Gift wrapping inspiration using your wrapping paper scraps

What kind of holiday gift wrapper are you? Do you wait until the very last minute to wrap everything? Or are you like me and start wrapping as soon as the Christmas tree is up? I spend a lot of time trying to make every gift look beautiful so I can't wait to start putting them under the tree right away. I consider the gifts to be part of my holiday home decor. 

When I use wrapping paper during the holidays, I try to select a minimum of three different papers in the same colour story. One is usually holiday themed - like the gold and white hand lettered print above. One will be have a simple everyday graphic like the confetti dot paper. My third wrapping paper is always a solid colour. 

After wrapping my boxes, I am left with a pile of wrapping paper scraps that I turn into small elements to embellish my gifts.

Create your own mini envelopes to hold little notes. Use complimentary wrapping papers to make your envelopes. Open a mini envelope to use as a template and simply trace the pattern onto wrapping paper scraps, fold and tape it together.

I have been making paper bows for a number of years. They are so easy and fun to make and it's possible to make them using wrapping paper. Simply trace the pattern for the paper bow and follow my DIY tutorial here. You can download my paper bow template here. 

You may have noticed that I used wrapping paper to decorate just the lid of this box. This is a great idea to use up your scraps and because the wrapping paper does not have to be torn off the box to open it, the box can be reused many times. I attached the box on the side of the lid so that this gift can easily be stacked under the tree.

I love to take photos and I always try to add a few to my gifts to work as gift tags. This accordian folded paper pop is a great way to use up small scraps of paper.  You can find my tutorial for making these paper pops here.

A band of wrapping paper was used to decorate a plain white gift box. Using bands of wrapping paper on boxes like this not only save you time but you save money by not having to use as much paper. I created another mini envelope for this gift using the printed wrapping paper.

Here's one more gift with a wrapping paper band and a mini envelope. I am totally in love with the "happy holidays" Posecard that I tucked into this gift ... 

the Posecard becomes a extra gift and can be used to take selfies and family group pictures during the holidays. 

I hope that you will save your wrapping paper scraps and try some of these simple DIY gift wrapping projects. You can find more of my wrapping paper ideas for you holiday home decor here.

Use up your craft stash inspiration - part two.

I can't believe how long I have hung onto some of my crafting supplies. Take for example a jar full of colourful clamp file paper clips and an old potato masher. They have been in my cottage crafting stash for over ten years. 

I know that I have had these items for at least ten years because it was in 2006 that I created the potato masher photo holder (above). I purchase two potato mashers at a garage sale near our cottage and I always intended to make the second potato masher into a recipe card holder. 

So this weekend, I finally got around to making my recipe card holder. It took me about ten minutes to make and I'm going to show you how I did it. 

Here's what you will need: an old potato masher with a wood handle, a metal clamp file paper clip, a 1/4" screw, a screw driver and a pair of pliers.

Step One. Pre-drill a small hole in the handle of the potato masher so it will be easier to add the screw. I made a quick hole using a nail and hammer.

Step Two. Using a pair of pliers, bend open one side of the metal clamp file paper clip as shown above. Bend it just enough so you can add the screw into one of the holes.

Step Three. Screw the metal clamp file paper clip in place on the wood handle. Bend the clamp file paper clip back into shape using the pliers and that's it ... you're done! 

Now I am thinking that it would be fun to make a few more of these to use for entertaining. They would make interesting sign holders for a food bar.

Here's one more photo so you can see what they look like from the side. By the way, I glued my photos and recipe cards to drink coasters so they will not bend easily. 

my "Mad Hatter tea party stands"

I got a little creative today with my "odds and ends" of vintage china and crystal pieces that have been waiting to be upstyled into something new and useful. I love the look of beautifully decorated cupcakes displayed on tiered stands and I decided that I'd try to make a couple of them to use when we are entertaining this summer at the cottage. Let's just say that I made a couple of them and I found they are useful for more than just displaying cupcakes ... I'm going to call these my "Mad Hatter tea party stands" ...

Here's one of my finished pieces ... and as you can see, I'm using it on a dresser to display some of my  jewellery. I'm going to make another one for my studio because I think that it will look sweet on my desk ... maybe I'll make one with little tea cups that I can fill with treasures waiting to be used in my art.

Here's how I made my Mad Hatter tea party stands ...

I used three different sizes of plates - a dinner plate, a lunch plate and fruit nappy. I also used two crystal pieces to use as supports - a candle stick and a salt/pepper shaker (with the top removed).

To adhere all of the pieces together I used E-6000 glue.

Note: I washed all of the dishes and made sure that everything was very dry before I started.

I arranged the plates from largest at the bottom to smallest at the top. I did the same with the crystal supports, the candle stick was the larger of the two supporting pieces so it was used on the bottom layer. I placed a ring of the E-6000 glue on the bottom of the candle stick and then adhered it to the centre of the dinner plate.

 Allow the glue to set for a few minutes before you move onto the next layer so that the pieces don't slide around on you ... now is a good time to start a kettle of water to make a tea if you are following along with me!

... then add some E-6000 glue to the top of the candle stick and place the medium sized plate over top of the candlestick - being careful to centre the plate over the larger plate. Quickly remove the medium sized plate and turn it over. You should see a ring of glue from the candle stick on the bottom of the plate. At this point I added more E-6000 to the bottom of the plate because I wanted to make sure that there is a good bond between these items. Let the glue dry slightly ... go finish making that cup of tea and bring it back to do the next step which is to place the plate on top of the candle stick. Allow this layer to dry before going onto the next step. You can drink your tea now!

Now you will repeat the process for adding the candle stick to the plates but this time you will do it with the salt/pepper shaker. You need to make sure when you adhere the salt shaker to the middle plate that it is directly over top of the candle stick or your tiers will look off balanced. You also need the top of the salt shaker to be flat so if it isn't - remove the top piece.

Once you have placed the smallest plate on top of the salt shaker ... take a look from the top and make sure that all of the plates look centred ... similar to my picture ...

and check again that the centre supports have not shifted. Once everything is perfectly lined up ... let it dry!

I can't wait to make some cupcakes with the kids at the cottage this weekend and display them on one of my Mad Hatter tea party stands!

Happy Canada Day to all of my Canadian friends! I hope that you have a great long weekend.

I also wanted to share with you a very inspiring magazine called "Mollie Makes" - it is from the UK - and I just found by chance last week ... I think that you will love it! Here's a promotional video that they created to launch the magazine ... very creative! I love their tag line too .... "for people who love the crafty life".

recycled tee shirts

As the summer weather has finally arrived, I found myself going through our closets this morning to see what short sleeve tee shirts still fit, what needs to be donated to the second hand store and what can be used in a craft project!!

I discovered that my youngest daughter, who only seems to own tees with holes in them, actually has a few tees hanging in her closet with the hangtags still on them. I really can't wait until she has children someday. So, between Robyn's {favourite} tees and a few of my own, I found myself with a new supply of materials for craft projects.

I bought this cute Mickey Mouse tee shirt over ten years ago at Disney World that was too worn out to donate but I loved the screened logo too much to throw it out ... so I used it to create another one of my sewing kits in a bottle. I did a quick tutorial on these a while ago, you can see it here. I used a mini canning jar this time ... it is just the right size for a few spools of thread, some needles and pins.

I've already packed my mini sewing kit in a jar to take to a class I'm teaching on Saturday ... we are making ribbon bracelets and this will come in handy during class.

fyi ... there are still spots available for this class if you live in the area and are interested ... I'm only teaching this class once because my vintage materials are limited. Any supplies that I have left over after class I will use to make these bracelets to sell in my etsy shop.

I know that my oldest daughter talked about making a blanket out of her old graphic tees ... I think that we saw that idea on one of the Twilight movies. Bella's mom made one for Bella ... come to think of it, I have a feeling that Jacob's mom may have made one for Jacob too and that is why Jacob is always walking around without a shirt on! ;)

 If you have posted any project ideas with graphic tees that your older children can't part with on your blog (or know of other blogs that have) ... please let me know! I have a feeling that we are going to have some ideas flying around our house after school today. Have a great weekend!

Add a little "bling" to your holiday decorating with some vintage and upcycled materials

I just love to add a little bling and glitter to my holiday decorating and here's a few projects that I created to decorate my home for Christmas. I have a collection of old rhinestone brooches and earrings that I rarely get a chance to wear and just hate to keep packed up in a box ... so I quite often "add" them to my home decorating projects ... such as this candle that sits on a vintage plate in the kitchen. I added two velvet ribbons to the candle by using short straight pins to hold the ribbons in place at the back. Then I attached the brooch by sticking the brooch pin directly into the candle ... I added another long straight pin to balance the brooch and keep it in place. It's so simple yet elegant!

This next project is a vintage crystal Christmas ornament that I have been making for a couple of years. It was featured in Somerset Studio's GreenCraft magazine (Autumn 2010). I use vintage crystals, ribbons and lace, vintage buttons and rhinestone earrings to create these ... and because most of my supplies are often one-of-a-kind, I rarely make two of these ornaments the same ... so they are kinda of like bling snowflakes!

Here's how to make these ...

I start with two vintage crystals ... one large tear drop and one smaller ... you will need to remove all of the antique metal pieces if there are any. Then add long head pins as shown above. I add one head pin to the top of the smaller crystal for hanging then I make and attach a jump ring to the bottom so I can link it to the tear drop crystal. The wire on the tear drop crystal is left long and I use my pliers to twist the end of the pin into a circle so I can attach the jump ring at the top.

You can see how the crystals have been joined in the photo above ... now it it time to pick out other elements to attach to the ornament and as well as ribbon and lace. I am using one of my vintage rhinestone clipback earrings on this ornament ...

First I tie some ribbons and lace that I selected to go with the rhinestone earring onto the long head pin ... 

... and then I add the clip back earring to the lace. That's it ... again, another simple but pretty way to add a little bling to your holiday decorating!

One last project to add a little bling to your holiday decorating ... 

This is a great project to use up some of those old frames that are the wrong colour or just don't match your decor anymore. I painted mine all the same warm white and took out the glass. Then I used scrapbook papers with glitter, chipboard letters and a couple of wooden letters that I had lying around to make this for our fireplace mantle. I always seem to be picking up letters that are in our names so when I found the "e" and the "r" in my box of supplies, I decided to spell out "be merry" but you could say whatever you want. If you have larger frames you may want to add more letters to a frame ... my frames were all on the small side.

You can paint the letters or do what I did and decorated them with different scrapbook papers. I used modge podge to attach the papers to the letters and then used distressing inks to edge all of the letters. After that each letter was treated differently ... I added glitter to a few, silver beads to one and Inkssentials glossy accents to a couple of others. You can add as much glitter and bling as you want to this project ... make it as simple or detailed as you wish!

I hope that I have you thinking about how you can add a little bling and a little sparkle to your holiday decorating! Have a great week! 



inspiration is everywhere ... and one thing leads to another ...

It's been a busy week in my studio ... so much inspiration and so many things on my "to do" list now that the kids are both in school.

I have been so inspired by an idea in Real Simple Weddings magazine (2010) ... in one article they showed chalkboards being used as props in a "photo booth" at the wedding reception. Our friend's daughter Breann is getting married next summer and I'm working on her wedding stationery and a few other things for the reception. I bought a bunch of old frames at the second hand stores and started painting them this week..

I painted all of the frames a flat white and added wood inserts that I painted with blackboard paint. I found a beautiful fabric that we are going to use as the backdrop for a "photo booth" at the reception ... the fabric is also my inspiration for the colours and design of the wedding invitations, etc. 

 I'm going to store the glass from the frames in a safe place so that after the wedding Breann and Kyle can pop out the blackboard pieces, add the glass back and use the frames for their wedding photos.

This week I created the calling card for Terri Smith ... the winner of last week's contest! I made the card to promote her blog and etsy shop as she requested. I did a couple of changes to my original design to work with her blog colours and font ... Terri and I are both pleased with the way that they turned out.

You can visit Terri's blog at here .

While I was working on the card for Terri I realized that I could use one of my existing invitation designs to complete a mixed media piece that I had started a looong time ago.

 The invitation became the piece I needed to complete the "i" block in this 6 piece series. With the series completed and no where to hang it in the house, I decided to add it to my etsy shop yesterday.

 

The "f" canvas is my favourite part ... I made a bunch of these little fairies a couple of years ago and have been looking for ways to use them!

Do you like my new photo frame? It's a freebie from Shadowhouse Creations and I got it from here . I talked about Shadowhouse Creations in my last post. I spent a few nights this week with the tutorials and textures from this site ... it is so much fun and it was great to just play with some of my pictures. Here's some of my fall inspired photos that I created ... I also made the photo frame above into a square for these pics ...

 

Don't these just make you want to get out your fall sweaters and pack up your summer linens?

Speaking of summer linens ... I started tearing up some of my daughters old linen dresses last night ... ones that they have out grown years ago and I couldn't part with because I love the fabrics so much ... yep, found another use for them when I was reading one of my GreenCraft magazines yesterday ....

there was a great article by Maize Hutton on how to make frayed flowers ... here's mine so far ...

I checked out Maize's blog and she has a tutorial on how to make these here if you are interested in creating some yourself! I still have to add some ribbons and scraps to these ... I think that I'm going to tea dye some newer ribbons to make them look old and add pin backs so that I can add the flowers to couple of my purses.  These frayed flowers are a great way to use up some of those vintage buttons from my collection. I think that I will try to find some pictures of the girls wearing the dresses that I'm cutting up. I want to make hang tags using the photos and add the tags to the flowers that I'm going to make for gifts ... my Mom and Mother-in-law will get a kick out of these!

Hope that I've given you some inspiration too ... have a great weekend!