Displaying your Treasures

Seems that I am on a treasure finding trip at the mo. Looking through my daughter's bookcase, I found a lovely old book of poems for children, illustrated with cute but simple graphics. Unfortunately there was no date of publication in the book. Just from the style of illustrations I would guess it is from the 1920s. In any case, the pictures are lovely, and I decided to display the book so that it gets the attention it is due.

The mantle in the bedroom was lacking a bit of care. So there was the perfect display space for the book. As usual my mantle is rather sparsely decorated - partly because I am not the only one looking at the decorations and my better half does not go for frilly, elaborate displays. So here is the compromise.

Do you see the two photos on the mantle? They were a two-minute addition when I felt that the mantle was too bare. I didn't have any frames handy, so I did some little magic with origami again. Here's what I did:


I printed some origami designs on scrap A4 size paper. I cut it into half and then trimmed the resulting A5 size pages into two squares. Then I folded the paper to produce this photo display, where you tuck your photo under the corners. It even comes with its own "stand".

I made a little video tutorial for you - as you know I hate picture tutorials for origami, so this will show you how it is done.

Easy or what? With a bit of measuring and thinking you can make these to suit all photo sizes. Makes giving a photo as a gift a bit more substantial, I think, and you can choose your paper according to your decor.

Here is the backside of it. As you can see I simply glued a penny onto the bottom "quarter" of the frame. The remaining three quarters I fixed in the middle with a glue dot. It stands perfectly on its own and does a great job.

Best,

  

Just in time to link to

Upcycled Packaging

Have you ever noticed how beautiful commercial packaging can be? We all love antique enamel signs and biscuit tins and we know how carefully they were designed decades ago. Most of the packaging nowadays seems to be utalitarian, cheap and cheerless. So imagine my delight, when I saw this beauty of an icing sugar packet in the shop. Well, I needed to buy some icing sugar, anyway, but I would have bought it regardless, just for the cute and nice design.

I have always had a soft spot for nicely designed containers and tins. Here is a selection of - empty but beautiful - tins that I just cannot throw out. They are attracting dust in my kitchen...

 

 

Anyway, back to the icing sugar box - I am not really a pinky-pink girly-girl, but the box was just so sweet, if you pardon the pun. It didn't take me long to figure out what to do with the lovely humming bird-design. It's kind of obvious, even:

 

I trimmed the front of the box and then cut out the "spoon". The opening created exactly the right size and shape for a sweet little portrait. Next I printed out a recent picture of my daughter and cut it the right size to fit behind the opening.

I also had to cover up the writing at the bottom of the design, so I simply printed out my daughters name and the year her photo was taken and glued it over the writing. It looked a bit bare like that, so I embellished the picture with a bit of ribbon that I had at hand. I actually used some nifty glue dots to stick it over the picture.

I had an old white frame the right size at hand. And presto! A sweet little portrait to hang up in my daughter's room. Ooops, I have just remembered that she doesn't like pink. Well, maybe she'll graciously overlook that...

Best,

Linking to

I Heart Origami Hearts

I don't know about you, but I am totally crap at origami. It is with horror that I remember a one-day Japanese language course where the kind tutor also showed us the traditional origami crane that all school children in Japan can make with their eyes closed. Well, I couldn't even do it with my eyes open!!!

While out on Sunday, a friend of a friend entertained the kids at the restaurant by folding the crane from a piece of scrap paper that was left on our table. I was mightily impressed - and wished that I had a little party piece like that to awe my little audience with. Also, my ambition was piqued, and I looked up origami crane instructions on the net. "If she can do it, so can I!" the Queen of Crafts thought, "thou shallt not be craftier than us!" Well, my attempts at recreating the crane were pathetic - and landed in the waste paper basket!!! But not being one to give up easily, I found another origami piece which I was able to do - yoohoo. Origami hearts!

Do you want to make one, too? I have developed an origami heart fetish and made about 20 yesterday. It's dead easy. Usually origami pieces are made from square paper. This project is so neat because you use a rectangular piece of paper - A4 size is just right. (Or A5, A6, whatever size you want your heart to be!) So no cutting or trimming needed! The other cool thing is that you only need paper that is decorated on one side. The pattern works in such a way that only the decorated side will be visible on the finished heart. That means you can even use scrap paper - recycle it here!


I usually take photos for my tutorials, but with origami I find pictorial instructions useless. I never understand the little arrows and instructions. So I stole borrowed my son's little digital camera to record my first ever clip tutorial. Tadaaaaaaaaaa! Craft-Werk goes 21st century! I proudly present my first attempt at a video tutorial. (Disclaimer: Sorry about the picture quality  - must be the poor pixel settings of the camera - and the typing sounds in the background. I hope it is not too distracting!)

Ugh, was that me? Do you also hate hearing your voice? Anyway, I hope you could see how easy and quick it is to make this little paper heart. I decided to make them into ornaments to hang from a few branches. You are asking me why go through all the fuss of folding when you could simply cut out a heart shape and hang it up like that. Point taken - but these origami hearts are nicely three-dimensional. And it's good to learn something new, isn't it?

My mantlepiece in the drawing room was in need of some colour and happiness. I had some coloured paper in my stash which I used. I also experimented with colourful pages ripped from a magazine (didn't like those so much, though). But the best results were with scrap paper that I had printed chiyogami patterns on. I have recommended the site before - Canon has a whole webpage dedicated to crafting. You can download beautiful paper designs there - for free - and print them on your normal paper. Check it out - Canon Creative Park. 


No two of my origami hearts are the same. They would look nice just on their own, but I decided to embellish them with bits and pieces that I had lying around - bells, buttons, ribbon, beads, even a little shell. My favourite, though, is what I have dubbed the "You hold the key to my heart"-heart.

I am not a fan of the whole Valentine's Day season, but these ornaments would make a lovely display. You could string them up on a bit of ribbon and hang them on the mantle. They also make an original Valentine's message - remember: only one side of the paper is visible on the finished heart, so you can write a message to your Valentine on the inside and then fold it up. Nifty!!!

Best,




PS: Am linking this to

and

 

21 January: Have just linked this to

22 January: Also linked to

and

The Darling Jugs of January

What's wrong with that headline? Haha, no, it's very fitting in today's context. Remember my twice recycled wreath? It looks as if wreath-mania is finally over! With a lot of ignorance goodwill I did get ten days out of those eucalyptus branches. But today it was finally time to say good-bye to them. I dismantled the wreath, threw the branches in the compost - and was left with an empty frame.

Luckily I had come across a quick and easy deco idea. TCB had directed me to a post by Queenplinker where she had created a lovely display from milk jugs. Check it out here. With about 500 jugs and assorted bits of junk flying around in my house, putting together my version of the milk jug display was a laugh.

I had bought a few rolls of organza ribbon in a 1-Euro-Shop in Munich and here they came in handy. Not quite sure about the brass circle I hung them from, but it'll do for the moment. And I love my display frame with them in it... They go nicely with the spring-mantle, I think. 

Decorating can be soooo easy...

Oh, and yes, there are some darling buds of January to show, too. Look at what is making a first appearance in the park. Just a week ago everything was covered in snow, and now here are the first snowdrops! Spring is on its way - my mantle is appropriate. (Just have to change the slogan on my reminder pebble...)

 

  

Corsages - can't get enough of them

It seems that I am a bit obsessed about corsages at the moment. I came across a tutorial for making a corsage out of old denim a while ago. Sachiko's of Tea Rose Home great and easy way of making a pretty flower brooch convinced me that I should give it a go. And what can I say - I got into a bit of a flower frenzy, it seems. They are so easy to make that I didn't just make one, but kept going and made three corsages.

Now, there is actually no real need for yet another corsage tutorial. The reason I am including one here now is that I found a way of (literally) cutting corners. Oh, but before I start, I would also like to give credit to Beckie of Infarrantly Creative who made a stunning necklace that involved handmade flowers a while ago. Her bonheur necklace is really amazing. And I basically combined her instructions with Sachiko's instructions to make my own flowers.

Ok, so here we go: You need some synthetic fabric, beads, needle and thread, scissors and a lighter... *hehe* sounds mysterious, eh? But you will see where the lighter comes in. First of all cut your fabric into rough squares, differing in size from about 12 cm to 8 cm.  As you can see in my picture to the left, I cut mine very carelessly and roughly - I doesn't really matter at this stage!

Next create petals out of the squares. Here is my little corner-cutting and time-saving idea: Fold up your square diagonally - and then diagonally again - so that you come up with this: 

Holding the fabric at the point, cut off the top part of your triangle in a kind of B-shape. The further you cut into the middle, the longer the petals will be. Opened up it looks like this (see right pic).

 Depending on how see-through your material is and how transparent you want the finished corsage to be, you need to cut a number of squares. I made about 12 petals and sorted them according to size:

Again, don't worry that they are all different shapes - mother nature isn't particularly regular, either... and the finished flower will still look fine!

The next step is where the lighter comes in. In order to stop the fabric edges from fraying, use a lighter and "burn" the edges. Unfortunately I couldn't hold my big camera and at the same time handle fire, so I have no images of this process. Essentially you just move the flame swiftly along the edges of the fabric petals. Don't be too slow, or the fabric will catch fire. What you want is really just to get the synthetic fibres to heat and kind of get sticky... (*arrrrgh* difficult to explain when English is not my mothertongue.... sorry). Check the picture (right) where you can see the slightly curled and "glued" edges.



Now you simply stack the petals, starting with the largest at the bottom and going smaller. Make sure the petals do overlap nicely to create that flower shape. 

When you are happy with the shape, sew the stack of petals together in the centre of the flower with needle and thread. My fabric (which actually came from a tab top curtain in silver) had some simple twirly flower shapes stitched on. I had cut one of the petals shapes in such a way that the silver flower-twirl was in the centre of it - and I made that my top petal. I only sewed a grey bead in the middle of the twirl as the centre. And that's it. I attached a brooch pin at the back of it and it was ready to go...




However, I wasn't happy that the corsage was so two-dimensional - not very full. So I gave it a couple more tries. To the left is another one, this time all in red and with a flower-bead as the centre.

Here is a white and burgundy one. Isn't it nice and delicate? Unfortunately the beads are off-centre *doh*...

 I couldn't wait to wear it yesterday - it stands out nicely on my black pinafore. (But if you knew to how much trouble I went to get this seriously underwhelming shot of the corsage in action!!! My arm nearly fell off, trying to capture it by turning the camera on myself...) 








Which one do you like best?

18 January 2010: I have just discovered a nice site - cottage instincts and am linking this to