Tag: Paper

Inspired by Trash

art-e-zine Inspired by Trash

Links of entry

This is a page from a creative diary (‘journal’), but I would love it as a collage, too!

Today I have not to do with a tutorial but an inspiration, especially with regard to ready-bought material versus material ‘saved’ from the trash.
When I’m visiting craft stores – especially the paper and scrap book sections – I’m often disgusted by the commerce that rules the originally creative use of trash.
The author shows in her article what wonderful and unique things can be made with material found a little bit everywhere by keeping your mind open.
I persevere in my attempt to emulate her ;-)


Links:
Inspired by Trash (Trash inside your journal )

Here at unikatissima: Keep Your Mind Open

Stencilled Card

unikatissima Stencilled Card

Links of entry

(Click photo to enlarge)
Recently I needed a birthday card and that is the reason why I played around with stencilling again ;-)

 

unikatissima Stencilled Card
I wanted to have a negativ stencilled feather and sketched and cut therefore a feather.
Here I’ve made my first tests already.

 

unikatissima Stencilled Card
I covered my feather with light brown chalk and smeared the chalk with my fingers outwards.
This way I got white areas around my stencil which made the quill of my feather much too broad for my liking (see arrow).

 

unikatissima Stencilled Card
Therefore I cut two half-stencils and used them.
It worked great!
Another advantage of this half-stencil method is the fact, that the really narrow quill of my feather can’t slip or even tear anymore.

 

unikatissima Stencilled Card
I glued a cut-out feather shifted on my stencilled feather and because I thought that something is missing, I embroidered some lines with golden thread.
I used a running stitch back and forth as I always do.

 

unikatissima Stencilled Card
That’s how the inside of the card looks – I left it this way and wrote on the right side of the card.

 

unikatissima Stencilled Card (Click photo to enlarge)
And that’s how the finished card looks: I liked it ;-) and the adressee liked it, too :)

Admittedly the card looks still a little bumpy here because I fixed the chalk with hair spray. After everything was (really!) dry I put it under a heavy book and afterwards it was beautifully flat again.

 


Links:
Instruction on how to make the Running Stitch (English)
Instruction on how to make the Running Stitch (Vorstich) (German)

Here at unikatissima:
Entries with the tag ‘stencil’
Entries with the tag ’embroidery’

Card Holder

Recyclart Card Holder

Links of entry

Wow, an idea again that I really appreciate: take a phone book, roll it up and fix it with a ring of a nature what-so-ever and done is the card holder!

The silver coloured ring looks quite good, but I imagine that it would look as good when you wrap your card holder with wire, plastic, beautiful yarns or fabrics or when you slip a poymer clay ring over, the only thing to make sure is that you fix everything well.
And in place of the Yellow Pages you can use as well coloured ads or paper – neatly stacked – or books where you removed the cover.


Links:
Card Holder (Reusing Yellow pages) – they’re linking to another website but I didn’t find the Card Holder on the other web page

Here at unikatissima:
Entries with the tag ‘ring’
Entries with the tag ‘wire’
Entries with the tag ‘plastic’
Entries with the tag ‘books’

Shape Book

cheeky magpie Shape Book

Links of entry

I’ve seen some shaped books, at an exhibition e.g. in our public library and I always liked them.
Therefore I’ve been pleased to find a tutorial for shaped books – great! :))

By the way, there are folded books, too which seem to be interesting, too ;-)


Links:
Shape Book Tute
folded books 2

Kelly Bag

Hermes Kelly Bag

Links of entry

Tammina brought the Kelly bag to my attention, and I find it very chic, too :)
I didn’t make it yet because I have an idea about but not the time to test ist.
Besides I don’t need a purse because I’m always using my knapsack.
But I like it so… ;-)


Links:
Kelly Bag – click there always on the picture of the bag in the Flash animation, then on the desired bag (the white one is down to the right) and for the template click eventually on ‘I want it’.

At flickr: photos of the Kelly bag

Here at unikatissima:
Shoulder Pad Purse
Entries with the tags ‘bag’, ‘purse’ and ‘tote’

Staple Together Little Notebooks

unikatissima Staple Together Little Notebooks

Links of entry

Another very dear friend sent me the link to the inventive technique on how to staple together little notebooks.

I tried it: It works great! And fast! And neat!
;-)

At any rate it is a really great idea that I’m glad to spread.

Playing cards could well serve as cover here ;-)


Links:
Staple together little notebooks (Tell me if you’ve seen this one before.)

Here at unikatissima:
Accordion-Style Playing Card Notebooks
more entries with the tag ‘books’

Origami Photo Frame

unikatissima Origami Photo Frame

Links of entry

A dear friend sent me the link to an Origami instruction for a photo frame.
I’ve seen several before which didn’t really impressed me, but of course I took a look at the tutorial:
I’m amazed!

My friend wrote that you can put a postcard or a 10 x 15 cm photo in a frame made of a A4 paper sheet and that a 7 x 10 cm photo fits in a frame made from a A5 paper sheet.
I find best of all that you adjust the size of your photo frame exactly to your photo in one of the last steps and this way you can even make it fit a not-so-exacltly-cut 10 x 15 cm photo.
What is more the frame is easy to fold.

What more could you ask for? ;-)

 

unikatissima Origami Photo Frame Here I show the back of the frame.
When folding you create an (amazingly stiff) triangle that serves as frame stand.
Here you can (hopefully) see that the photo frame can only stand if the picture is in landscape format, a portrait formatted picture has to be hung at the wall or put into a photoholder.

First I thought about making the frame from patterned paper but then I found it a little bit silly because you can only see the four corners on the front side.


Links:
Origami Photo Frame (Picture Frame)

Here at unikatissima:
Plaster Photo Holder
more entries with the tag ‘photoholder’

Flower Flap Box

unikatissima Flower Flap Box

Links of entry

I saw somewhere (unfortunately I don’t remember where) such a box, but it was flat while I wanted the actual box (not the flaps) to be of about 2 cm height.
So I made me a template myself ;-))

 

And that’s what you do:
unikatissima Flower Flap Box Template (Click to enlarge)
That is the template.

 


Instruction for first box: Pasted paper

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
First print the template and cut it.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
I wanted to have a Chinese box so I pasted the outside up with some Chinese newspapers that I stained with tea before (see links below).
Of course you can paste the paper up with gift wrapping, snippets from ads and so on, too.
I suggest to paste a second layer on the paper in any case to get it sturdier or to use thin cardboard.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
When having pasted up all four flaps you can pre-fold the box. This way it will be easier to glue the tags.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
Here is the glue setting.
You can see that I didn’t paste up the inside.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
And that is the box in its full beauty ;-)
I suggest to let the glue set well because there will be some strain when you close the box and the tags can get unfixed.

Instruction for second box: Thin cardboard

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
After the first box I felt like making a box from thin cardboard.
The cardboard is from the wrapping of a pair of trousers I bought and I liked the colours of the printed picture.
So I put my printed and cut template on the cardboard, copied it and cut the cardboard along the lines.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
I pre-folded the folding lines to get better folds.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
Then I simply folded the box without glueing the tags.
The red arrow shows that there originates a gap.
Depending on what you want you can leave the box at that, the tags make sure that in spite of the gaps nothing will drop ;-)

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
Here I glue the tags to see what happens.
The box always got apart until I fastened it with an elastic.
The glue could set this way better.

 

unikatissima Flower Flap Box
And that is my second little box.
You can see at the edges that it is a properly closed box now ;-)

 


Links:
Here on this site:
Instruction for first box: Pasted paper
Instruction for second box: Thin cardboard
Template to print

Stain paper with tea
Tea Staining Your Art Journal Pages
Tea Stain Paper

Making Paper Beads

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads

Links of entry

After I’ve made my paper beads roller that I presented yesterday I played around with paper beads a little more.

I prefer the tube beads anyway (marginally ;-)) and after having seen the paper bead designer I thought: ‘Yes, a little bit of colour is enough, you can’t see the rest anyway.’

So I quickly made me some doodle paper beads ;-)

And that’s what you do:

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
First I took two sheets of plain printer paper and simply doodled at one side with a blue ballpoint pen.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Then I cut the sheets in strips of the same width…

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
… and rolled my paper strips with my nifty paper bead roller in a wonderful short time.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Of course the hole of the bead is split into two holes, too, because my bead roller consists of two halves.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
I ‘stirred’ the hole again with a toothpick so that only one big hole remained.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Somehow I didn’t want to use the glue excess as varnish for the beads, so I used a simple glue stick and covered the beads afterwards with medium gel. Here you can see them drying.
My potted palm got special leave on my balcony for it ;-)

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Although I find my doodled paper beads beautiful I thought that I would look boring if I string only them, therefore I made some additional easy Peyote beads.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
Looks good, doesn’t it? ;-)
I wasn’t sure yet what I would do with my beads on this photo.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
It became a bracelet in the end. I simply strung the beads on an elastic and hid the knot in a bead.

 

unikatissima Doodled Paper Beads
And here an ‘action shot’ ;-)
It’s not so easy to take a good photo of your own arm ;-))

 

After I had finished with my doodled paper beads I thought, that this was a great way to make a lot of matching paper beads from advertising flyers.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
So I picked an ad with a photo of bed sheets where I liked the clour scheme.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
Then I measured the circumference of my doodled paper beads with a string and cut strips from the ad a little broader than necessary.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
I glued the strips from the ad at one side of a plain printer paper sheet and cut the resulting papers in (in this case) 1 cm broad strips, because I wanted to have little beads.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
I glued some patches from the rest of my ad on details that I didn’t like, they won’t to be seen on the bead.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
Here my beads are drying on a wire because I cut about 80 paper strips and I don’t have enough toothpicks or plants for the drying process ;-)
This time I used a water-based craft glue that glues fast but dries slowly.
This is great because I could varnish my beads easily with the excess of the glue which made them shine and when my fingers eventually got sticky I could wash the glue easily away with water.

 

unikatissima Magazine Paper Beads
I have not yet finished, but I find my paper beads beautiful, a little bit like made from Jade.
We will see what they will become :)

 


Links:
Paper Bead Designer

Peyote Bead (Beaded Bead)

Here at unikatissima:
Paper Beads Roller
Entries containing the words ‘paper’ and ‘bead’