style and all the inspiring ways that she uses paper crafting products. Be sure to check it out and leave a comment letting her know you found her here.
January 16th, 2009
As I was cutting out squares for my pincushion, I realizes that I would be making a cute stuffed cube. And so I thought it would be really cool to make a “soft ABC baby block”. I wanted to make it slightly smaller and without the raw edges showing. So It was a bit of a different process. Here are the steps I took…
Cut 6 3″x3″ squares. I recommend wool.
Next you’ll want to embroider letters on the pieces. There are a few choices for embroidery. An embroidery machine (which I used), embroidering by hand, and some sort of iron on transfer.
Since I had already cut out my squares, they were too small to fit in the embroidery hoop. So I stretched some thin cotton and pinned them in the center of the hoop
square pinned to cotton in embroidery hoop
Then I just set the embroidery to do one letter, in the middle of the field as big as I could — which was 40 mm. I would have loved to do them bigger, but I only have the stock designs that came with the machine.
embroidering the "A"
After the “A” was all embroidered, I trimmed the cotton backing that it was attached to. I just trimmed fairly close to the letter, It doesnt have to look perfect because it will be hidden.
backside of the now-embroidered square
I followed those same two steps on each of the squares, embroidering A-F. You could also embroider numbers or images. I think embroidering by hand would give you a lot more flexibility… however it would take much much longer!
I went through the same steps as my first project. Sewing 4 squares side-by side, then to each other, followed by attaching the top and bottom:
4 sewn side-by side. This would be extra cute if it spelled baby.
sewn into an "open cube"
Now you’ll notice that I have the wrong side facing out. On this cube, different from the pincushion, I want to hide all the raw edges. So I’m sewing the whole square inside out and then reversing for the final soft block. You could do it with the edges showing like yesterday — it saves a bit of hand stitching in the end.
sewing on the top square
the bottom square is sewn on 3 sides waiting to be turned inside out & stuffed
Once you have sewn the bottom square on three sides, you will need to turn your cube inside out. As you turn it inside out, you will have to push the corners out as much as you can so it does not look sloppy. Then go ahead and stuff it really really full! You’ll need some thread and a needle to finish the cube up nice and clean.
Once you have your needle threaded. You’ll need to fold the raw edges into the cube and start stitching. You can pin them along the way, but this was such a small edge that I just held it in place as I stitched. I used a “baseball” stitch to get a smooth corner. That basically means that I sewed from the outside of one square to the inside of the stitch and then sewed from the outside of the opposite square again to the inside of the stitch. This makes a pattern similar to a baseball stitch.
the completed stitched side
And there you have it! My completed Soft ABC baby block next to my cute pin cushion! I think the baby block would be so cute as a set – you could do one with numbers and one with pictures and give them at a baby shower. Such a sweet handmade gift!
January 15th, 2009
My First Project! And hopefully the first of many.
I did something unthinkable to me just 6 months ago… I set out to start AND finish a personal project and I actually did it! I do so many projects for work and if I do have any free time, I usually spend it on facebook or surfing the internet. So first of all, I’m so very proud of myself. Secondly, I can’t believe I successfully used my sewing machine! About 13 months ago I bought an amazing sewing/embroidery machine and have yet to sew something completely by myself on it.
So I wanted to start with something fairly simple… ya know a good warm up to this uncharted territory of actually completing a project. About 6 months ago I bought a sewing project kit by Amy Butler. It has patterns of neat stuff AND even came with some fabric.
The box that I bought from Barnes & Noble
This is what the pattern shows is the "Final Product"
What you’ll need for this project:
1. Fabric – The pattern specifies wool. In my project closet I found 1 fat square of wool and a few bits of felt. I think this project would be fun in all felt — and no frayed edges.
2. A few basic sewing items: scissors, ruler, chalk pencil, seam ripper, thread, needle, pins . After having completed the project, I would recommend a rotary cutter for the squares.
You can see why I need a new pin cushin...
3. A Sewing Machine
4. Apparently it is necessary to have an iron to sew… But I don’t have one… So I used my Flat iron to get the fabric flat.
After you have wrinkle-free fabric, you need to measure and cut it. I couldnt find my fabric ruler, so I used a tape measure… My mother would be mortified, but it worked! I marked 3.5″ along a straight looking edge of fabric and then cut the whole strip.
After I cut out one strip, I layed it on top of the fabric and cut out an identical strip.
I then layed the two strips on each other but at a 90 degree angle to get the perfect height for my pieces. Once I had a 3.5″ x3.5″ square, I layed it on the other 3.5″ fabric strips to cut squares.
You will need 6 squares for this project.
Once you have the squares, you pretty much start sewing. If you are using a loose wool, you should sew a “stay stitch” which is basically a stitch close to the edge so that it does not frey.
After you have done the stay stitching, Start with 2 squares and sew the 4 squares to each other in a row. Keep the right sides facing inward/toward each other, because you’ll want the raw edges showing on your pin cushin.
After you sew the squares to each other, you’ll want to sew the row ends together to make an “open” cube like this:
Okay now for the tricky part… The pattern instructs you to pin the remaining squares on the top and bottom of your cube. So i pulled out my trusty pins and started…
This proved fairly difficult and after sewing the first square, I found it fairly unnecessary so I took out all the pins and just held one edge to another while sewing. Please note that all raw edges are on the outside of the cube.
sewing with the annoying pins
Next I had to do the same thing to the bottom — but only on 3 sides. This I did completely without the needles and it worked just fine.
the bottom sewn on three sides… waiting for stuffing
So I don’t have any stuffing in my closet, so when I got to this point I thought I would just walk 2 minutes to the local quilting shop… Well I walk in and ask for batting and they are all sold out! What was I to do?? I had to get this post out for my readers! So I did what any crazed crafter would do…
I found a pillow!
and some scissors!
Hehe I totally cannibalized a pillow… hopefully Mr. Project won’t mind! I don’t recommend it, but I had no other choice!
The pincushion with incriminating pillow stuffing. Note: you'll need about 2.5 times more than you think you will
stuffed!
Okay to the hardest part… sewing the last panel while smooshing a 3.5″ cube through your sewing machine:
But… once that part was over! I had a fabulous cubic pincushion! Just trim all the loose threads and stick in some pins!
Sooooo… there’s my new fabulous pincushion! However, because I am crazy, I couldn’t stop at just a pin cushion… tomorrow I’ll post the other very cool item I made from this same pattern!
