7 Great Crafts for Spring

Spring is finally here (even though it doesn't quite feel like it everywhere). Get yourself in the spirit either way by making some of these cute Spring crafts. :)

Make some paper flowers. No matter what flower is your fave, you can find a paper variety to whip up on a weekend.

If gardening is your thing, these fabric covered flower pots are sure to brighten up your space. I love them as part of my tiny windowsill garden.

I saw these adorable bees over on The Experimental Home. Use your leftover plastic Easter eggs to whip up a hive full of them :)

These dinosaur garden markers were one of my favorite garden projects ever. They add whimsy and color to your garden while you are waiting for everything to sprout!

April showers bring May flowers, so you might as well join in the fun with a rain cloud brooch. If storms are more your style change it up with a cloud + lightning brooch instead.

Don't forget to brighten up your office with some candy colored binder clips. Some clips, glue and scraps of paper or fabric are all you need!

Take a few minutes and make some bright Spring stationery! These cards are super easy and will brighten anyone's day when they open the mail.

What are your favorite Spring crafts?

Fish Scale Patterned Paper Placemat

This is an easy project that is extra eco-friendly. I used a 2" hole punch to punch out circles from an old magazine and then pasted them onto an extra sheet of 12"x12" card stock. Even the glue was eco-friendly! I used Glu6 craft paste from Nine Lives Products, it is a new craft glue that is made from recycled styrofoam, how cool is that!? They make a few different glue products, all from styrofoam, you should definitely give them a try. The glue even smells kind of good, it reminded me of Gojo orange pumice hand cleaner, which all of my art classes used to have for us to use (elementary school and up). Totally nostalgic.

Start by punching out lots of circles from a magazine. I used an old fashion magazine, which had lots of super colorful ads and whatnot for great variety of small images, but any magazine should do the trick. You could also add in some newspaper images as well, but the ink on newspaper tends to smudge a bit.

I started at the bottom of my sheet of card stock and worked my way up to create this fish scale pattern. Your very bottom layer will use half circles. You could use a smaller or larger hole punch if you want, just make sure the size will fit evenly on your paper (since my paper is 12" wide, anything that divides evenly into 12 would work without needing to trim the paper).

Above you will see the finished starting row of my scales. To start the second row, choose a side to work from and you will again start with a half circle, as the fish scale pattern is staggered by an inch. The circles that are not on the ends will be full circles.

Continue your pattern up the sheet of card stock, as shown above. I tried to evenly disperse circles with lots of detail with circles that had solid color so that no one area was extra busy while one area was too plain, but overall it's a pretty colorful piece of work. Once your glue is dry you can coat this with a top coat or clear sealant. If using this for a place mat isn't your style, it would also make a great piece of wall art, or could be cut up into coasters. I'm thinking about lining the drawers in my craft desk with something like this!

Glu6 craft paste sample provided by Nine Lives Products, manufactured in the USA (CA). All opinions are my own.



All Craftinomicon readers can get 25% off their Glu6 order at Nine Lives Products by using coupon code Fall2013 at checkout until October 31st!

Thresher Shark Journal

Welcome back for another sharky craft! This is a simple papercraft that you can do in just a few minutes. All you need is a shark pattern of your choice, a journal (or notebook, card, etc.), some colorful paper (I used some photorealistic scrapbook papers), pencil, a scissors and some glue (optional material: a foam brush to spread the glue thinly and evenly).

Start by tracing your shark onto your scrapbook paper and cutting it out. You can change up the size of shark depending on how large your journal is (or by how many sharks you want on the cover). Next, play around with the layout of your sharks. Once you are satisfied, spread a thin layer of glue onto the back of your decorative shark and press firmly onto your journal. Allow to dry completely before you use your journal to avoid any issues with access glue sticking to anything and dirtying up your final product.

Enjoy! This is a great way to give new life to an old journal or sketchbook that might not be inspiring you to grab it up and use it very often :)

Easy Vellum Flower

I have been slaving away making flowers for my sister's wedding (it also helped pass the time while I was waiting for a replacement lens for my camera to arrive). As such, I was not really able to post in July, so I hope you all haven't been too mad at me. Fear not, the new lens has arrived and I am almost finished cutting out all of my sister's lovely wedding flowers.

While my sister decided on mainly paper roses, which can be found as part of my paper flower roundup post. I have come up with some cute and much easier flowers that can be used to fill in bouquets. A great thing about these flowers is that they work especially well with this great platinum vellum paper I found! Vellum doesn't like to be bent/shaped/hot glued the way copy weight papers do, so finding a simple flower with less fuss is a great way to use it. The shimmer of the paper also makes this simple flower look a bit more exciting. It's a win/win!

I started this flower by using the template from some of my tissue paper flowers, as shown above. I decided that cutting out 3 same sized petals, punching a small hole in the center, and arranging them around a simple bead on a wire looked simple and elegant, and was also pretty darn quick and easy! I used a tiny bit of glue between each petal to hold them in place. You could also cut out 3 petals of each size and make a larger, layered flower. I think a bouquet made entirely of these little beauties would be a great everyday centerpiece or table decoration!

I'll be posting again tomorrow to let you all in on my upcoming projects! If you can't stand the suspense, check out my July Newsletter! What have you all been up to during my unplanned break?

Paper Gerbera Daisies

My favorite flower is probably a gerbera daisy. I love the bright colors they come in, they seem to last quite a long time in a vase compared to other varieties, and something about them is just plain fun. I have been working on a pattern to make some out of paper for quite awhile, and came close to finishing it up for a Craft Wars challenge, but decided to hold off and work on it a tiny bit more to make sure it was just right. Here are my results, let me know what you think!

To make your own paper daisies you will need:

Paper of choice (I used a magazine)
Scissors
Daisy Petal Template
wire stem
glue
Decorative button
floral tape (optional)




I started by making a template for my petals. Since cutting these out gets rather time consuming (or maybe it's just the fact I always cut these out while doing something else like watching a movie?) I opted to go with only 3 different sizes of petals, cutting 2 of each size to make one flower. You could certainly play with the size on your computer/printer to get more like 5 or 6 different sizes of petal templates and use smaller petals in place of a button center, as I used.



I've never seen a flat daisy, so I used my scissors to gently curl each petal a little before gluing my edge tab under. As this daisy is made with magazine paper, not much pressure is needed, and you want to be careful not to tear your petals, as they did just take you awhile to cut out. I will mention, these work pretty great with vellum papers -- I'll get photos of the one I attempted and post it later on, but the fact that these only make a slight cone shape in the center once assembled makes them work well with thicker papers as well as thin.





I found these great flower shaped buttons and decided they'd look great with my flowers. You could use just about any button you like, or if you don't like the button look, attach your button to your floral wire stem, then cover it with a little batting and wrap it in your favorite fabric or some tissue paper.



Then start adding your petals on (you will need to poke a small hole in the center of each one before putting it on the wire), arrange them as you like (you may need to add a little glue between each layer of petals to help them stay in place) and wrap the stem in floral tape if you want. I always wrap mine with tape as I think it look nicer, but it is not necessary.

If you want to check out more handmade crafts and recipes, visit this link party at Frugal By Choice, Cheap By Necessity.

Polka Dot Table Runner

I've been trying to come up with ways to keep myself from turning my dining room table into a catch all. Every tie I clean it off, it seems within seconds to be covered again by mail, craft projects, to do lists and more. So far my best defense has been trying to keep some kind of decoration on it, but a centerpiece isn't always good enough. So the other day I thought up this table runner! It's so cheap and easy to do, that you could change it almost every day if you wanted. It would also be super cute as a party decoration!



To make your own all you need is:

Scrap book paper or Card stock (here I used card stock)
Large circle hole punch (you could use a fancier shaped punch if you prefer)

That's it! Two supplies! How great is that? I will also point out that as long as you don't feel the need to attach these to a backing of some sort, you can re-use your punch outs in several other crafts later on :)



I am addicted to ombre color schemes lately, so I chose several shades of orange for my runner, but you could use any combo of colors or patterns. Start by punching out your polka dots. I punched out about 3 12"x12" card stock sheets worth of dots for my table (53" in diameter). You could also arrange your dots in a sunburst pattern, in which case you'll likely need more dots. Experimentation is key here, and you can't mess up!



Once you have your dots punched out, arrange them as you see fit! I started with my white dots on one side spaced pretty far apart, and then went to light orange, orange and dark orange. PLay with your spacing and colors until you come up with what looks best for you and your table.



In the end, I couldn't resist adding my ombre pom pom centerpiece as well. Complimentary colors make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

DIY: Paint Chip Art Journal

I started a series on Art Journaling awhile ago. Then we moved into a new apartment and I kind of let that fade away without getting to some of the finer points. Consider this my attempt at trying to rectify that somewhat. Here you will see how you can turn a stack of just about anything (in this case, sample paint chips) into a bright shiny new art journal.

To make this style of journal you will need:

A stack of old paint chips, or any kind of old paper/cardstock (playing cards would work very well)
a hole punch
binder rings

That's it! Start by deciding where you want your holes punched, and use one card to make a template. You can use this for punching all of your holes in your cards in the same place, simply line up your template on top of your unpunched cards (I only do a few at a time) and punch your holes in the same spot as the original. Then, secure your book together with the binder rings. The thing I love about this style of journal is you can start small with smaller rings, and then if you decide to add more pages later, just graduate to a larger sized ring and add more pages as needed. It also makes it easy to remove a page without tearing anything out. Binder rings...another office supply I like way too much. :)

One great thing about paint chips, is if you are having some trouble thinking of something to draw/write/etc. in your journal, each color has some fancy name that you can use as a jumping off point. Maybe you will draw a tropical lagoon on the card aptly labeled "tropical lagoon", maybe you will decide to make a collage of items in a certain colorway on another page to match (or contrast!). Also, while you can find paint chips in many sizes, most are very manageable as far as fitting a finished book into your pocket or bag to carry around with you everywhere you go. :)


I save everything, so I had a large number of paint chips on hand. If you don't but would like to make this project, ask at a local hardware supply store if you can take some paint chip samples without buying paint. Other options you could use are: playing cards, the fronts of old greeting cards/thank you notes, scrap cardstock pieces from old projects, cut up cereal boxes, etc.

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone! It is an absolutely gorgeous day here in Portland, I hope you are having great weather as well wherever you may be. In honor of the Earth Day holiday, I thought I'd share links to some of my past projects that re-use magazine pages, as well as some of my favorite crafty tips for being more "green" and getting the most out of your crafty stash.

First, here are some projects that you can do with old magazines (or any paper you have lying around, phone books, junk mail, old notes and lists would all work as well!).

Office style gift card envelopes

Paper Twine - Great for tying up gifts!

Recycled Paper Beads Just use paper and mod podge to make tons of unique beads for jewelry and more!

DIY magazine envelopes Perfect for all of your correspondence, can be made to any size :)

Besides these ideas, you could also use scrap paper for making paper mache projects, collages, art journal pages and more!

Not really an abundance of paper in your life? Well, fear not, I still have some great earth friendly ideas for other crafty items!

If you do a lot of sewing, you likely have a lot of fabric scraps. If they are large enough, you may want to look at this craft project roundup of things to do with those scraps! If you find you have lots of small scraps, don't worry, there are still things you can do with them without throwing them away! I like to save up a bag with my tiniest fabric scraps and then mix them in with batting when I stuff fabric toys; it can save you money on extra batting, give your toys a nice texture and is soft and washable. Small scraps can also be used in mixed media art pieces.

If you are looking for an earth friendly craft activity to do with friends, think about hosting a craft supply swap. Have everyone get together some of their old supplies (I know I have tons of extra beads, paints, yarns etc. sitting around that I used for only one project) give them new life by trading with your friends for something new to your stash that they weren't using anymore! If you have leftovers, try to find a local school or after school program that needs craft supplies to take the rest :)

Do you have any other earth friendly ways to use up craft supplies? Post a comment with your ideas or "green" projects I'd love to see them!

Art Journaling: Adding Pockets

While not at all necessary, at some point you might find yourself wishing your art journal had a pocket or two. There are tons of different ways to do this, and as with everything else in art journaling: none of them are wrong! One of the easiest ways to add a pocket, in my opinion, is to sew two pages together.

Start by cutting one page a little shorter than the other. This isn't really necessary, but I like being able to more easily get things out of my pockets, so having the front of the pocket shorter than the back helps.

Next, decide how you will join your pages together. Glue and tape will also work, but I decided to go with a sewn pocket. To make it easier to stitch together, I used a small hole punch to pre-punch holes. I could have sewn without pre-punching as well, but this helps to not tear my pages and weaken the pocket.

I used an embroidery floss rather than thread to make a sturdier connection. Just weave it through the holes, and knot off both ends.

The finished pocket. If you like the look of the thread wrapping around the outside of the pages rather than being in straight stitches, feel free! There is no wrong way to make your art journal.

I decided to cover the back of my stitches with washi tape. It gives the back of my pocket a nice border and covers my knots and stitches. You would never know the front of the page had a pocket sewn in.

Another great pocket method is gluing envelopes onto your pages. You could use the tutorials I have here or here to try making your own, or simply buy envelopes in any color or style you like and glue them on to your pages. I sometimes add a photo corner onto my envelope to help hold it shut, or you could make a button closure like I do in my gift card envelope tutorial.


If you aren't quite sure what you would put in your pockets, here is a list of things that I have filled mine up with in the past:

Recipe cards, or recipe pages torn from magazines
Paint chips
Leaves and pressed flowers
fabric scraps
needle and thread
paper with quotes on it
photographs
stencils
or maybe one of my favorite little extras: Stickers

I got these little beauties from a Sanrio store several years ago. I think the Little Red Riding Hood theme is what draw me to them, I just love it.


What are you going to fill your pockets with?