My tiny golden violin!

Every so often, I see a new craft on Instagram or online and I know that it is the craft for me! Usually, it involves some recycling or reuse! If it's that, I am all over it!

For me, the craft I gave a go today was just that.

It involves a Tomato puree tube.

Take a completely used metal tomato puree tube and then cut off the ends - the top and the bottom and then carefully snip one side open and open it up so it is a rectangle.  Be careful! It's metal- it can be sharp!

Then clean off any residue tomato. 

You will have a wrinkly, golden rectangle.

Take a spoon and rub it in circles over the metal, right to the edges. You may have to go over parts.  This will flatten the wrinkles generally.

You should be left with a slightly flatter rectangle.

Now you need to choose your design that you will draw backwards on the reverse using a biro pen that doesn't work anymore (or an embossing tool if you have one)

The designs I have seen now are usually stars with trails behind them. In fact, I went to a friend's house in December and saw one hanging up. I knew it was going to be a tomato puree tube. When I turned it over, I was right.

I decided to do something with a musical twist, naturally.

I decided to go for a tiny violin!

I grabbed my little violin keyring purchased from the Beethoven Birth house museum in Bonn to use as a model to draw around and to copy.

I turned the tube over and drew the design hard. It can be a bit tricky especially if there are still any ridges.

You then draw any detail on that you want to. The hardest part for me was the F holes. I decided to add some extra decorations- the purfling (that's the patterned edge on the outline of the violin shape) and also added some hearts on the tail piece below the bridge.  The strings were a bit of a disaster! Should have used a ruler!

You then need to cut out your shape with scissors- bonus is that it sharpens your scissors! 

The downside is, I accidentally cut off the pegs at the top of the violin on one side. I've never been skilled with scissors since I was very young! I was gutted! 

Here is our Jellycat Christmas star modelling the finished violin. Look at the top, you'll notice the missing pegs!

At this point, you could then make a hole to hang it for a decoration for the Christmas tree etc. I haven't done that. You could attach your decoration to the front of a car for a detachable gift for someone.  Beware of sharp edges. I'm not sure if you could perhaps sand the edges. I haven't tried it because it bends and I am clumsy!

I then tried to think what I should attempt next.  I was going to attempt a flute but then decided to just draw a musical stave.

The question was, what musical quote to include?

Being incredibly geeky, I decided to start drawing a quote from my favourite symphony- the 1st symphony by German composer, Gustav Mahler. It's first played by the cellos but it picks up on the motif played for the first part of the symphony by the strings and woodwind bird calls.   However, when I got to the end, the 2 crotchets and minim looked bare so I just decided to alter the quote into something else to make it look better.  If I did this again, I would cut off the f for forte below the stave so it has a neater base. Considering I did this all freehand, backwards, I was quote pleased with it!

Listen from about 4:44 and then hear the glorious cellos come in soon after!

I still have a bit of the tube left so I may fashion some paisley hearts for either a wedding or a valentines card (although I have another idea for that this year as CBC has become rather fond of Tweedy and Fluff on Insta so I may draw/paint a design of them instead!

What do you think of this craft? I must confess that I am utterly enchanted by it!  I can imagine making lots of darling little decorations out of the tubes. Just be careful of the sharp edges!

xx

 

Eco-Christmas cards 2021

I made a pledge to myself that if I came across something that I could make sure ends up in recycling, that I would try to ensure it reaches a place where it could be recycled. At school,I was using the Office scanner and I noticed a large pile of ex-school Induction pack covers ripped and put into the recycling.

Using this card and the tools below, I made 23 cards (the majority of these envelopeless postcards to add to the eco-dimension). The ones I sent in the post all reused old envelopes with decorative rectangles of blue envelope inards to cover up the previous usage. 

4 craft punches

1 embossing tool

1 embossing stamp

Guillotine

 

They may be simple But, I hope, effective.

Xxx

My DIY Easter Wreath

As you saw from last week, I've been trying to reuse some of the cardboard boxes I bought home from school to recycle (but never actually got around to) after making my Phoenix wings.

On Friday, I decided I would like to make an Easter wreath.  Not eggs, not bunnies, not lambs but flowers.

I didn't really have any plan of what to do. I went to the garage to the craft shelves and searched for all the flower punches, also grabbing a butterfly punch too.  

I knew I had some paints somewhere and found a small bottle of green-pearlescent acrylic paint and a paint brush.  Also, I found my stash of coloured envelopes which I always keep from cards I've been given and a paper pad.

The first job was to make the wreath base. I drew around a dinner plate and then placed some smaller circular object in the centre and cut them out.

Next, I painted the wreath green with the Acrylic paint. 

Next, I punched 2 large daisy shapes out of all the different colours of envelopes until I had 10 different colours.

To give them a 3D feel, what you need to do is get an old biro that doesn't work and a piece of craft foam.  Then, to make the petals curl, you just need to make circular movements with the biro on the petals (or straight lines) and then go around the centre and the petals lift.

I laid them in a pattern.  

Next, I used a small circle punch to cut one circle from all the colours and moved them 2 places backwards rather like musical chairs and stuck them into the centre.

After that, I stuck down the flowers. I misjudged the spacing so ended up with a half-space so I punched a lilac butterfly from my wedding punch (made turquoise confetti for the tables and ones to go on the table names from old music)

Next, I added some white gel dots to the edge of the flower centre.

At this point, I punched holes in the top and added string.

To fill in the gaps, I used 2 sizes of tiny flower punches and experimented with making paper Stitchwort, Celandines and Forget me nots, adding details in gel-pens.  There was something missing so I used a dark green envelope and a mini leaf punch to cut some leaves and arranged everything.

And voila, here is my wreath!

Got to admit, am very pleased with it!

Pretty much all recycled material apart from the mustard-coloured card and the pink, which were offcuts from previous projects. I honestly think that my flower punches are my favourite craft tools!

What do you think?

xx

6 ice-creams- 5 envelopes.

I mentioned, in my Summer plans, that I wanted to make some cards this Summer as I haven't done for ages. One of my greatest holiday joys is being able to make a big crafty mess and getting some hand-made cards prepared.

Sometimes, I don't have a specific idea in mind and I start off with some type of material.

In this case, I opened all the cards from the kids at school and was left with a pile of envelopes, some of which were some rather nice colours.  It always seems a shame to chuck them straight into the recycling despite the fact I have a heaving craft stash.  I feel that I owe it to the pretty coloured envelopes to try and use them somehow.  

So, below, I made the two cards out of 5 different coloured envelopes I received.

These are incredibly easy to make and the only TOOLS I used for these (aside from those the standard layman might have like scissors and glue) were a circle punch and a set of alphabet punches.

The cones were made from a brown textured envelope and the letters and ice-cream boules themselves were made by punching circles from a pink, white, cream and  yellow envelope (plus some dark brown paper I have). You just need 5 identical circles (which you could cut by hand if you lacked a punch).

You just fold them in half and blue a half circle to another one 5 times and then fan them out and glue down onto the cone.

The sprinkles were just made by hand.

 I will be going over those rather uneven silver dots at the top and the bottom with a silver outline strip sticker to neaten up my poor drawing-skills! That serves me right for being lazy and doing it freehand rather than measuring.

What do you think? 

Do these designs work?  Would you fancy an ice-cream card?

x

A simple Father's Day card idea

It seems an age since I made any cards or shared a crafty post on here.  Despite having all my craft materials in one place (most of it has been sitting in my friend Nath's garage for 2 years), I have somehow failed to make many cards.

I thought I'd share a simple idea I made for my Dad's Father's day card.

It took me about 10 minutes to make.

There are some versatile materials that you need for a simple card. Patterned papers are a brilliant one because you can use them in a myriad ways and they look good instantly. 

Alphabet stickers and outline stickers are also incredibly useful.

This sheet of 'family' paper came in a pad that had 50 sheets of 15cm by 15cm papers and was very inexpensive.  I thought it was very cheerful!  

it was a simple matter of cutting it to size on my guillotine and then attaching with pritt stick and then going over the join with outline stickers and adding these flocked letters.

Little cost, little time, but hopefully still showing an effort.

And here was my Dad on his birthday which frequently coincides with father's day.
It was delightful that we were able to join him on his birthday for the day. We had a lovely barbecue and I had my first experience of cooking on a one as he was struggling with juggling two barbecues.
Joyfully, I also spent last weekend with him and my Stepmum and sister as CBC was away in the Southdowns with school so I travelled there after a Friday night concert with Flautista and stayed till Sunday.

Made any cards recently?  Do you get to spend much time with with your Dad?

xx

Advent Calendar Day 8: Star

The other day, I shared the beautiful paper chain Christmas tree the LSAs at school had made me.  What I was saving for today was that they also made me a paper star! Our whole building is adorned with them.

What I didn't realise was how really easy they are to make! One of them showed me how to make them one lunchtime and they really are simple but how effective!

I

I looked on Youtube to find the tutorial she had used to make them. We didn't bother doing the measuring part, we just did it with our eyes and we also used Prittstick rather than PVA glue.

You too can make one!

Have you made one of these before and do you have any other easy but effective-looking decorations to share?

xx

This is Day 8 of my Advent Calendar with Julie at KC's Court