Storybook banner tutorial

I saw the idea for these storybook banners on Pinterest earlier this week and I knew that it would be a great project for my daughter and I to make for her bedroom. My daughters and I have adore Golden Books and collected quite a few of them over the past few years. We like to make them into dream journals. 

As you can see, to create our book banner we used a children's book with lots of colourful illustrations. If you use a book with just text you could embellish the book pages to match your decor, colours, party theme or whatever.

This simple project can be created in less than an hour and requires very few materials and tools. 

Here's what I used for this project: a Golden children's book, twill tape (I used about 3' for mine), a disappearing ink marker, a piece of paper to create a template, pencil, scissors and sewing machine. 

1. Remove the cover of the book. Cut all pages so they are the same size. You can use a paper cutter for this part if you have one. 

2. Create a template for the shape of the bottom edge of the banner pages from the blank paper. Use the template and a pencil to trace the banner shape onto the bottom of each page and cut out.

3. Arrange the pages the way that you want to see them in the finished banner. There are two sides for each page so if you are using children's books with illustrations you will want to see what they will look like before you start sewing them together. 

4. Next, you will want to create a loop at each end of your twill tape and make sure that each banner page is evenly spaced out along the twill tape. To do that I used a disappearing ink marker to indicate on the twill tape where to make the loops and where to position each banner page. I positioned the pages so that the top edge of the banner page lined up with the top edge of the twill tape. The disappearing ink will "disappear" in a few hours so don't wait too long to do the next step.

5. Now you are ready to start sewing. I did a zigzag stitch at the top of the twill tape and stitched continuously along the twill tape and added the banner pages as indicated along the way. Once all of the banner pages where zigzag stitched to the twill tape, I did another row of straight stitching along the bottom edge of the twill tape so that the twill tape sits flat for hanging. The last bit of stitching that needs to be done is to create and stitch a loop at both ends of the twill tape for hanging.

If you use all 12 pages of a Golden children's storybook you can arrange the pages to tell  a story. If you don't want the banner to be as long as mine, just select the pages that you want and adjust the length of the twill tape. 

Paint colours for our new house

Our family moved to a new city last summer. I LOVED the new custom built, open concept home that we were living in but we wanted to move closer to a school for my youngest daughter. The homes in the area of the school are all really nice older homes on mature lots with lots of trees. We really like the new city because it has a wonderful downtown area, it feels like a small town more than a large city and we are half an hour closer to our cottage. 

Our new home is the complete opposite to our last home. The ceilings are not as tall so a few of my furniture pieces do not  fit in the rooms ... I had to get rid of my beautiful 9' Christmas tree in November and buy a 7 1/2' tree. I have lots of small rooms instead of large open spaces. I will need to purchase or find the time to make lots of art work to fill the walls. 

We have been living here for just over 4 months now and we have been making lots of small changes.  We are now thinking about what we want to do in regards to painting and I have been starting to collect paint colours.

Here's some of my inspiration! Tell me what you think. 

You can find the sources for these pictures on my Pinterest boards here.

I am totally in love with the birch tree wall paper. Have not shown it to my husband yet. I know that he will try to remind me about how much I hate having to take down wall paper ... but I don't think that I will get tired of this one for a long time and I am just think about it for an accent wall in the living room!

Here's the colours that I am thinking about ... although they look a lot cooler in the pictures than they do in the swatches. I want warm greys to go with my existing furniture.  I am thinking about using one of the two lightest greys on most of the walls. The dining room could be a little darker so maybe stone harbor in the dining room. I will have to do all of the trim over so I am thinking  a warm white (cloud white) for the trim. I am going to remove most of the doors on the main floor to make the rooms seem more open. There will only be a few doors left and I am thinking about painting the doors (only the doors not the door trim) a dark grey (gray). I love the black doors in some of the photos that I have pinned but I have a feeling the dark warm grey will be better .The spindals on the stairs have already been painted white and I may paint the rest of the wood in dark grey.

I have not shown any of this to my husband yet. I know that he is thinking we will just paint everything taupe again so keep your fingers crossed for me!! I have already convinced him to let me paint all of the wood wainscotting a warm white ... it was either that or buy a new sofa and chairs and he most likely thought that painting would cost him less! 

Happy New Year! 

Wishing everyone a wonderful twenty thirteen.

My last minute Christmas projects

I hope that you are ready for Christmas at your home. I'm happy to say that my last gift has been wrapped and is under the tree, the turkey is in the fridge and I just have a few last minute things on my grocery list that I will pick up a little closer to the 25th. I am looking forward to spending time with my daughters baking in the kitchen over the next few days. 

I wanted to share with you a couple of my last minute projects. The first one is a little treat bag that you can make up and hand out to friends that stop by over the holidays. I called it a Reindeer Treat bag!  I created the bag header and I you can use it too if you want. Just  download my art, print it on white cardstock and cut it out. To attach the bag header to the top of a glassine bag  or a clear bag you will need to fold the bag header in half and use staples to close. Fill the bags with candies or use my recipe below.

Reindeer Treats Recipe: mix together  equal amounts of pretzels, Shreddies cereal, M&M's candies and chocolate chips.

Download Reindeer Treats bag header here.

You will notice on the download that there are two extra square tags on the side of the download. I hate to leave blank space when I am printing something out so I added the tags!

I love to send and receive Christmas cards. It's a Christmas tradition that I personally look forward to every year. This year I made a ribbon garland using scraps of ribbon to display the cards with pictures on them. My photo above shows my  2012, 2011 and 2010 Christmas cards to demonstrate what the Christmas card garland will look like. 

Here's a quick overview of how to make one of these ribbon garlands. It doesn't  take long to make. It's such a simple project that you could make it with the kids in under an hour ... it will keep them busy before Santa arrives! I used lots of different ribbons - assorted colours, widths and textures. I even added some tinsel ribbon for fun. I cut the ribbon into lengths of about 6" but you don't have to have them all the exact same length so don't worry too much about measuring. I used one long length of twine as the base and tied a loop for hanging on one end. Then I just started tying ribbons in a random manner along the twine. I added a large wood clothespins in between the ribbons about every 4" to hang the cards. You will want to cut the ends of the ribbons once they are tied onto the twine. Cut the ends however you want ... mix it up as you can see in my photo above. Make the garland as long as you want to fit the space you want to hang it. When you are done, tie another loop at the end of the twine for hanging and cut off any extra twine. 

I made a couple of these chalkboard signs with my daughter and her friends a few weeks ago. They were painted on wood market trays from Creative Bag. I bought some more of these wood market trays to use for Christmas day entertaining. The trays are disposable but the shapes are really nice and I clean them off and paint them with black board paint. You can see more details on how I create these here and here. I am going to save the trays from Christmas day to do something for my daughter's rooms. I know that I will be checking my Pinterest boards for quotes to use. 

I hope that your Christmas preparations are going well and that there will be time to do sit back and relax with family and friends. 

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Christmas {post} cards and chalkboard art

I am so excited ... my Christmas postcards arrived this afternoon! 

I knew that I would not have time to create 80 handmade Christmas cards like I normally do this year. Instead, I designed a holiday postcard and had it printed at moo.com.  I have designed and print my business and family cards with moo many times over the past few years and I have always been happy with the quality of their products. The stock they print on is so nice and everyone always comments on how beautiful they are. The colour on the girl's photo turned out great and the digital chalkboard and vintage postcard backgrounds that I created look even better than I thought they would.

I paid for quick delivery turn around but it took the courier 4 days to get them to me after they were cleared from Canadian Customs ... long story short ... DHL Express should not have the word "express" in it's company name. Oh well, at least I have my cards now and I looking forward to writing on the backs and mailing them out to our families and friends.  

By the way, I am really glad that I made these as holiday postcards instead of cards. No envelopes to be thrown away and I had our return address printed on the back of the cards so I don't have to add return address labels. 

I have been on a bit of a chalkboard art phase lately. I have been pinning lots of chalkboard art and graphic inspiration on my "chalkboard" Pinterest board. And I think that I am going to use a number of chalkboard elements it in my holiday decorating this year. I'll share more about that later ... I'm still painting "things" with black board paint.

 I just finished this large chalkboard artboard on the weekend.  I was hoping to pick up a couple of large wood canvases but I was only able to get one in the size that I needed. My original plan was to create a piece that I could hang over the fireplace in the livingroom with a Christmas saying for the holidays. I ended up designing what you see above because I was missing my oldest daughter who is off to University this year and I thought that she would like these graphics instead. I loved reading "Guess How Much I Love You" to both of my girls when they were small and this quote was just so much fun to work with. Now I just have to figure out where we will hang it ... but not until I have the Christmas cards addressed!!

 If you are interested in making chalkboard art piece like mine, you can see my chalkboard tutorial on Creative Bag's blog over here. 

salt shaker snowglobes

My oldest daughter went off to university this fall for the first time. She was home last weekend and I caught her looking through my Christmas decorations for things that she could take back to school to decorate her dorm room. Her room is as big as a closet and she shares it with another girl!! We ended up buying her some mini lights that she could hang on the walls and together we made a small salt shaker snowglobe to put on her bookshelf. 

Here's how we made them:

1. Gather your supplies: salt shakers, mini bottle brush trees , silver glitter, snow glitter, gel medium, E-600 glue, pliers, a long stick, mini dictionary and scissors.

  2. I found that the plastic bases on the mini bottle brush trees were too large to fit through the opening of the salt shakers, so I used a small pair of pliers to break pieces of the base off until it was small enough to fit. 

3. Then we added gel medium to parts of the tree that we wanted to add the german silver glass glitter ...

... and we quickly added the silver glitter before the gel medium dried. 

Note: I like to store my glitter in vintage salt and pepper shakers - it makes it easier to use the glitter and I have more control.

4. After the tree is completely dry, it is time to put it into the salt shaker. I added a small dot of E-6000 glue to the bottom of the tree base before inserting the tree into the shaker. You can use the long wood stick to position the tree in the middle and make sure that it is standing straight. Let the glue dry for a couple of minutes and then add snow glitter to the bottom of the shaker so that it completely covers the tree base. 

5. I torn pages out of a mini dictionary and cut little banners to go inside the snowglobe. My daughter is helping out with "frost week" activities after Christmas holidays on campus and we thought that "frost" would be a good word to use on her banner. I played with the paper banner a bit so that it would curl around the tree once we placed it in the shaker. Again, use the long wood stick to position the paper banner where you want it. 

And there you go! So simple right?!

I think that this is one of the holiday crafts that I will make with my youngest daughter and some of her friends for Christmas this year. 

Note: here are some more details about my supplies ...

Salt and pepper shakers - I collect vintage ones at the antique and second hand stores all year. If you want a bunch to do with the kids like I am going to do - you can buy new ones at the Dollar Store.

Mini bottle brush trees - I bought a value pack of assorted sizes of these trees at Michaels. I am going to use the larger sizes in larger glass jars so the value package was perfect for me.

Glitter - my favourite glitter hands down is Wendy Addison's Emporium Pure Glass Glitter. I found it in a shop in New York a couple of years ago and I am so happy that I can buy it at home  in Toronto at Creative Bag.

Looking for more holiday ideas and live in the Toronto area? I have two free holiday workshops scheduled at Creative Bag in November and December. You can get more information by clicking here!

Vintage book projects no.1 - fall pumpkins

I have had a love affair with old books for quite a long time. And I am always looking for unique ways to re purpose them. I was inspired by a picture of a "carved" book earlier this year and knew that I had to try to make a pumpkin book for fall decorating in our new home.

If you'd like to try to make one of these yourself, this is what I did ...

1. You will need an old book and an exacto knife. I used a dictionary for this project because I liked the yellowed pages.

2. Cut the book pages from the cover being careful to leave the pages glued together.

3. Draw out the shape the you want your final pumpkin to look like. You have to think about how your pumpkin will sit so you will want to leave a small area at the bottom of the pumpkin flat.

4. Using the shape that you drew as a template, start cutting the pages with the exacto knife. You will want to cut in sections. Take your time. When you get to the end of the book and have cut all of the pages, you may find that some of the pages were not all cut to the same size. That's okay, don't panic ... you can always go back and trim some of the pages.

But just like when you were 5 and tried to cut your own bangs ... try not to be a perfectionist and over cut!

5. To make the pumpkin into a 3D shape, I glued the first and last pages together using gel medium and 6. used paper clips to hold the book pages together until the gel medium was dry.

You can decorate the top of your pumpkin with a branch. I also added leaf shapes that I cut out of green felt and some pieces of twine.

These pumpkins are great for fall decorating and can easily be added into your Halloween decorating as well.

If you are looking for more Halloween projects pop over to Creative Bag's blog. I have been posting Halloween packaging, food decorating and party ideas over there all month. There are some free downloads for Halloween packaging here and here. 

I know that a number of people have been inquiring about my workshops. I don't have any mixed media or art classes planned at this point. The only workshops that I have planned for the rest of this year are free holiday packaging and party workshops at Creative Bag. The workshops are usually on Thursday nights in Toronto (close to Yorkdale Shopping Centre). If you are interested in attending just send me an email and I will add you to my email list and notify you when dates are available.