There’s a fun and practical application of papercrafting: altering useful objects!
So I went ahead and altered this pen holder, which I then filled not with pens but with my growing number of make-up brushes!
Papers & die-cuts are from the Summer at the Beach collection by Studiolight. It looks fantastic in my white & wood beach-themed bathroom! 🙂
A man requested a customized tea box for his beloved, an avid tea lover. He asked me to keep it natural, with browns and greens and no fuss, and when I suggested he watch my K&Company Olive Tree paper walkthrough, he chose four sheets that he loved the best.
So it’s with those four 12×12″ sheets that I altered this 9-partition wooden tea box. I used some die-cuts to create a paper ornament on top, with a Tea is Ready stamp – in Dutch. The result is an elegant, stylish tea box keepsake in warm, neutral kraft colors. I was of course very happy to hear both the man and his lady loved the tea box! 🙂
Have you ever created a kraft-colored project or would you ever consider it?
This week I’m sharing with you a great gift idea, especially if you’re a bit in a hurry to get something for someone because, say, you forgot to plan ahead… (just a random example, that’s not what happened here at all 🙄 ).
I don’t know about you but as a paper crafter I always have some wooden boxes in stock, because sometimes I want to cleanse my scrapbooking palate by working on an altered art project. So for this occasion I choose a medium-sized one, slightly over 4×6 inches (10×15 cm). The beauty of this size is that you can use large ATC cards or cutaparts of exactly that size, and many paper collections come with those. For this particular one I used the colorful Worlds Fair papers by Graphic 45.
I embellished with flowers, blings, die-cuts, stickers and chipboard pieces – some of which I made myself by backing up a sticker with chipboard. I filled up the box with chocolates and added a Worlds Fair card with my personal message. And done!
Hope you enjoyed this gift idea, have fun creating and see you next week!
Now and again I like to vary my craft technique and leave papercrafting for a short while to dabble in decoupaging. I use this technique mainly to alter wooden or porcelain objects, like gift boxes but also candles, coffee mugs and even a lamp!
Usually I paint such an object white or ivory first, so that the napkin’s colors will show clear & bright. With the tea box I’m sharing today however, I started decoupaging without painting it white first. This made for warm wood colors, and also caused the box title Thee (= Dutch for Tea) on the lid to show through nicely.
After adhering the parts of the napkin I wanted to use, I painted the rest of the box around them in a warm forest green and added some glitter accents. Of course I covered the whole thing with boat varnish to protect it from all things Liquid – a prudent measure if you’re anything like Clumsy Me 🙂
By the way, an altered tea boxes makes for a great gift!
This week a blog exclusive project, so no Youtube video 😉 .
I find that sometimes it’s quite refreshing to vary your techniques, it avoids a rut and it gives the opportunity to create something for someone who may be familiar with papercrafting but not decoupaging.
I had just such a case on my hands, so when I decided to gift a colleague a nice wooden pencil box for her coloring pencils and markers, I decoupaged it with napkins instead of decorating it with scrapbooking paper. She was completely taken by surprise for she had never even heard of this technique and wanted to know everything about it 🙂
The box itself was white, with a plain wooden lid that had The Pencil Box printed on top of it. I used an antique gold colored napkin for the lid without painting it white first, so the words on the lid would come through and remain visible. I decorated the top right corner with some flowers,…
… and the lower left corner with a fussy-cut napkin flower, to which I added several colors of glitter glue.
Napkin decoupaged all around, including the back of the box.
I embellished the front with a satin ribbon, through which I had put a crown brad first.
I left the insides of both the box and the lid plain.
And last but not least, I painted the bottom burgundy, but since that left the surface slightly sticky unexpectantly – as would decoupaging it with napkin – I matted it with a piece of design paper in coordinating colors instead.
In short a relatively quick-to-make gift idea, especially for paper crafting recipients who’ve seen it all – except not 🙂
An altered object can be a great present for Christmas or someone’s birthday. It can be tempting to embellish your project with all kinds of decorations, like flowers, charms, trinkets and the like. However, keeping it simple and elegant is sometimes a more sophisticated choice. Let your beautiful papers speak for themselves, and use your creativity to choose the right combination of paper patterns & colors.
For instance, the gorgeous Enchanted Forest collection by Graphic 45 has such beautiful patterns, I thought it really wouldn’t do to cover them up by anything else 🙂 So I used them to decorate this cute little wooden desk organizer I found in one of our home decor shops. This one was a bit smaller than my previous one, and its black color was the perfect base for the Enchanted Forest collection (and almost any other Graphic 45 paper line for that matter).
Personally I’m very pleased with the result – in fact I think I’ll keep this one for myself after all! 🙂
Using the collection’s signature sheet to decorate the left & right side of the organizer:
Tea boxes are the ideal gifts to give and they are very fun and easy to alter!
For instance, I bought this simple wooden tea box, painted it black inside and out, and decorated with Bo Bonny’s Asian-themed Serenity paper collection & ephemera.
I did that once before, using the same design papers – I guess there’s something about Asian-themed paper on a black background, even more so when it’s all about tea 🙂
My first altered tea box with this paper collection:
To celebrate my friend’s early pregnancy I created a little gift for her. I found the perfect matchbox in one of our craft stores, already white so there was no need to paint it.
Bacause the match box was already white, I wanted a paper with lots of white, of a color that would suit both a boy and a girl, and was still soft enough for a baby theme. I chose You Are My Happy by Teresa Collins, and altered the match box. The top is decorated with “2016” in die-cut numbers, for my friend will be pregnant for the larger part of this year. Of course I filled the box with the cutest gift: perfect little baby socks in matching colors! 🙂
When I found a little gray-painted coffee tray in one of our local home decor stores, I decided it would be perfect for the Stationer’s Desk collection by Prima Marketing. With a lovely summer picture of my mom and dad during their Rome holiday, this collection combined just the right amounts of nostalgia and vintange romance.
Placed upright, any such tray can be turned into the perfect picture frame, adding unique shadow box qualities to what would normally be much more straight-forward and flat. It was great to be able to use up all of my larger flowers of the collection, and because of the many embellishments this project was also perfect for using up some of the scraps I had left over from the paper pad.
Another great advantage was that the tray’s gray color already coordinated perfectly with the papers, so I didn’t have to paint it myself.
All in all a very fun project to do if you’re looking forward to paper crafting but are not in the mood for creating a card or a mini album!
Sometimes pictures say more than words – and a video tells it all 🙂 In today’s post you’ll find many detailed pictures below the show & tell video, but first I’d like to show you one of the basic micro chests as it was before was altered:
These are simply the cutest, and once altered they are near-perfect gifts! For instance, what about these three I’m showing you, aren’t they the most adorable baby shower gifts? 🙂
So enjoy and let me know what you think!
Please like, share & subscribe! (click on this blog post’s title and you’ll find all sharing options below).
I found a great wooden desk organizer in one of our home decor stores, and I bought it to alter it. It was already painted white so I chose Kaisercraft’s Antique Bazaar, a collection that would go well with the white wood of the organizer.
The rounded shape of the organizer’s compartments presented a special challenge, especially on the insides and with the split compartment on the left – for which I had to create a very specially shaped mat:
Materials used
So, here’s the results!
Don’t forget to check out the pictures below!
Hi all!
As you may have noticed, one of my favorite design paper brands is Graphic 45. Which is why I’m super excited – and a little nervous! – for this blog post, for it is my first time ever submission for a Graphic 45‘s Design Team Audition! 🙂
I am delighted to be able to share some of my favorite projects – old and new – that showcase my style, including a tutorial via Snapguide, and I hope you’ll all feel inspired by them!
Project 1: ATC Book Box Wall Ornament – with Graphic 45’s Sweet Sentiments
Graphic 45’s ATC Book Box (ivory) offers many, many creative possibilities and it was an absolute joy to work with it!
It inspired me to create a brand new project: an Easter Wall Ornament. It has a removable decorative show piece showcasing many fussy-cut images from the collection’s gorgeous signature sheet.
Without this show piece it is still a very decorative but also practical little box for anything you’d like to store – and keep handy at the same time. Like your keys. Your phone. Your business cards. Or your lipsticks! 🙂
To create it, I (gently) cut the box part from the book cover part, turned it 90 degrees and reattached it. By firmly wrapping the cover part with design paper I made sure it stayed straight, preventing it from folding like a book.
I used a ribbon tied through an eyelet to hang the wall ornament on the wall.
Below are some pictures, and the show & tell video:
To see more of the details, click the picture below for an enlargement:
Fussy-cut tag, adorned with fussy-cut floral (lifted with some dimensional tape):
Detail of the ornament, without the show piece:
Bottom
The chipboard pieces on the front are backed up with design paper, continuing the main pattern on the back:
Hanging from my bed room wall
Show & tell video:
Project 2: New Job Card – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate
As soon as I laid eyes on the Time to Celebrate collection, I fell in love with its vibrant spring colors. I immediately created a card with it for my friend who got a new job. She’s quite the lady, so this paper fit her perfectly! 🙂
I love making cards with Graphic 45 papers and for this one I worked with both the 8×8″ design paper and the 6×6″ patterns & solids pad. I used the Best Wishes chipboard piece of the collection, and added some embellishments from my stash: flowers, ribbon, feathers, and flat-back pearls. I stamped Nieuwe Baan (= Dutch for New Job) to finish it.
I layered the inside of the card with both design paper and cardstock, and added two stamps that I cut from the design paper – one of which I lifted with some dimensional tape. I also added two small butterflies from my stash.
Quick video overview:
Project 3: Double-stacked Mini Album ‘Celebrate Every Day’
I love to design and create new or special kinds of mini albums. For example, I’ve designed three different types of folio albums, I love to design large gatefold-style keepsake albums and I’m also an enthousiastic creator of micro albums. The project I’m entering here is yet another kind of (large) keepsake album, which I designed last August. I’m calling it a double-stacked mini album.
This sophisticated album has six page assemblies, three above, three below – which together offer twelve unique interactive page layouts plus some large photo mats!
The insides of the large front and back covers make up their own interactive pages, twice as large as the regular ones. The album has a magnetized closure and although I sometimes go all out with embellishments on mini album covers, I intentionally kept this one crisp and clean on the outside, to showcase the papers – with the added bonus of it easily fitting into a book case.
Below are some pictures, plus the show & tell video I did last September. I’ve also done a video tutorial for one of the origami page elements in the album, which I’ll also embed below.
Inside front cover:
Bonus Project: Briefcase Micro Album – with Graphic 45’s Bohemian Bazaar
This is one of my first designs with Graphic 45 papers and I’m still proud of it, which is why I’m adding it to this audition, even though it’s from 2014 🙂 .
I designed this cute little micro album to look like sort of a briefcase. It measures only 11 x 9 x 5,5 cm (4¼ x 3½ x 2″) and sports six small pocket pages. Each of those holds a tag or a cutapart from the collection.
I created a ‘suitcase handle’ from cardstock lined with book muslin, which I attached with two brads and two small D-rings. The album is held closed with a magnet closure.
Because I really enjoyed showcasing the gorgeously colorful paper, I only added a few embellishments both inside and outside, keeping it clean and stylish and letting the paper speak for itself.
The album is designed to open vertically, not horizontally, just like an actual briefcase. This enables you to thumb through the pages with both hands, kind of like you would a rolodex or some records or some such (yeah I know, this reference totally dates me… 😉 ).
The intended way of opening and perusing this micro album is vertically:
And here’s the (2014) video show & tell video:
Tutorial: How to Create a Micro Booklet – with Graphic 45’s Time to Celebrate
I really love my micro projects, and for the tutorial part of this audition I’m entering a second micro project, next to the Briefcase Micro Album above (Bonus Project). I designed this cute micro booklet as a fun alternative for a card or gift tag. It holds several tiny tags on which you could write your birthday wishes and/or little personal messages. Thanks to its small size it’s easy to send by mail, to carry in one’s purse, to add to a bunch of flowers, etc. – for it measures only 6.5 x 7 cm (2½ x 2¾”).
As an added bonus, it’s perfect for using up the scraps of your awesome scrapbook design papers! (I don’t know about you but I hate to throw away even the tiniest sliver…)
For this project I chose my beloved Time to Celebrate paper line again – couldn’t help myself, it’s just too gorgeous 🙂 .
Please check out my Snapguide* tutorial for this fun project! It’s embedded below, so simply click the tutorial’s pictures or the arrows underneath to move back and forth through the tutorial – very convenient! 🙂
*: Edit 2021: It seems that Snapguide no longer exists, and without warning they apparently removed their entire tutorials database. So I’m sorry, but the aforementioned tutorial for this little booklet is no longer there. If you’d like to know how to make one though, check out this earlier video tutorial of mine.
Hope this inspired you to create one or more yourself, for it’s really a fun little project!
Short show & tell video:
In conclusion
This has been my entry for the Graphic 45 Design Team Audition 2016!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post as much as I have creating it!
Like to see more? Click here for all of my Graphic 45 projects! 🙂
Thank you to all who follow me on this blog and/or on Youtube or other social media, I really appreciate all of your support.
Now please wish me luck 🙂 – for I’m really hoping and praying I’ll make the cut! I would be so honored with a spot on the ever-awesome G45 Design Team and am really looking forward to a chance of working with this great team of designers and crafters – and of course with Graphic 45’s great products and beautiful vintage paper collections – which are great to work with and always smell so good… 🙂
Bye all, see you next blog post!