Posts Tagged ‘paper’

Tutorial: Rear-View Mirror Love Notes

February 1st, 2013
5 Comments

I made a little hanging white board for Chris’s rear-view mirror. Kinda silly, but I can write him all sorts of fun notes and hang them from his car rear view mirror for a little surprise as he leaves for work.

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There are all sorts of ways you can make mini white boards, but I used all things I had on-hand, plus sheets of washi tape (yes sheets!).

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DIY White Board Supplies

  • glue stick, invisible
  • bone folder
  • string
  • washi sheets
  • thick board
  • white paper
  • transparency paper

These supplies worked for me, but you could easily substitute: a popsicle stick for the bonefolder, paper and glue for the washi sheets, a few layers of cereal boxes or the back of a sketch pad for the thick board and clear plastic packaging for transparency paper.  If you’ve got it on hand, use it!

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Glue up your board and carefully place your white sheet of paper on top.

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Use a bone folder or popsicle stick to smooth out any bubbles.

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Around the outside only, glue down the transparency sheet. Make sure it is firmly in place.

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Cut your washi sheet about 1 1/2 inch larger than the width and height of your board. Remove the backing or evenly coat your paper with glue. Place your paper-covered board in the center of your washi sheet or paper.

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In your hand, turn the board and sheet over and smooth out any bubbles with your bonefolder.

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Clip off the corners, but about 1/8th of an inch away from the corner. This will make your corners look neater. Promise.

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Bend the board, making the tape stick to the sides. Press tape neatly over top the transparency. It might want to buckle in spots.

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Pinch down the excess over those corners. Repeat on bottom and sides until the tape is completely wrapped around the front side of your board.

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Punch holes and thread string through the holes. Secure the string.

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Write your message.

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See how cute the back is? It’s such a simple project, but I could see this being a fun little game within a family or tight group of friends.

Write a little love message or compliment and leave it in their car, bathroom, etc for them to read. They can then erase and pass the love onto someone else. A perfect family activity for the month of February, if you ask me.

Washi tape pages provided by Lifestyle Crafts.

 

Sewn Paper Boxes

November 4th, 2011
15 Comments

I always find that I don’t have any boxes when I need them most. I hardly ever keep boxes or buy boxes just because they tend to take up so much space. And I can never seem to keep the right sized gift boxes in stock! It’s especially the pits when I’m looking for some adorable packaging for a gift. It’s such a pain to run those errands with two kids. I’d much rather make do with what I’ve got at home. Since that’s the case, I’ve found two adorable packaging options with items I always have on hand.

My friend just had a baby girl a few weeks ago & I’ve had a few goodies lying around the house waiting to go to her. Since we were going to be visiting her yesterday, I thought it was high time I wrapped up her gift.

Isn’t that cardigan just so sweet?!? I found the sweater, it was hand crocheted (?) I’m assuming and I made the little onesie. I think they’re just adorable together. I needed a little box for it all so I whipped up the above box lickety split. I thought I’d share with you how I did it! This technique is perfect for little treats & gifts! Hope you enjoy the tutorial!

• S U P P L I E S •

  • card stock or heavy paper. I’ve doubled up two sheets of regular paper before with great success, too!
  • ruler
  • bone folder or scorer
  • paper cutter or ruler & X-acto
  • sewing machine

First, you want to figure out the size of your desired box. I usually just wing it when it comes to these measurements. If you want your side wall to be two inches, you’ll want to measure two inches in from each edge. Makes sense? See diagram below for measurements.

Score along each line. Crease each fold, then match up each corner score. You’ll need to box out the bottom & then crease out to the corner. It’s sort of hard to explain, but in the process of matching the two perpendicular score lines, you create a 45º from the score corner to the corner of the page.

Keep those two score lines together & sew down that score line using your widest stitch. Make sure you test out your thread tension beforehand to make sure it’s tight enough, otherwise you’ll have some loosey goosey stitches in the back of each seam. It’s not pretty. Also, I used a zipper foot in order to sew this seam. I just need a straight stitch & I needed the foot to be as small as possible to get a straighter line.

Trim the excess with pinking shears. Another method which I find a bit cleaner, is to sew the flaps to the sidewall with only a few stitches on each side. The measuring for this is a bit trickier. You have to make sure those two flaps are long enough to overlap in order to sew. So you make sure in your measurements that the sidewall is longer than 1/2 of the length (plus 1/4 inch) of one of the bottom measurements. Example: If I want the box to be 4 inches by 5 inches, I need to make sure the wall is at least 2 1/4 inches tall so the flaps can be sewn together. Make sense?

Check out the video ABOVE to see how I did this.

A big thanks to American Crafts for sending me their CUTUP trimmer. It’s fantastic! Check out the video above to see all of its bells & whistles.

Handmade Envelopes & Scotch Tape Giveaway *CLOSED*

November 3rd, 2010
102 Comments

This post is brought to you by Scotch® Double Sided Tape Double Sided Tape. 

I love making my own envelopes. They’re so much more fun than buying plain envelopes, as I can use any color/patterned paper I want. If you’d like to learn more about how to make your own envelopes & download a free template, check out my envelope printable here.

I recently got some new papers & goodies & I wanted to play around with them a bit, so I made an envelope & wrote Chris a little love note. Granted, the note is a bit feminine, but Chris appreciated it anyway.

I could just use a glue stick for this sort of stuff, but double stick tape is my go-to for paper assembly. It’s so easy, it never dries out – I think I have 15 dried out sticks of glue in my craft supplies, and a little goes a long way!

Crazy Cat Lady Vinyl Decal

May 31st, 2010
9 Comments

Have you seen the vans/suburbans/people carriers with the stickers of stick figures of mom, dad, kidlets and pets? You know what I’m talking about, right? Well, I made a pretty hilarious set of vinyl decals at my aunt’s request. When I made Scott’s decal, she commented,”Can you make those family decals that are so popular to have on your Utah minivan? Uncle Loren wants one for his truck that looks like a crazy lady and then about 12 cat decals!”

How could I not make those?? Seriously. I didn’t make 12 cat decals, but you get the idea. I hand illustrated the lady & the cats. Surprisingly, the cats were easiest to illustrate; it was the lady that irked me. I ended up getting inspiration from the Simpson’s cat lady and Hang Mioku (a woman who injected cooking oil into her face).

I also whipped this up the other day. This was one of my favorite quotes in seventh grade. It’s just so obvious, you know?

Pom Poms & Paper Circles

February 3rd, 2010
36 Comments


Many of you who know me, know that I’m not a scrapbooker. My mom has always been the one with the eye & the patience for scrapbooking. She’s awesome at it. I do, however, have an unhealthy obsession with scrapbooking supplies.

In the last 8 or so years, I’d say the scrapbooking industry has really come into its own. Papers & embellishments no longer boast of unsightly forest greens and maroons and the artwork is artwork, not some automatically generated microsoft clipart on repeat. Ew.

Scrapbooking is all about pretty these days. No? I have a friend who works at We R Memory Keepers in the product design and development end of things. She’s been back and forth from Salt Lake City and China a few times in the last few months in preparation for last week’s CHA. WRM has been very busy coming out with new papers & tools to make our eyeballs pop out of their sockets. What you see above and below is a small fraction of what they’ve been working on. When Jen gave me the samples* to play with, I could tell she was really excited (and proud) of what they’re releasing to stores soon. Aren’t these papers and embellishments fun?

I think I need to host a baby girl shower soon. I think these papers would be so cute cut out into little doilies for serving cupcakes. The stamps would be an easy & inexpensive way to add color & cute to black and white printed invitations. The pink flower lace you see above is adhesive backed. AND Glittery. Isn’t that genius?!? Use that for a closure on an envelope or wrapped gift. Awesome, right?

So, I didn’t have time to plan and/or execute a baby shower, but I did have time to spruce up Penelope’s room a bit. Remember the scalloped border I did a couple of weeks ago?

First, I just want to tell you how much I loved your comments. I loved hearing from you & I really appreciate how nice you are to me. Thank you! Second, the scalloped border was getting a little lonely. A lot lonely. He needed a friend up there by the ceiling, so I made a little mobile for the Nels. This particular arrangement was heavily inspired by this beautiful nursery I saw here. I was just blown away at how gorgeous it was & had to have it. . . part of it, at least.

I made tissue pom poms via Martha Stewart, attached them to ribbon and stapled them to the ceiling. Then, I cut a million and a half irregular circles out of the WRM Hippity Hoppity paper and sewed them together. Sewing paper is tremendously easy and SUPER satisfying. If you haven’t done it, try it. NOW. You don’t need any special equipment, a threaded sewing machine would do just fine. You can’t tell from the picture, but the little circles spin around gently from even the softest little breeze. It’s so mesmerizing.

If you don’t have a sewing machine, or you’re too afraid you’d mess up the paper trying, you could buy pre sewn paper from WRM. I was just a little giddy when I saw the 12×12 sewn sheets of paper. Did I mention that I love sewn paper? It’s wonderful!

Not wanting to cut up this perfect piece of paper, I wanted to do something with the whole sheet. Again, I’m not a scrapbooker, so a pretty 12×12 with pictures of the Nels on it won’t happen. A door sign with almost all of Penelope’s nicknames was just what the doctor ordered. Penelope really has so many little nicknames, and they’re all just so cute, so I did a hand-calligraphed cloud of her nicknames. When I showed Chris, he let out an audible, “ooOOoooOOoo!” That made me feel so good inside.

The above paper is a nice cardstock, so I just needed some double-stick some tape, ribbon and a thumb tack to post it to Penelope’s door. It’s thick enough that it doesn’t look silly all by itself, but I have to admit it would look cute framed in swirly gold.

*note: I received free product.

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