My Camera Fund Gets A Home

Are you good at saving? Well, I am good at cheapskating, but the money that I save usually then gets spent on other unnecessary must-have items. But now I have this dream of upgrading my camera kit with some truly professional gear, and that doesn't come cheap :-(. Despite wanting it very, very baaaaaaaaaaaaadly, I knew I had to give myself some extra motivation to put money aside. And so I set about making myself a money box that will be nicely and proudly displayed near my workspace, reminding me day in, day out, that I am not to buy another interior design mag, the 31st white cream jug for my collection or yet another pair of shoes.

I can't resist anything but temptation nice tin boxes. This one was a filled with yummy orange flavour, dark chocolate from a classy chocolate company in my home town. Design-wise not that exciting, though, but too nice to throw out. (Hehe, in the reflection you can see me taking the picture...)

So instead I took a can of spray-paint to it, in my signature red. Gave it about four coats until the black background didn't show through anymore.

And then I set about decorating the tin. As this is a treasure box, it seemed only fitting to adorn the lid with gemstones and pearls. I stuck loads of little diamond-y stickers (from scrapbook supplies) on it to hide imperfections in the coat of paint. Centrepiece is a dome-shaped bead ball. (Read more about them here.)

I really love it when the insides of things are decorated, too - you know, wallpapered cupboards, paper-lined drawers etc. Such a nice suprise when you open it up... So I quickly threw a few photography-related images together, and cut them out.






 So grow, camera fund, grow... still a couple of grand to go.

Best,

Bead Balls - An Exercise in Patience

Now, here is another thing I have been working on the last few days. I came across a pattern for "beaded beads" that looked straight forward enough for me to attempt it. Candie posted an extensive and clear tutorial for the bead balls with lots of photos, so I sat down with my bead box and a string of nylon thread and made this:

I don't want to attempt another tutorial for this as Candie's instructions are detailed, so please check them out here. But I will show you what I made and how I adapted the bead balls. If you look closely at the photo above (and disregard the horrible, piggy fleshiness that is my hand *ugh*), you will see that I enclosed a pearly bead in the bead ball. I simply popped that into the ball before I threaded the last little bead on. A little surprise, so to speak...


Without getting into a tutorial, I'll just write down a couple of observations that might help you when you are making these. My recommendation is to make a couple of these bead balls with slightly larger beads first before you start on the fiddly tiny ones. You need 30 beads of the same size, preferably round ones, and about 20 inches of nylon thread. Count out your beads and put them on a saucer on your crafting table! Making these bead balls is addictive, as Candie warned in her tutorial...

I have to admit, it took a few attempts before I got the bead balls right. But  I ploughed on until I got it right. The whole process is fairly logical and regular, but I found I really understood the process of weaving them together, when I used different colour beads for the various parts. I.e. start with 5 beads of one colour. Then have 15 beads of a different colour. And for the last part have 10 beads of yet another colour. It just means you understand the pattern and the weaving better. It will help you to make your second bead ball in just one colour...

Nonetheless I got a couple of them wrong and finished before I had a regular ball shaped pendant. They were more of a three-quarter globe, with the last bit missing. I found a use for those, too, though. I popped a red bead into one and then fixed the ball onto a ring.

Another three-quarters finished ball became the centre of one of my corsages. It looks lovely like that and was easier to sew on than a full ball, I think.

I am still wondering what to do with my green-and-blue bead ball - I think I will turn it into a pendant once I have figured out how to fix a little hoop onto it. The obvious use would be earrings - Candie shows several of hers. My daughter loves this red-and-black raspberry bead ball - not sure yet, what to do with it, but it already has a matching gift box *haha*...  

 
Best,

Linking up to         

Paper Boxes - Cheap and Cheerful Packaging

Hello! I am still here - but was busy with my *real* life for the last few days. Not too busy to craft, though, and there are three (3!!!) things I will show in Craft-Werk over the next days. Not all of it is quite finished yet, but there is one thing that I would like to show off already.

If you are following the blog regularly, then you will know that I was quite excited to submit a donation to the Craft Hope for Haiti-initiative. And you may remember that I was thrilled my donated flower corsage got sold very quickly. I have now received the details of the buyer and the corsage is ready to be shipped on Monday.  Lying in bed this morning, I was wondering how I could ship it without it getting squashed and damaged. And then I had the Eureka moment - why not fold the Origami box that my mum always makes as her little party piece?

 

This is another really simple Origami piece - one that even I can do... In order to get a slightly sturdier box, I printed some white cardstock with a cheerful, dotted design that I had downloaded from Canon Creative Park. (Seriously - I can't mention this enough: The Canon site is just fantastic!!! No need to buy pricy Origami paper anymore! There are tons of nice designs under the "Scrapbook" tab which you print on paper - and there you have it!!!)

For this little box you need square paper - so just cut your A4 size, printed paper, determine a square shape and cut off the excess paper. Then you can quickly fold your box in a matter of minutes. You need to place the "nice" side down on your table when you are folding, so that the design will be visible on the box. Neatly, it will be visible both on the outside and on the inside. The more exact you are when folding, the neater it will come out, of course. As with most (all?) Origami you do not need to glue anything down - it is all held in place by the folds! Cool!

Update: I have been persuaded to upload a video tutorial for this origami box, as well. So here comes the fuzzy clip - apologies for quality. But you will get the general drift of the project.



My box was made from a square piece of paper that was 21x21cm (roughly 8.5x8.5 inches). The resulting box is 7x7cm in size (2.75x2.75 inches). If you want a matching lid for your box, just make your square paper a little bit smaller - maybe cut off half a centimetre on the two sides. Then the two boxes will neatly slide into each other. So here it is - isn't the corsage nicely packaged?

This is a cheap and cheerful way of packaging little gifts. Fill it with M&Ms for Valentine's Day. Or if you are an Etsy seller, here is a cute box for protecting your precious handmade items when you are shipping to someone. It doesn't cost anything or  take long, but cute packaging makes such a difference for your buyer. Just imagine how pleased they will be when they open their delivery and find this...

Make them in all sizes - I made another small one just for fun and to show here - this would be great for a ring or any kind of small jewellery gift.



 



 
Best,

Art Box

Apologies for a break in the MoW posts. I have had to put this week's second instalment onto the backburner as it isn't yet quite presentable. But since I don't want to leave you, my esteemed readers, waiting, I have decided to break the boredom with a quick post on another crafty project I did this week.

My favourite daughter got into a right panic on Sunday evening when she was getting ready for her first day back in school. She was looking for her old art box - which seemed to have vanished over the summer holidays. In order to dry her tears I suggested we make a new, absolutely unique one-in-a-million art box. One that none of her classmates would have.

I used to make these boxes all the time when I was in college. That was back in the early 90s when all those fabulous b/w photos were used for ads in the magazines for the likes of Calvin Klein and Davidoff and Guess. I made a huge one to keep my record collection in (yeeeeeees - it was back in the good old days. No child, mummy did not have an MP3 player then - we were living in analogue times. However could we exist without digital sound back then????), covered kids' shoe boxes to collect letters in (yeeeeeees, we were using "snail mail" - noooooo, there was no internet yet!), made trinket boxes and pencil holders (yeeeeeeeeees, we were still able to handwrite back then!). Whoa - what a trip back down memory lane. Seems like a century ago. Oh, hang on - it actually is...

Anyway - I found her a shoe box (of which I currently have a whole stack - they are waiting to be used for parcels to my friends back home) and suggested we cover it with some blue gingham sticky cover which I had picked up for a couple of Euro a while ago in discount supermarket Lidl. Luckily blue is her favourite colour and she agreed to it but wanted it more unique - so we made a nice collage of pictures for the box and only used the gingham for the lid.

At this point I am an expert in using sticky cover stuff - I think I covered 23 schoolbooks for my kids last week *sighs*. Over the years I have found a technique that works best for me when covering books etc. without getting air bubbles and creases into the plastic. What you really, really need is a soft cloth with which you continually smooth down the sticky cover. Don't worry if you notice a crease - you can pull the sticky cover off again as it only sets after a while.

While I covered the lid, I set daughter up with a stack of my interior design magazines (*sighs* - yes, one of my expensive weaknesses...) and glossies to cut out images she liked. I also ripped out some big blue ads for the background.

Once we had collected a number of images, I stuck the background pics onto the box, using a pritt stick. Then I cut out smaller pics and placed them on top of the blue background.

When everything was to her liking I covered the box with clear sticky cover to make it more durable. I loved that part best - because it meant I was finally able to use up all those cut-offs that were left over from the book-covering last week. (The sticky cover is so bloody expensive, I hate it when 10 x 40cm strips of it are left over...)

The daughter was happy with the outcome - and wonderful mother that I am, I am happy when daughter is happy... *winks*. I should really make a few more of these boxes - there is always stuff lying around that would benefit from a little organising.


I actually covered a few boxes when we were doing up our bedroom a couple of years ago and I wanted my work station to tie in with the decor of the bedroom. Back then I used Laura Ashley wallpaper frieze (or whatever you call that small strip you paste at dado height) which I had picked up in their bargain bin for € 2.50 apiece. It was just the right width to cover shoe boxes, magazine holders and folder backs.

Holiday Memories

Isn't this a beautiful box? It came from my sister- and brother-in-law. When they visited us recently, they brought it back for all the family. There were little cakes in it which are traditionally given as presents in the Chinese spring festival. Very nice. Alas, against usual evidence I was not really interested in the cakes. I really only wanted the box, because I can't resist beautiful things. And lucky I was - the family was happy with the cakes, and I got my box!






The Chinese definitely have a knack for presenting things in lovely cardboard or wooden boxes, as I found out when I travelled to Shanghai two years ago. Whether you buy a lucky charm, a decorative teapot or a kite - they always came in beautiful handmade boxes with colour paper or fabric cover. I should really take a picture of all the Chinese boxes that have been amassed in our house, also thanks to a generous friend who lived in China and often brought back pressies for us.

Anyway - the box was far too nice to be hidden away in a drawer for a yet-unknown later use. So I have turned it into a display box for my Shanghai mementos. If you want to do this, just find a nice box. It doesn't have to have a lid or "doors" like mine - it will look great just as a 3D-display on your wall or on a shelf.

I started by pasting a Chinese-style paper onto the back of the box to make the inside more colourful. (Tommorow's blog entry will be about the source of my paper.) Then I simply glued paper mementos onto the "back wall" of my box. The bigger and heavier souvenirs like the Mao badge I stuck on with blu-tack. That way I can remove them should I need them. The hand-painted lucky charm is fastened with a thumb tack.



I finished the project just in time - I am going on holidays in a couple of days' time, and will probably come back with another handful of sugar sachets, ticket stubs, coins and stamps. So get collecting all the bits and pieces that you find on holidays, and make your own memory box. I already have my sights on a couple of other nice boxes in my son's room - and neither last year's trip to Namibia nor the family holiday in Silesia have been preserved for posterity yet. Watch this space!