Scrapbooking Demo- easy double page spread

   In high school, I was forced to scrap book as part of a team bonding for, of all things, volleyball. It was something I dreaded doing as I have never been much of a girly girl (as I wrongfully assumed all scrapbookers must be.)

finished scrapbook 2-page spread

     However, once I actually started scrapbooking, I realized it was something I could really get into. After all, I love stickers, bright colors, and organizing information. I did two more forced scrapbooks during high school and a couple of scrapbooky things during college, but didn't have time for more than that.

     Now that I have left college however, I find myself with all sorts of paper junk that I collected over the four years I was there. I sorted it all by year, month, then event and began the process of making scrapbooks for each year I was in college. I finished my freshman year and thought I would share my process for making a scrapbooked double page spread, my way (aka re-purposing leftover pieces of paper and having a unified color theme to create a cohesive look and feel to the pages).

Crafter's Block

 Yes, much like writer's block syndrome, I currently have crafter's block.

    In the hopes to get my crafty self motivated as well as to actually write a post, I have decided to let you in on the secret of which blogs I read to inspire and motivate my crafting-self. I know none of these crafter's personally, but they each have a style that speaks to me; if we are lucky, they will speak to you as well. So here goes:

For Clothing and Accessories:
     I love looking at the new creations from the blog Made By Rae (http//.www.made-by-rae.com). Rae is a sewing pattern maker who posts about her creations. She has the most adorable children's patterns that are also very wearable (at least I'm guessing, since her own kids wear them!)

A purse I made w/a Rae pattern

• One of the neat things about her blog is that she encourages reader feedback through pictures of what they have made with the patterns she sells and gives away. These pictures are then posted to a flickr.com page so that everyone who is looking to use/buy one of her patterns has the advice and modifications of everyone else who has made that pattern.

• She occasionally gives away free patterns, for personal use (in this case, it is a purse). I made my own version of this using some leftover material and it turned out great!   

     For when I want to feel girlie, I head to P.S. I made this (http://psimadethis.com/). This one is pretty famous and honestly, most of the time this blog is too trendy for me fashion-wise, but I appreciate how she re-purposes everyday items into a higher fashion calling.

A-Door-Aborable Wreath: Tech Edition, Part 2

    Hello again! Just wanted to give the second half of the LED jingle bells wreath project. The first half of the project covered the creation of the wreath itself, using cardboard, a craft knife, glue, and a few other materials. The video is the conclusion of the second part of the wreath project: adding song and lights!

    Though I liked the wreath when I first made it, it is much more interesting now that my brother incorporated LED lights and an arduino code to make it play "Jingle Bells." To get the code he wrote as well as some read through instructions on how to get started, click here. Some basic info on the project, in his words:

"To make a similar project, on your breadboard, wire two LEDs in series on each Arduino out pin called in the "LED PIN" array, and include a 330 Ohm resistor on each pin circuit to ensure that you stay under the maximum current draw for each pin.  The piezobuzzer is wired as usual, and the pushbutton has a pull up resistor to prevent any erroneous 'low' signals. "

A-Door-Aborable Wreath: Tech Edition, Part 1

      I know it has been a while since I've written a post (the combination of being in my best friend's wedding and the holidays), but I have another - perhaps now less timely- Christmas wreath project. This project is unique in that my brother and I collaborated on the design and implementation of the wreath. I also knew that I wanted to use cardboard in some way because I have a bunch of it at my house from work and it is a cheap material to work with. This post will just describe making the cardboard wreath. The next post will cover how to install LED lights and set up the arduino code to play Christmas music.

Materials:

•  cardboard, lots of cardboard
• wood or white glue (Elmer's or other brand)
• An exacto knife or a box cutter
• marker or pen
• surface to cut on (one that you don't mind getting scratched up or marked on)
• (optional) acrylic paint (red, green, white)

How To:

1.  The basic plan was to create a wreath of interlocking triangles. So, the first step was to cut out a bunch of similarly sized triangles in three different sizes. (I needed about 60-75 total for the project)

Triangles- so many to cut out. Get a cushy exacto knife or your hand is gonna kill you afterward

An A-Door-able Wreath

   When I brother asked me to create a wreath for the door of our apartment, I'll admit, I sort of panicked. Not because it was such an extreme request, but because I realized that Christmas is real and truly on it's way and I have gotten almost no shopping done for family and friends. So instead of solving that problem, I took my brother up on his challenge and decided to make a wreath for our door (yes, the old standby of productive procrastination).

    For some reason, I felt the need to use ribbon in this project. After buying the ribbon, I had no real idea of how to attach it or how to make a ribbon wreath. So, while walking around the store, I bought a set of fancy pearled topped pins, figuring I might be able to wrap the ribbon around itself and pin it to keep it together.

    When I got home, I checked pinterest to see if I could find any good ideas, but none of them really spoke to me (they were either too girly or not fancy enough.) So I thought about my original plan, and came up with this easy 2 hr. wreath:

Materials:

• Extruded Styrofoam ring (mine was about 12" across)
• 2 different colors of 2.5" ribbon
• 2 or more different colors  of 1/4" ribbon (I had 4 - yay for 50 cent ribbon spools at Michaels)
• Sewing scissors (believe me, using regular scissors on this project would have been ridiculous)
• Straight pins
• Tape (optional)

 

Picture Hanging Trick

    Our living room walls are incredibly bare; it is sad. To make up for the fact that we have no art that matches the look of our living room, I came up with the idea of hanging 5 monochromatic canvases I spray painted blue. I have 2 canvases of one size and and 3 of the other (odd numbers look better, but 3 wasn't quite enough and 5 of the same size was too big.) For visual interest, 2 are flipped vertical while the others remain horizontal. I worked all this out by laying them out on the living room floor and trying several different configurations until I found this one.

     And I will be honest, I hate hanging pictures.  Especially when I have to do math or use a ruler- two things that aren't hard by themselves, but when combined with my brain making things overly complicated, become impossible to use when hanging frames. But, I still like to have beautifully straight pictures that are exactly as far away from each other as I want. So I came up with an alternative method that my brain understands better.

Quick Tip- Sauce Portioning

Whether it is from homemade sauce or jars of store-bought sauce, I always have leftovers. Since they don't last that long, even in the fridge, I always freeze my sauces. But it can be messy to get sauce into sandwich bags, so I use this trick that I borrowed from my days working at a Bakery and filling bags with icing - shout out to Bobbicakes!

1. Place a sandwich bag inside of a wide-mouth mug or cup. Make sure that the top of the bag folds over to the outside of the cup. 
2. Place a funnel inside the cup and pour in the sauce (if you are super confident about pouring, you can skip the funnel part.) If any lumps stop up the funnel, shake it gently from side to side until the clog clears.
3. Once all the sauce is poured into the bag, zip the bag closed. Then remove the bag from the cup. Mess free sauce portioning!