Look how cute these little pillow containers are and believe or not they are made out of TP cores.

I’ve made one for my GS – Gareth and one for my GD – Rylan.

This is a very simple and quick project.  I’m currently gathering little items to make my GK’s valentine boxes.  I saw this craft on a show called “She’s Crafty”.  They used the TP cores to make favors for a wedding but I thought this would work perfect for the GK’s.

You need the TP cores, a tape measure, some adhesive (I used a permanent tape runner) and some ribbon and embellishments.  I also used eyelets and an eyelet setter.

I measured the length of the TP Core and I measured around the TP Core.  TP Cores all measure a little differently so don’t think one size fits all.

I used my cutter to get nice straight cuts instead of using scissors or a craft knife.

Running adhesive around the outside of the paper and then wrapping it around the TP core worked great.

I’m always amazed how something so simple can make a TP core look like something else.

You will want to cut the paper a little longer than the TP core.  So if the core is 4.5″ long then I would cut the paper 4.75 or 5″ and then center the paper on the roll.  This will leave a little overhang on each end.  When you fold the sides down this little extra paper will cover just enough so you don’t see the TP core cardboard.

Take your thumb and fold down one side of the end of the TP core making sure you get it far enough down that when you fold the other side it overlaps a little.

I decided to put an eyelet in one of the flaps and add some decorative ribbon.  When you pull on the ribbon it opens the end flap easily.  This is helpful for little hands and it adds a little more embellishment to the pillow.

This is for Rylan.  I just added some flowers, ribbons and a brad with her initial charm.

This is Gareth’s and I tried my best to make it more for a boy so I tied the ribbon differently and made sure I had blue with some animals going on.

I stashed some Valentine Candy inside and of course I’ll have to add a $1.00 in their for their piggy banks.  They are all into saving their money right now!

I think these turned out so cute and the candy is all wrapped so I’m ok with putting it inside of the TP pillows.  I can’t wait to see how they like their Valentine Boxes.  Having GK’s are so much fun.

I love this bush!  In the middle of January it starts to bloom every year.  It adds that little bit of life in the middle of bleakness.

The flowers are delicate and dainty and as the weeks go by they will cover the entire bush and then give way to small green leaves for the rest of the spring, summer and fall.

It was in the 60′s here yesterday with a forecast of 100% rain today and heading down into the 20′s tonight.

We’ll see how these beautiful yellow flowers fair during old man winter’s blast.

 Remember the project where I used toliet paper cores to make a mini-album (What Does TP Rolls & Pictures Have In Common????? it was posted on 8/3/2009.  I tried to set-up a link where you could just click but for some reason my system will not let me do it right now.  You can go back through the old post and look at it.   I have a new project for using these TP cores and I will be showing you the “How To” tomorrow so be sure and check back to see this cute project.

I have seen this “thing-a-ma-gig” before and decided I “needed” one…..ok I wanted it.  I have been tying my bows by hands or using two post.  The problem with doing them by hand is they are inconsistent in size.  When I use the peg system I only had one size.

This tool, called Bow Easy, makes various sizes of bows; however, the instructions on how to make those bows and use the tool was not very good. 

Thank goodness for Youtube.  There are various demos out there and I just keep watching the various demos until I found the one that made sense to me.

It’s a great tool and once you get the method down to making the bows you can make a one loop, two or three loop bow very easily and they are consistent in size.  I think it was a good investment.  It was only $5.50 and I’m glad to add this to my craft “tool box”.

The Gypsy has two fonts that are already loaded on it when you get it.  The first one is call the Gypsy Font and the second is Gypsy Wandering.

This is one of the hearts that is on Gypsy Wandering.

I like this heart because of the two center holes.

I cut out 5 large hearts in white and 5 smaller hearts in a pink pattern paper.

I inked the white hearts and I glittered the edges of the smaller hearts using MS red glitter.

I used the grid lines on the self-healing mat to line up the white hearts and then used a see through ruler on top of them so I could evenly space where I wanted to mark the spot to make a hole.

I’m going to make a hole on each side of the heart and then place an eyelet through them so I can run a ribbon through them to make a banner for our menu board on the coffee bar at chruch.

I used my crop-a-dile to cut the eyelet holes and set them.  I really like this tool, especially for early in the mornings.  If I was using my regular punch I would be waking up Red from pounding 12 holes.

Using a small ribbon, cut the end at an angle and this will help you thread the ribbon in and out through the eyelets on each heart.

As the point wears just cut at an angle again to get it back to the point.

I used dimensional tape to lift the pink  pattern heart up off the white heart.  Then threaded the red heart ribbon through both hearts and did a simple knot.  Took a good sharp pair of scissors and cut the ends at an angle.

Do you know the difference between scissors and shears?  Scissors usually have blades that are under 6″ and shears have blades that are over 6″.  I didn’t know this and I have sewn for years.  I receive an e-mail about sewing and this was one of the fun facts I learned today.  I love learning new stuff!

I know that the eylets on the white heart is not showing but that is the way I designed it (actually, it was by accident). It will allow the ribbon to be run through the eyelets and not take away from the double stacked hearts.

Here are the 5 little dressed up hearts.  I took the pink ribbon and ran it in and out through the hearts and then tied some of the red heart ribbon in between each heart.

It makes a very cute banner.  Sorry, I did not remember to take  a picture of the final product (hey its 5:00AM).  It was just the right size for the menu board and when Valentine’s Day is over I’m going to use these on my GD scrapbook.  Another recycled item.

This was the first time I used my Gypsy to do everything.  I pulled the heart from Gypsy Wandering cart on to the mat and copied, resized and cut.  This was so easy.  The Gypsy plugs right into the Cricut.  You have to have a cart (it doesn’t matter which one) plugged into the Cricut for it to work.  Then you just tell the Gypsy to cut and it walks you through some reminders to check on the Cricut before you hit ok (which is nice to make sure you set your speed and pressure correctly for the paper you are cutting).  It worked like a charm.  Now if they could just get it to see both the Gypsy and Design Studio at the same time.  That way you could pull the stuff you design in your Gypsy over to your DS and see it on a bigger screen.  Who knows maybe that is in the works.

I’ve already been up an hour.  Went to bed fell asleep woke up about 3:00AM and could not go back to sleep.  So, I got up and decided I would work on some crafts.

I needed to come up with some decorations for our Church’s coffee bar and why not work on them since I couldn’t sleep.

The trick here is that the decorations need to be minimal with a good impact, but be able to pack them up easily.

I have 3 clear vases that are different sizes.  Phyllis and I found 3 different color of small roses for $2.99 each.  I discovered that a 12 x 12 sheet of paper, cut down to 10 x 12 worked perfect to wrap around the tallest of the vases.

I took floral tape and and ran three strips both horizontal and vertically across the top of the vase.  This creates a grid that makes holes that I could put the roses through and hold them up without having to fill the vase with foam.  I simply used a tape runner and ran a strip around the outer edges of the 10 x 12 paper.  This works well to hold the paper on the vase.  A little valentine ribbon at top, middle and bottom and the vase is done.

On the next level vase I plan on putting some foil wrapped chocolate hearts to fill the empty space.  The trick here is to put the flowers in first then drop the foil wrapped choc0late hearts down each side until it is filled.  Since it is around 4:00AM I wasn’t going to run to the store and get the hearts.

I found a cute border paper and used the MS hear punch to give it a pretty border and attached it to the vase the same way as I did on vase one.  Since the foil wrapped chocolate hearts will hold the flowers in place I didn’t need to use floral tape to create a grid on the vase opening.  Another cute ribbon and vase two is done.

Vase three is a squatty little vase and we just used a package of crinkled red confetti and filled it up.  This holds the flowers very nicely.

To add a little extra punch to this vase I used three heart Dazzles and some Flower Soft gold border.

Here is a close up so you can see what it looks like.  Very simple and with the other stuff going on with the other vases, this one didn’t need anything over the top.

Here they are all together.  I wish I had those foiled chocolate hearts to get the full affect.  This will make a nice interest piece for the coffee bar.

From here I’ll make a little heart banner for the menu board and then just scatter some 1 x 4 pieces of card stock stamped with things like “inspire, gratitude, faith, live, etc.”  I also cut out a few hearts with the word Love stamped on them to scatter around the table.

Paper crafts are an easy way to make things for very little money.  These three vases will end up costing less than $10.00 to make (for all three).  That’s decorating on the cheap.  When we are done we can reuse everything for another project.  I think that is a good thing.

Oh, coffee is done I’m going to go get me a cup!

This is just a paper flower but as the months roll along soon we will be seeing Spring burst forth.  I already have a bush that is blooming out.  I need to get a picture of that here in the middle of January.

Today it is suppose to get up to 72 and I’m ditching the inside to get outside.  It may just be working to clean out a garage and a little shed (which we call the “little house”) and leaves out of our gutters but it is outside in sunshine.

If I still have energy, tonight I will work on some decorations for our coffee bar at church.  I made another paper flower that I’ll post later.  I want to make several and then show you them all together.

So if it is sunny where you are today, get outside and soak up some Vitamin D.  The paper crafts will be there tomorrow, which by the way tomorrow it will be rainy…..a great day to create.

I used Embossing Paste with a Dragon Fly stencil to get this affect.

In this simple form it is beautiful, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone.

I took my Zig glue pen and ran some down through the center on the Dragon Fly’s body.

I placed the piece of card over the color of glitter I wanted to use (Gilded Grape Leaf) and scooped the glitter on it and then flicked the excess off back into the container.

I took the Zig glue pen again and glued up the next areas I wanted in a different color.

I followed the same process as before flicking the excess glitter back into the container holding that color glitter.

This is the last color that I put on the Dragon Fly and as you can see you do not have to be that careful about putting the glitter on the Dragon Fly. 

Because the glue for the other colors are already covered with glitter the glitter colors do not get mixed up with each other.

The finish product is stunning (the pictures do not do it justice).  After I glued the last color of glitter on I put another piece of paper on top and then took a Brayer and run over the piece.  This makes sure the glitter is smashed into the glue good and the piece of paper placed on top of the piece keeps your Brayer clean.

Now with the glitter Brayered into the Dragon Fly I can take a fluffy brush and clean up any stray glitter around the design.  Keep the touch light and I found a soft fluffy brush (like the one that comes with Perfect Pearls) works well.

First let me address a couple of comments I saw on my website.  For those of you that are asking how to stop getting e-mails for each time a comment is made…….unsubscribe.  Once you unsubscribe you should stop getting the comments.

After I played around with the embossing paste I decided to play around with some dry embossing.  This picture is the finished product.

Of course I picked black cardstock and light does not show through black card stock.  However, I was determined that was not going to stop me.

I taped down the stencil and turned it over to start the process.

I used a large paper stump and ran it over the card stock until I started seeing some indentions.  This allowed me to see where the design was and that would enable me to use my stylus and start the dry embossing.

I used the large end of the stylus since this was such a large stencil.  The stencil is from Paperwishes.

If you look closely you can see the lines where I went back and forth on the black card stock to get the design.  Because the card stock is pretty thick it was capable of handling a lot of manipulating with the stylus and because no one will see the back I wasn’t worried about what it looked like.

Once the dry embossing was done, I decided I would highlight it with the Metallic Cream Chalks I recently purchased.

I used the silver but as you can see it was not really doing what I wanted it to do.

 I used a Stardust Gel Pen to enhance the dry embossing after the Metallic Cream Chalks but I still didn’t get the “pop” I wanted to achieve.

I had put in a lot of time dry embossing and I wanted the Fleur De Lis to show up more.

So I pulled out my silver pigment ink.  I placed the stencil back on the card stock and took a dauber and started applying the pigment ink over the metallic cream chalk.

Now this is more like it.  I also inked around the outside of the stencil so the circle around the Fleur De Lis would show better.

I think I will stick to this technique when I’m using a stencil with a wide area to cover and then I’ll use the embossing paste for those stencils that have a smaller area.

I’m having a lot of fun playing around with some different techniques, now I need to make some cards.  I also need to work on my GD scrapbook. 

I thought I would show you how to use Embossing Paste.  We went to a Card and Scrapbooking Convention and there was a lady there showing various techniques you can use with stencils.

For this process you don’t need a light table, just be sure to do it on a craft sheet.

I cut a piece of card stock about a half inch bigger than the stencil.

You need to tape off the card stock and around the stencil.  This serves two purposes 1) to help hold the stencil in place and 2) to protect the card stock from getting messed up with the embossing paste.

This particular stencil created a need for extra taping because it is oval shaped.  The trick here is you want to put the tape down in a clockwise movement and remove it counter clockwise.  This will help you pull the tape off (after you have put the embossing paste on) in reverse of how you initially put it down.  That is because the tape overlaps each other and if you pull a tape that is underneath another tape you could get the embossing paste on a part of the card stock you did not intend for it to be. 

I’m using Dreamweavers Embossing Paste in Copper.  This looks like “cool whip” in consistency and it spreads really easy across the stencil.

You can use a putty knife or an offset spatula.  I happen to have this plastic offset spatula and it worked very well.

I bought a squeegee to use with the Embossing Paste but I seem to be able to do a lot better job with just the spatula.

I took a “glob” of embossing paste and spread it over the stencil like you would frosting on a cake.  As I pulled the excess off I put it back in the jar.

At this point you start taking the tape off in reverse order.

When you get to the last piece leave it in place to create a hinge.  Gently lift the stencil off and carefully remove it.  Then take off your last piece of tape.

The technique of leaving the last piece of tape in place keeps the stencil in the right place just in case you drop it.

Here it is all done and now all it needs to do is dry.

Some things I learned. 

You only need a thin layer.

It works better if the stencil has small areas (like the wheat).

Don’t rush removing the stencil and the last piece of tape.  Remove it gently and carefully.

The larger the areas of the stencil are the more difficult it is to get the embossing paste smooth and keep it at the same depth.

If you click on the picture you will see the one of the Fleur De Lis has black paper showing through.  Because the embossing paste is wet the paper soaks it up and starts to buckle a little on large pieces.

Here the wheat is dry.  The copper color really starts to pop on the brown paper.

If you buy white embossing paste you can mix colors with it to make it a color.  I used alcohol inks and I think you could use acrylic paint.  Just remember to start with a small amount of white embossing paste and your colorant then build it from there.  A large amount of white embossing paste will take a lot of colorant to make it a color with depth or you could just use it as a pastel.