Scrapping by Design

I have always struggled with tying bows. My bows tend to be lopsided and crooked. I found these great video tutorials on YouTube that demonstrate how to make foolproof bows using a fork as a tool.

And here are a few more fork-bow videos that are useful:

How to Tie a Small Bow with a Fork

Tiny Bow on a Fork

This makes my life so much easier.

Yesterday, I showed photos of an accordion made from a file folder. The theme is “Sewing”. I also made a video showing how the file folder was folded.

Here it is:

This is video demo of the Romantic Era Altered Book that I described at this post: Altered Book with Romantic Era Theme.

The video shows how I cut and glued the book to form the drawer.

A few days ago, I posted pictures of a mixed media floppy hat that I had made for a swap.

On the weekend, a bouquet of long stemmed roses found its way to my house.

Low and behold, the roses were the exact same color as the ribbon and trim on the floppy hat.

I had to take a picture of them together, and this led to the decision to make a video showing how I made the hat.

Incidentally, the picture has been edited in Adobe Photoshop Elements 10
, only to clean up the background. I took the picture with the roses against a wall and sitting on a carpet. The carpet did nothing to enhance the picture so I removed it and added the cloud-like effect instead.

Here is the video.

This is the cover of an envelope book I made for a swap at Art for the Creative Mind group on Yahoo.  The theme of the book is Things I Love to Hear.

I opted to go with a humorous approach, so I made a list of some of the things I like to hear in terms of comments or compliments.  I suspect my list would be similar for a lot of women.

I include such messages as “No, the dress doesn’t make you look fat’, “There are no calories in this cake”, “There are no mosquitoes this summer”, and more.

I used eight envelopes and covered them with scrapbook paper. The main colors used are brown, cream and turquoise. To bind, I dyed binder rings blue using alcohol links and punched holes with the WRMemory Keepers Punch and Eyelet Setting Tool.

Here on the front cover, I have used an image from The Graphics Fairy blog. I have added a painted chipboard flourish to which I added a large, pearl brad, and a number of quilled chrysanthemums.

I made the chrysanthemums using the Chrysanthemum Cuttlebug Quilling Kit, which I cut on the Big Shot. I have done quilling before, but this kit really takes a lot of the grunt work out of it. I love these flowers.

As far as I know, Cuttlebug has three kits: the rose/carnation kit, the daisy kit and the chrysanthemum kit. I have the rose and the chrysanthemum and I may get the daisy at some point.

Anyway, back to the envelope book. I have made a video, which is on the fuzzy side. I apologize for this. I bought a new computer a little while ago and had to replace some of my software. As part of this modernization process, I purchased Adobe Premiere Elements 9 to use for video editing.

It’s much more powerful than Windows Live Movie Maker, but it does come with a learning curve. This video was my first try and as yet, I do not have the software mastered. Expect to see improvement down the road. LOL

There are, of course, many ways of making an envelope book. This is only one of them. It strikes me that an envelope book is form of altered art, given that you are altering envelopes.

A few days ago, I posted a picture of a holiday snowflake ornament made using the Fleur de Lis Pendant from Spellbinders.

Today, I’ve made another one, this time using white and gold papers, and mounting the design on a ribbon spool. As I have mentioned previously, this design is created by AmazingPaperGrace.com.

I have made a video tutorial showing how to make this ornament yourself, provided you have the wonderful Spellbinders Shapeabilities Pendants Dies, Fleur De Lis,

Here is the video tutorial:

I have made another fun discovery about these Fleur de Lis pendant dies. They make beautiful snowflakes when cut from waxed paper. I’ll be doing more with this another day.

This project is a combination anniversary scrapbook and guest book. I made it on request of a woman who is planning an anniversary party for someone’s 20th anniversary. She intends to pass the book around so guests can view the pictures in the scrapbook, then sign and leave a comment in the empty pages at the back.

I chose a ring-bound 8 inch by 8 inch album with a cover of black felt with silver threads running through. The ring bindings made it relatively easy to add the Guestbook pages at the back.

My instructions were to put a picture on the album’s front cover, and to use a simple design. With that in mind, this is the project I came up with:

I have attempted to make the facing pages complement each other, picking up colors and using similar scrapbook paper, card stock and embellishments. The entire book leans heavily to a red, white and black color theme. Those colors seem to match with almost of all of the photographs, and I’m told red is the wife’s favorite color.

Not all pages have headings, but those that do are cut with the Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter using the Jasmine Font Cartridge

I’ve used a considerable number of quotations set in journaling blocks, since I know the people involved are fond of that approach.

I hope the Anniversary Scrapbook and Guest Book is a hit.

This Holiday craft project is a candy holder made with card stock, acrylic and a ribbon. It couldn’t be simpler, but of course, you could decorate it any way you choose.

The inspiration came from a make and take at Clipper Street Scrapbook Company, a craft store in Langley, BC. It was one of the make and takes at their annual Christmas open house.

In the video demonstration below, I used a Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Circles Die Template to cut the shape in the middle. At Clipper Street, we used the Spellbinders S4-220 Nested Pine Trees Die Template. That’s the one shown in the picture above.

One tip: if you’re going to do this using a die cut machine (I used the Sizzix 655268 Big Shot Cutting-and-Embossing Roller-Style Machine
), its a good idea to tape your die in place before cutting. Otherwise, it can slip a bit during the cutting and that destroys the symmetry of the candy holder.

Here is the video demonstration:

Although this little 3-D candy holder is made as a holiday or Christmas craft project, you could adapt it easily to make wedding favors, or to make a holder for Valentines Day, birthday parties, Easter, Halloween or any other holiday or special occasion.

This hand made birthday journal was inspired by a project I saw on a crafting community called Life on the Scrap Beach.

The journal is called My Year, and its a gift for a friend’s birthday.

I made the project 100% from my stash, since I’m trying to use up the supplies I already have before I buy yet more. The downside of stash-using  is that not all pages coordinate well. The upside is that in addition to saving me some money and reducing the piles of craft supplies in my home, it also forces me to use more hand made embellishments and to strive for more creativity in design.

Each page in this little book  has a title and contains tags for journaling.  The book has a wire binding, made with the ZUTTER BIND IT ALL SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL. The titles and a die cut on the front and back covers are made with the Cricut Expression 24-Inch Personal Electronic Cutting Machine.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Cricut because for quite some time I could not get it assembled correctly. Now that its working the way it should, I am warming up to it.

Here is my video demo of my hand made birthday journal:

I have used a number of techniques that I have demonstrated in other videos.   People new to crafting or people unfamiliar with the tools and techniques  might want to check them out:

1. Video Demo of the Zutter Bind-It-All
2. Video Demo of the Sizzix Big Shot Universal Die Cutting and Embossing Machine
3. Video Demo of the Burnished Velvet Glitter Technique
4. Video Demo of Basic Rubber Stamping, Masking and Coloring
5. Video Demo of Heat Embossing

This hand made birthday journal is in the mail now. I hope it arrives in time for the birthday.

I made a posting a couple of days ago about the Halloween House project that I made.

Today I took a notion to make a little video of the house. It’s a good way to show the four sides in a way that a still image cannot.

Here’s the spooky little video now:

I have a video demonstration showing how I made the Halloween house. It was for St. Patrick’s Day, and I also made one for Easter.