Flower fairy

 I didn't share the card I made for my Mum for Mother's Day so I thought I'd share it.

I only got around to making it at 11.30pm at night and realised that all my glues had dried up so I was limited with what I could use.

I found this unusual shaped card piece which I found a Flower fairy outline sticker for. I stuck that in the centre and then used my watercolour pencils to colour it in but I tried to do it lightly for a stained glass effect. I then added a light border around the edge of the card.  The final touch was adding some tiny butterfly stickers all around the fairy.

I think she liked it and I was pleased with it considering I was limited with what I could do!

Now need to get some new glue...

xx

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

 

Roll deer

I saw a really cute little tutorial/post on Instagram about making a cute little reindeer out of a toilet roll tube along with some twig antlers.

I adapted this idea and cut the antlers out of the piece of card I had cut from the top to form the ear shape.

It was a simple and fun craft to complete!

x

 

Magazine Star!

Last year and the year before, I shared a few  Christmas crafts I enjoyed doing which involved reuse of some sort of materials.  I am quite fussy at what I am going to attempt and I've seen numerous 'star' tutorials on Instagram that look too fussy or confusing or I think wastes a lot of paper/card.

Today, I saw a great video/tutorial on making stars out of magazine pages and thought that it looked really easy to follow and not too complicated.

Here is the video I watched:
 

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A post shared by Marioara Gabriela (@ralucagabrielam)

I had a little magazine come through from Bam clothing (I bought my sister an item of clothing from them for Christmas last year and the year before and they keep sending me magazines- I had unsubscribed from them via email but they are still sending me magazines- annoyingly).  It was made out of matt paper in neutral shades so I thought would be a good resource to use.  The magazine pages are A5 sized.

I made the first star as the video and was super pleased how easy it was to make.  I had the strips left over from the first stage of folding the paper diagonally to make the initial square and I decided to do the same procedure to make some smaller stars.  In fact, I ended up making three smaller stars out of the left over paper and I was left with barely any paper at all- just a tiny strip of each piece.

And here they are.

They look nice from either the front or the back....

Back view...

Front view....

I thought I'd share this early in case anyone is thinking of doing crafts with either kids or teens or indeed, like me, you fancy doing some recycled crafts.

Enjoy!

xx

 

Recycled Materials Christmas Crafts- Christmas tree window display- (used envelopes)

I've really enjoyed doing some crafts on my weekends over the past couple of weeks.

After I made my paper snowflakes, I decided to try and make some envelope Christmas trees.

Using the pre-used envelopes, I cut rectangles of different sizes and folded them in half. I then cut them diagonally so I was left with a Isosceles triangle.    I then decided to cut simple triangles, half-heart shapes, semicircles from the fold side and the diagonal edges.

With some of them, I used deckle-edge scissors or used star or snowflake punches.

To display them, I used a octagonal plastic base from a chocolate box  on our window sill.

I sent some photos to one of our Year 5 teachers who decided she needed to make them with their class.

 I'm really pleased with it and slowly enjoying the decorations I am putting up in my house!

xx

Recycled Materials Crafts- Used Envelopes for Christmas decorations

Good Evening!

Greetings from sad and lonely Kezzie whose husband did not tell her he was going to the Staff Christmas party until late! I totally would have made social plans if I had known!

Anyway, I am going to do some marking but I thought I'd post before that.

Thank you for all the love on my recycled cardboard Advent calendar!

Today, I thought I'd share some other crafts that I tried the same weekend as my calendar.

I saw this idea on the web (not sure of the original source but I saw it on Pinterest in Google.

 

A concertina paper tree on a skewer seemed a cool idea to try.

I picked up a junk mail envelope from the table and decided to use it to experiment with rather than waste a piece of fresh paper.

https://www.pinterest.pt/susanafrgomes/christmas/

I liked the way it looked, rather than just a white tree so I rescued a few more envelopes from the recycling and tried making a few more.  CBC had bought a pack of skewers for a Duke of Edinburgh expedition so I grabbed some to put them on.  They slipped off a bit so I guess you'd have to glue them.

There were a few pieces left over so I decided to try making paper snowflake cut outs in the remains.

I wondered if using variations on patterns would look more interesting than white.

They're easy to make.

I'm sure you know how to make paper snowflakes but just in case, here's what I did.

1.  Cut out a square of paper. Any size will do but make sure the sides are equal.

2.  Fold it in half, from one diagonal to another so you end up with a triangle. You shouldn't fold so you end with a rectangle.

3.  Fold in half again and half again.  You should end up with a triangle each time.

3. Hold the middle point (where all the folds are) in your hand and cut a curve from one point to another.

4. Cut little triangles or curves from each edge but don't let any of the cut outs join with other ones or they will just make one big cut out.

5. Use a hole punch to make holes further into the shape.

6. Unfold and you will have a lovely snowflake!

I've sat here making a few more and I think I might try to decorate our upstairs windows!

Have you ever made paper snowflakes? Why not try reusing old paper to make them?

xx

Recycled Materials Advent Calendar Craft activity

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***EDITED!!! Sorry,not sure where the photos vanished to!!!!***

I saw the most wonderful craft activity for making your own Advent calendar of sorts on Instagram from a maker called Amber Lu who posts at @tulips_and_a_toolbox . It involved constructing your own cardboard forest of Christmas trees with a wooden base. I was itching to give it a go and decided to adapt it so you don't have to use wood IF, like me, you are not handy with a saw and wood or don't have the money to spend on a piece of wood. I really recommend the maker as there are loads of eco-crafts on there!

I wrote my own instructions for my neighbour to follow with their kids as I adapted the idea slightly to give measurements etc, but remember, this is not my idea and I was able to follow her post with very limited instructions from the very clear pictures she shared!  My instructions are probably very over complicated but I thought it might be a good reading and doing activity for the kids at school!

 Materials:

• Cardboard box 
• 24 cocktail sticks (possibly only 21 as you are cutting some in half)
• Black thin felt tip pen
• Glue (I used PVA)
• Brown Paper tape (or decorative tape)

Making your trees

1.  Cut a rectangle- one side from a cardboard box. Be sure to remove all labels and avoid printed parts.

You can adjust the dimensions to make it smaller and larger as you see fit or to match your box size but I found a rectangle with a width of 14/13 cm was good.

2.  Measure 6cm along the length (long edge) and mark it with a pencil line. 

3. Now draw a line to the other side of the box. You have a rectangle that is 14cm x 6cm.

4.  Half way along your 6cm width, mark a pencil mark at 3cm.

5. Draw  diagonal lines connecting both corners of the other end of the rectangle with that pencil mark. You should now have an isosceles triangle.

5.  The same end where you drew your 3cm pencil mark, mark 3cm along that edge of the rectangle you have drawn.

6. Connect that mark with a diagonal to the  bottom corner of your rectangle at the other end. You now have 2 identical isosceles triangles that share a diagonal edge. 

7. Continue to make more rectangles in the same way until you have 6/7 of them.

8.  Repeat these previous steps but this time using a rectangle strip that has a 10cm width. Your triangles can also be 5cm instead of 6cm long in total (mark2.5cm along for the half way) . Make 6/7 of them.

9. Repeat these steps but this time with a  rectangle with a width of 8cm.

10. Repeat these steps but this time with a  rectangle with a width of 6/5cm.

11. Cut out your triangles. Discard the very end pieces that are not isosceles triangles.

12. You should now end up with 24/28 triangles of 4 sizes. (I made extra just in case)

13.  Take a triangle and using a black felt tip or fineliner and draw a straight border around the edge of each triangle around 4-5mm from the edge. Do the same with all your triangles.

14.  Now decorate the inside simply with dotted lines, lines, circles, line, dots, in various repeated patterns. Try to achieve as much variety as possible but keep as neat as possible.

15. You might notice I did make a couple of Christmas tree shapes rather than simple triangles. Do if you feel you can make symmetrically and cut easily. (harder with small kids)

Making your base stand

16.  Cut 2 rectangles 30cm long by 15cm wide. (Feel free to make your measurements longer than mine. I probably could have been a little more generous with mine although I do like the crowded nature of my forest. E.g. make it 40cm long and 15cm wide.)

16.  Glue them on top of each other to make a double thickness base and then use either brown paper tape or decorative tape to make a border around the edge that covers up the rough edge of the cut cardboard and goes just over the top and bottom layer.

17. Start with your tallest trees. Lay your trees out in a row along the length to check that they will fit along the length of the board when standing side by side without overlapping.  Check you are happy with the arrangement.  Keep them in this row whilst doing the same with all the other sizes.

18.  Now, on the back of each tree, number them from 1-24 in pencil for the moment.

19.  Draw 4 light pencil lines that are equidistant along the length.

20.  Lay out your flat trees in order along  your first row and mark a darker pencil dot where the middle of each triangle base is. Make sure they don't overlap. Do the same for the trees in the other rows.

21. Use a large safety pin to make a hole where all your marked dots are.  Wiggle the pin around to make sure it makes the hole a bit bigger (Big enough for a cocktail stick to go through happily but not fall over).Make sure you go through both layers of cardboard.  I used a double piece of funky foam to ensure I didn't make a hole in my table! 

22.  Mark on the numbers by each hole. I use a black fine-liner and made my numbers like calligraphy. I marked mine from front to back but in retrospect,when I started putting the trees, I think it would be nicer to start with the back row as the first numbers so you get to see all the trees face on completely before the next row goes in front.

24. Number your trees in black pen right at the top of each tree tip in nice letting (not too big!) 

Adding cocktail sticks to trees*( you could do this after you make the trees but I waited to check my measurements)

25.  Now use paper tape to tape cocktail sticks to the back of each tree.  Start with the back row trees Check you are happy with the height of them.  They need to be the tallest so they have the most stick showing at the bottom. Make the next row of trees a bit 'shorter' by how you position the stick.

26.  For your front row, cut your cocktail sticks in half and keep only a little of the cocktail stick showing at the bottom.

27. Check that all your trees will go happily into their holes.

28.Now gather up your trees into a small basket, bag or tray and lay them nicely beside your base.

29. Each day of Advent, add a tree to your forest. Feel free to sing Christmas tree themed songs or carols! You could even write one in tiny letters on the back of each tree to sing. By the 24th December, you will have a forest.

30.As an optional extra,you could cut out a golden shiny star on taller skewer and make a hole for it above your Christmas tree height as an extra for Christmas day!

------------------------------------------------------*****---------------------------------------------------

I was so pleased with my Advent calendar and cannot wait to use it in December.

The thing I liked most about this was that there is no plastic and the majority of the craft is reused cardboard box. 9 of my cocktail sticks were from eating olives in a restaurant (I made CBC and I only use ONE and kept the rest for this craft!).

It would be nice to make a little drawstring fabric bag to keep this all in for next Christmas.  Haven't quite thought that one through yet!

Cards 3

 Here's the next batch of cards I made over the Easter holidays.

I started with a strip of patterned paper which I stuck to a pink card blank.  The ice-cream cones were made from an old brown envelope and the ice-creams from scrap papers. Not 100% convinced by this one. I've made better ice-creams.

This one isn't much of a change but the letters came from a 3D birthday card I was given with the letters on various levels. I reimagined them in this guise.

Hazel might recognise this card as she sent him to me originally and I decided he needed a second life so I cut and gave him new deckled corners and then mounted him on patterned blue paper (which I used a border punch on) and a pink card to match his glasses.

One year, my sister gave me a really nice (and clever birthday present). She had this dress punch so she punched me a whole lot of dresses in different patterned papers so I had my own batch for making cards. She put them in a moisturiser tub so that was good reuse. I decided to match the drss with some flowers and a complementary spotty backing. The dress is held up with foam squares to make it look more 3D.

Is there one you like better here?

xx

Cards 2!

 I shared a post last week which showed some of the stash of cards which I made over the Easter holidays.  Thank you for your kind comments on these.

Today's collection are all a bit more varied than last time.

This first one started with some scraps of yellow card which I had punched using my edging punch.I think they came from an old school exercise book. The blue tropical card was actually a tissue box which a colleague was chucking out- it was too pretty to waste! The butterflies are outline stickers from a large stash I have!

The next card features a felt flower I cut freehand some years ago and forgot about! I found the perfect paper to go underneath it and the small yellow flowers came from an egg box! The purple flower is a bit wonky but I don't mind!

This was a really easy card to make. I think I bought this white card topper (feels a bit lazy!) about 14 years ago!  The only addition was the silver glittery background which was part of someone's Christmas cracker that again I snaffled!

The dog was a layered sticker that came in a pack I believe. I layered it onto the inside of a card I received and finally used a thin layer of double-sided sticky tape and carefully stuck on tiny pink iridescent stars. I have owned the pot of tiny pink stars since I was 10. My Mum bought me the best present. It was a 3 layered tool/craft box which had lots of containers of heart and star sequins in a myriad of colours. Everyone received sequinny cards for years! I still have the originals now!

I created this sweetie jar using some reused plastic quite a few years ago but never actually used it! I finally stuck it to the card and added an edging mosaic of matching squares. In retrospect, I wish I had added some white gel pen reflections to make the sweeties look more shiny and 3D- it's not quite right but I am sure I can find some use for it!

My final card here uses my old favourite school prospectus blue! I used a Martha Stewart corner punch to edge this one (Fun fact: My stepmum has this same corner punch and I really wanted the same one but it had sold out on QVC where she got it from and it was £40 from craft sites online. About 2 years ago, a friend of Mum's was getting rid of craft stuff and GAVE me the very punch I had wanted 10 years before!). I added a gift tag which had been attached to a card from a child at school and then punched 6 gold stars from some packaging I had.

Do you have a favourite?

x

CARDS!

It's been a while since I shared  photos of cards I have made.

In the Easter holidays, as part of my big tidying up activities, I FINALLY put away all the craft stuff I had got out over a year ago for mine and CBC's Valentines craft day in lockdown that had, ahem, been cluttering up the dining room table along with a myriad school articles.

But before I did it, I had a mammoth card-making session or two. I believe I ended up making around 22 all in all which was good for replenishing my stock of homemade cards for occasions.

Here's 4 that I made.

What all of these have in common is that they all use the blue card that came from the school prospectuses I fished out of the recycling and used for my Christmas cards.  All of them use some sort of recycled elements in addition to the blue base-card.

1. (Top left) just uses gold stars. These came from some packaging or other. It might be a bit simple but sometimes you just want a simple card that says "Well done" or something of that ilk. That's the aim of this one.

2. (Top right) This one is possibly aimed at my nephew-in-law.  I had some cute bubble stickers with sports on and I used them on some reused corrugated cardboard with some Easter egg box stars.

3.  (Bottom left)- This made use of some Taiwanese Pineapple cake box packaging. It was a lovely box. The cakes, not so much.  The flowers were all made out of shades of orange and yellow from egg boxes and other such packaging.

4. (Bottom right). More of the pineapple box with an old school book cover! My craft-punches get most used out of all my stash!

More to come anon!

Hope you are well!

x

Handmade Valentines card ideas

Here's a post from February 2017 where I shared ideas for eco-friendly or handmade cards. Should you feel like dabbling in a burst of creativity, then here's your chance to be inspired

Super easy, eco-friendly Valentines Cards ideas

Hi there,

Just in case you have left it too late to buy a card or you fancy making your own, I thought I'd link to a few previous posts of mine in which I have shared simple ways to make cards:

 6 easy peasy Valentines cards you can make yourself

This Dot to dot post card was one of the 6 ideas I suggested in the post above.  This one, as you can see, is ridiculously easy to make.

Dot to Dot

Envelope hearts

As part of a Heart swap back in 2012, I made a box of heart cards for Tracy, my partner and this is a design I have made numerous times for engagement cards which uses recycled envelope inards in contrasting patterns. It could work well for Valentines too!

Heart swap post

The card below was the card I made for Tracy to accompany the gift, but I don't see why this couldn't work as a simple Valentines card. I used the heart stickers I had used as masks to paint her a heart mug, as they were still sticky, rather than chucking them away.

Just add stickers...

Citrus hearts

These card are not Valentines cards as such but since they contain hearts, they could be a nice non-soppy idea for someone in your life!

Hearty drink 

A slice of my heart

Ribbon hearts idea

If you click the link in the caption, you can see how I made this card by utilising those annoying ribbons in clothing that are for hangers but stick out of jumpers and dresses annoyingly.

Ribbons from clothing card

Buttons:
 Buttons can act like Mosaic pieces and I love a good mosaic! All the below were a case of arranging and sticking with PVA glue or sticky tape! If you save those buttons from clothing but never seem to use them, now is your time!

Button heart idea

The wedding card that could be a Valentines.

Rainbow buttons

Yet another button card... The background blue is from a Tissue box!

Office Essentials holepunch card

I had sooo much traffic to this Valentines idea post a few years ago, I think it was because it said the phrase, Office Essentials in it! Anyway, this one is another very non-soppy idea and rather like the buttons is a form of mosaic but with hole-punched pieces from some paper that was going into the recycling.

Holepunch valentines

Origami hearts:
 If you look for a You tube tutorial, this is where I got this idea from for Origami hearts. These ones were made out of old envelopes! I am TERRIBLE at Origami but I found these super easy and I even managed to get one of the girls in the office to make one for her boyfriend by showing her how.

Origami hearts

Scrap card mosaic:

Most of the card in this mosaic for my husband came from tissue boxes, junk mail or other packaging except for the holographic one- have a look and see what packaging can be used!

And finally, here is yet another mosaic card idea,but this was the first Valentines my now-husband made for me back in 2010, so it's not just me who likes to give the crafty idea a go!!!! If I can find any of his other ones, I will post them..

Do you have any Valentines cards ideas? Do share if so and let me know if you use any of these!

Much love,

Kezzie xx

Linking up with Creative Mondays at Claire Justine's! So long since I last linked up!