Showing posts with label paper crafting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paper crafting. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

My England Travel Journal Is... Excessive

 It took an extra six months and a final boost of half of The Crown Season 3 on DVD, but my England travel journal finally went from this--


--to this!


It might be just a tad overstuffed...

The actual travel journaling didn't take six months, but I also wanted to incorporate all of my favorite family photos from the trip and some of the ephemera I'd collected. 


And then at the Half-Price Books Outlet one day I found an old Eyewitness Great Britain, the kind where every page is illuminated with all the little pictures and maps and infographics, and things got a little out of hand.


So the book may indeed be morbidly overstuffed, but now I'll never forget the name of the delicious ice lolly that I got at the ice cream truck after making it down from Glastonbury Tor without having a heart attack--

--or the excitement/exhaustion of our first day in London, and how maybe some of us possibly wanted to curl up on the grass and die in front of Big Ben, but we rallied and toured Westminster Abbey instead:


If I ever want to remind myself of the floorplan of the White Tower, or reassure myself that yes, the Uber Boat schedule IS completely impossible to interpret and no, I do not EVER want to get back on that boat again no matter how lovely the Tower Bridge looks from the water, all I have to do is turn to my travel journal!


I can also use my travel journal to remind myself that I DO want to go back to Canterbury one day!


And, of course, anytime I want to debate with myself about which of the approximately 1,000 photos I took of my family at Stonehenge is the most marvelous, I can just flip through my travel journal and admire them all:



It's the perfect final chapter to a perfect trip!

I don't think I've got any massive trips coming up this year, not with all the fun my partner and I are going to have adding a second college tuition to our bill schedule. 

But we ARE going to New York City for a couple of days later this winter so I can finally see Hadestown on Broadway...

Okay, and my Girl Scout troop IS currently planning a spring trip to Boston...

And my younger kid and I might need to do some college visits after acceptances and financial aid offers come out...

And my older kid might be studying abroad next Fall, and if she does, well, it *would* be nice to go visit her...

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Upcycle Photographs into Stickers: Three Methods That Really Work

 

I first published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

Upcycle your old print photographs into stickers, and you’ll unlock a whole new way to display and enjoy those magical memories!


I don’t do a lot of crafting with print photos anymore, so I was a bit dismayed recently when I found a huge stack of 4″x6″ photos leftover from my scrapbooking days. Gotta clean out my closets more often, I guess!

I recognized all these photos as ones that I have digital copies of (I’m still not ready to talk about The Terrible Hard Drive Erasure of 2017…), so I could have just tossed them all into the recycling. But yikes, how wasteful would that be?!?

Mind you, I have no problem tossing stuff that I truly want to toss, but Past Julie clearly spent time and money on this photo order, and all the photos are of my adorable babies, now almost all grown up, and our fun traveling adventures. As far as I know the Jedi Training Academy no longer even exists at Walt Disney World, so that photo of my tiny padawan winning a light saber battle against Darth Vader himself deserves a fate much more exciting than the recycling bin!

Also, there is genuine terror in her eyes in that photo, and I laugh every time I look at it. Kid was pretty sure she was fighting for her life up there!

I have fun crafting plans for most of these surprise photos, the first of which is stickers!

Here are three easy methods for upcycling print photos (and book pages, wrapping paper… just about any paper works for this!) into stickers, along with the pros and cons of each method.

Method 1: Adhere a photo to an existing sticker.

Pros: Quick, materials are easy to obtain.

Con: Stickers are low-tack.


If you’ve got a sheet of printer labels on hand, you can have your own photo stickers ready to go in minutes.

These stickers will be pretty low-tack, so cutting the photos down a bit will reduce their weight.

Use an excellent white glue, like Aleene’s Tacky Glue, to adhere the photos to the front of the label sheet. Let the glue dry, then cut out the photo stickers.

Glossy photos don’t make the best stickers right out of the gate because of how easily they show smudges. To solve this, laminate the front of each photo by sticking a piece of clear tape to it.

Fair warning: I, personally, am MISERABLE at jobs like this. One of my teenagers even installs all my screen protectors for me because she can’t stand looking at the state of my phone screen, all bubbles and trapped lint, when I do it myself. I had to cut down that photo above right because I somehow managed to trap a giant cat hair under the tape, sigh. So be super careful with your own tape lamination!

Method 2: Paint the back with Aleene’s Tack it Over and Over Again glue.


Pros: Most eco-friendly, least use of additional materials, stickers are repositionable.

Cons: Most time-consuming method, requires a specialty supply.


This is my favorite way to make stickers. It’s super easy, and I used to do this to make re-usable stickers for my kids from old book pages, toy catalogues, and our drawings all the time–tbh, I think the bottle I used for these stickers is the same bottle I was using way back then!

To make these re-usable stickers, cut your photo to size, then coat the back with a VERY thin coat of Aleene’s Tack It Over And Over Again glue. I like to do this on top of parchment paper, so I can brush excess glue off the edges of the photos and onto the paper:

Let these photo stickers dry for about 24 hours, then peel them off the parchment paper. Even though they are repositionable, I like to stick them to wax paper to store them.

Method 3: Use a store-bought sticker maker.

Pros: Makes the highest-quality stickers by far.

Cons: Most expensive, least eco-friendly.


I wouldn’t buy one of these for myself, but I do use the snot out of the Xyron Creative Station Lite that I bought for my kid back when she was a tween. She creates a lot of art, and I thought that she might like to make stickers and magnets out of her own little art pieces… and she does!

But yikes, this machine is made entirely of plastic, and each cartridge is made from more plastic. Please feel free to spam me with suggestions for more eco-friendly models!

I will say, though, that the stickers this machine makes are WONDERFUL, easily equivalent to good store-bought stickers. We’ve worked with materials as thick as food packaging cardboard, and the stickers always come out well. This cartridge even laminates the top of the sticker, so glossy photos remain smudge-free.

Ugh for all that plastic, though!

I wasn’t excited to find these photos in the back of a closet, true, but I have to say that I am excited to have a fun little way to display some of them! It definitely brings a bit of magic into my daily grind to catch a glimpse of a happy memory and a sweet kid or two.

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Tuesday, December 26, 2023

I Finished the Wool Felt Moveable Alphabet (and the Dolch Sight Word Cards!)

 

Once upon a time, waaaay back in January 2023, Past Julie thought, "Ooh, I have the perfect idea for a cute Christmas gift for my niece! I'll hand-sew her a moveable alphabet out of the rest of my stash of wool felt. I'll just sew, like, one letter a week and she'll have SO many letters by Christmas!"

June 2023 rolled around, and Past Julie thought, "Hmm, no big deal. I'll just start stitching a couple of letters a week."

During the October meeting of my mending group, I happily cut out letters and burbled to my fellow menders that "I just need to sew one a day and they'll be done in plenty of time before Christmas!"

During the November meeting, I said, a little more grimly, "Just two a day and I can squeak them into the mail just in time for Christmas."

Those last couple of days in December, it was more like six a day while binge-watching Chicago Med DVDs, but look at the glorious result!


I am SO pleased with them! 

Here's a rooster for size comparison, because the entire flock could not get it out of their heads that these colorful nuggets were perhaps made of delicious chicken food:


My favorite part of this project is that even though yes, it took a lot of me-hours to accomplish, the materials are ENTIRELY stash!


The felt is a really nice merino wool felt that I bought long ago for projects with my own kids (it's this exact set, but I bought 8"x10" cuts instead of the 4"x6" cuts shown here). I blanket stitched the letters with basic-grade Amazon embroidery floss and I stuffed each letter with snips of that same felt, and won my own personal game of wool felt chicken because after the very last letter was stuffed, I had less than a handful of little wool felt snippies left. 

I even had all the colors left! I managed a complete rainbow to start the set--


--and also had enough grey, brown, black, and white to make a nice variety and multiples of every letter (except for X and Q, ahem):


My partner handled creating all the Dolch sight words in the same font and size, and I backed each one in pretty paper and laminated it so my niece can use them as templates to make words with the wool felt letters:


Wool felt has such a lovely feel, though, and the colors are so pretty, that I'm hoping that the letters alone are a fun sensory experience. Sensory experiences build intrinsic knowledge and increase one's love for a topic.

It's clear that the chickens, at least, appreciate the sensory appeal!


Even though this project took a loooong time, it was not hard at all, and I actually would recommend it as a beginner-level hand-sewing project for absolutely anyone. Over Thanksgiving break my college kid sewed a perfectly acceptable "I" after about five seconds of instruction, and it's now mixed in there somewhere with the rest of the letters, completely indistinguishable from the lot (well, *I* can distinguish it, but definitely nobody else could)...


Best. Christmas. Yet. Now, to figure out something even more unwieldy to make for next year!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Make Magnets from Any Paper: My Three Favorite Methods

 

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

Magnets are a fun and easy way to show off your tiniest art, upcycle your favorite photographs, or display comic book panels, sweet love notes, or pretty papers of all kinds.


I am sooo glad that “cluttercore” is now a thing, because just between us, it’s always been *my* thing. A bare wall or surface is nothing but a spot that I haven’t put something cute yet!

To my endless irritation, my refrigerator isn’t magnetic, but I’ve made up for it by DIYing a giant magnetic wall in the kitchen, and a smaller one in the family room. I love displaying all the greeting cards, A+ schoolwork, concert tickets, and assorted other tchotchkes that one generally puts on a magnet board, but to be honest, my favorite things to display are the magnets, themselves!

Magnets are a great way to upcycle all kinds of cute little things that you’d love to have on display but that are too wee for mounting and framing. I love making all my special little mementos, from postcards to greeting card sentiments to Instamax photos to fortune cookie fortunes into magnets, so I can enjoy looking at them while they hold up other stuff I enjoy looking at–it’s cluttercore at its most decadent, lol!

Here are my favorite ways to DIY magnets from any paper!

Method #1: Mat Board and a Button Magnet


For this method, you will need:

  • paper to display
  • adhesive (archival glue or double-sided tape, AND E6000 or similar epoxy glue)
  • mat board or book board
  • button magnet
  • ruler, craft knife, scissors

Cut roughly around your image, leaving a border that you can trim to size later. Then, use archival-quality glue or double-sided tape to adhere your image to the back side (not the pretty colored side, unless you want to chance the color being visible through the front of your art!) of mat board.

Use a ruler (a metal one is better than the beat-up plastic one I’m using in the photo below) and craft knife to trim the image and its mat board backing to size:

To seal the front of the image, I like to either laminate it in packing tape or cover it in Diamond Glaze or several coats of Mod Podge. Here, I used packing tape:

Any other fans of My Life as a Background Slytherin out there?

Use E6000 or a similar epoxy glue to adhere a button magnet to the back of the mat board. You can also add additional embellishments like gems and stickers to the front, Sharpie the edges, poke holes at the bottom and add tassels, and do whatever else you can think of to pretty up your magnet further!

Method #2: Sticker/Magnet Maker


For this method you will need:

If you’ve got (or can borrow!) a store-bought sticker/magnet maker, it makes creating magnets from your own papers SUPER easy.

I own this specific Xyron sticker/magnet maker, but I’ve also got teenagers and their friends who all use the snot out of it, so it gets a lot of use. If you don’t want to buy a whole entire one all for yourself, it’s worth checking out your public library’s DIY or teen space or asking your local Buy Nothing group for one to borrow.

To use a machine like this, you feed your paper into it and let it add adhesive magnet sheeting to the back and laminate the front:

The laminating is especially nice for papers that are glossy or ink that’s water-soluble. Kid art made with washable markers can be so delicate! It’s also an easy way to make a magnet out of an entire photo for display on my gigantic magnet boards.

Method #3: Adhesive Magnet Sheets


For this method, you will need:

  • paper to display
  • adhesive magnet sheets
  • scissors

This method is best for papers that don’t need lamination, Diamond Glaze, or Mod Podge. I like it for my comic panels and my collection of vintage space-themed stamps, but basically anything commercially printed or printed on a laser printer could get away without lamination.

To make these magnets, roughly cut around your image, stick it to the adhesive side of an adhesive magnet sheet, then trim it to size.

Crafting this magnets is a fun kid project, especially for tweens and teens. Give them lots of magazines to cut from, plenty of adhesive magnet sheets, and let them have at it! The finished magnets make sweet handmade gifts for friends and family.

Pro tip: these easy magnets are awesome for the front of a college student’s mini fridge!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Sunday, November 26, 2023

DIY Coloring Book with an Upcycled Cardboard Cover

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.


A DIY coloring book lets you customize exactly the coloring pages you want!


I was in the market for a new adult coloring book the other day, but I just could not find what I wanted! Honestly, how hard could it be to find a small-scale book with spoopy images that would be fairly quick to color and would have no swears, but also wouldn’t be baby-ish?

Ugh, it was SO hard!

Eventually, I went back to the only sure-fire way to get something that is EXACTLY the way I want it: DIY!

I modified my go-to DIY journal with a cover made from upcycled cardboard, and filled it with coloring pages downloaded from the interwebs. It’s exactly what I wanted, and here’s how you can make one, too!

To make your own DIY coloring book with an upcycled cover, you will need:

  • coloring pages. Yes, you CAN print coloring pages in an eco-friendly manner! For each coloring book, you’ll want 10-12 coloring pages, printed two-to-a-page on cardstock. You’ll only be using one side of this cardstock, so feel free to use up the back sides of cardstock that’s already been printed on one side.
  • upcycled cardboard. You need two pieces, each about 6″x7″. Any weight from cardboard food packaging to corrugated shipping box cardboard works well–in these photos, I’ve used both!
  • metal butter knife. A bone folder or back of a spoon also works well.
  • stapler and (optional) rubber block eraser. If you don’t have a long reach stapler, I’ll show you how to get the same effect with a regular stapler and a wedge eraser.
  • measuring and cutting supplies. I used a gridded quilting ruler and guillotine paper cutter.

Step 1: Arrange and trim the coloring pages.



Print 10-12 coloring pages two to a page on cardstock, so that you have 5-6 of these sheets for your coloring book.


Trim the excess paper from the top and bottom of your sheets. If you have a good guillotine paper cutter, you can stack the sheets together and trim them all at once!

Step 2: Measure and cut the upcycled cardboard book cover.



Most types of cardboard should work well for this project… even thin food packaging, like this empty popsicle box that I rescued from my recycling bin!

Open the box so that it lies flat, then fussy cut two pieces of cardboard to serve as the book cover. You want the dimensions of the cover to be slightly larger than the dimensions of each page; for this half-scale coloring book, with top and bottom margins trimmed away, 6″x7″ was perfect.

Step 3: Trim and tape the book cover.



Order the coloring book pages, then fold them sharply in half, coloring images to the inside. Burnish the fold with the butt end of the butter knife to make it even sharper.

Compare the sizing of the finished quire to the book cover, and trim as needed. Above, I’m using the quire as a visual aid to mark where I want to trim my cover, because I’m too lazy to measure.


Now comes the magical part! Lay a length of duct tape, sticky side up, on your work surface. Set the two pieces of book cover on the tape, with about a 1/8″ gap between them. Tear off enough tape to fold over the spine completely and overlap just a bit. There shouldn’t be any sticky side left uncovered!


Use your fingernail or knife tip to burnish down that crack between the two halves of the cover, then turn the cover over and burnish the other side, as well. When you’re finished, you will have a complete book cover with a duct tape hinge.

Step 4: Staple the pages into the book.



Center the coloring book pages inside the cover so that the fold of the pages lines up with the duct tape hinge of the cover. You’ll have to flip this whole book over and staple it from the other side to keep the staple ends hidden, so feel free to secure the quire to the cover with a bit of washi tape, if you’d like.


If you’re lucky enough to own a long-reach stapler, just staple the cover to the pages from the outside. However, if you have a standard stapler, get a rubber wedge eraser or, as in the photo above, a stamp-carving blank, and center it underneath the spot where you want to staple.


Unhinge the stapler and staple the hinge from the outside, stapling into that rubber wedge eraser. Repeat for each of the other two staples you’ll put into the hinge from the outside.


Turn the book over and remove the rubber eraser, and you’ll see all the pointy staple ends sticking up alarmingly.


To solve the problem of pointy staple ends, just use the flat side of the butter knife to push them down!


This is a handy little coloring book to keep in your backpack in readiness for any time that boredom might strike.

Are your kids interested in other bookmaking projects? My kids LOVE bookmaking, and we've done a TON of bookmaking projects together over the years!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!