goshery

seeing stars - a tutorial.

STARS can be a great addition to anything from a scrapbook page to home decor.  They are gender neutral, which makes them so versatile.  They are also a symbol of the United States and a staple of Americana.  I have a set of red, white and blue stars that I use as decor year round, but since it's almost JULY I decided to put them in an area of my house where I spend a lot of time - the kitchen.

This set of stars may look like the tin/metal variety that you see in stores, but they are actually made from paper.  I know!  It's really hard to tell, even in person, until you hold one in your hand.  Today I'll share a quick tutorial so that you can make a set of stars for yourself or to give as a gift.

To start, you'll need some heavy weight paper.  For this set I used white tag board, which you can find at a craft store or office supply store.  You could also use card stock, but regular typing paper is not heavy enough.

Next you'll need a star shape that you can trace.  If you have a Cricut or some other type of die cutting machine you could use that to cut out star shapes.  Another option would be to search the internet for free clipart of a star shape, print it and cut it out to use as a template.  My set contains three different sizes of stars, but you can make them all the same size if you prefer.

Once you have the shapes cut out use a ruler or straight edge draw a line from each point to the middle of the star.  Then fold along each line, so that you have a nice crease from the middle of each point to the middle of the star.  If you used heavy weight paper you'll find that the star quickly takes shape once you start making the folds.  You'll also want to fold between each point to make the five pointed sections stand out.

Once you have the folding done use some craft paint to paint the front side of each star.  Craft paint dries quickly and covers well on the heavy weight paper.  I chose red, white and blue but you could use others colors if you want the stars to match a specific area in your home.

The final step is to use black paint to create the look of aged metal.  I found that it worked best to use my finger to apply the black paint along each crease, but you could also use a foam brush.  You can add as much black paint as you'd like, not only on the creases but across the entire surface.  I started by adding a small amount of paint, but quickly decided that adding more paint gave me the look I wanted.

And that's it!  It's a fun and easy project and would be a great afternoon activity to do with kids.

papercut.

Last Sunday I visited the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.  I went there to meet my Aunt for lunch and to tour the museum and the current exhibit, Papercut.

We started with lunch in the cafe.  I chose the meatballs but everything on the menu sounded delicious.  The meatballs, on a bed of mashed potatoes, were topped with very thin cucumber slices and lingonberry sauce.

The Institute is a mix of new and old.  The new portion is a modern space with a cafe, gift shop and exhibit space.  The old portion is the Turnblad Mansion, which is the former home of the Turnblad family.

The mansion was build in 1908 and is incredibly grand.  There are eleven fireplaces including this hand carved mahogany fireplace in the Grand Hall.

There is a balcony that surrounds the Grand Hall; the second floor also includes a solarium, library, reading room, three bed chambers and a dressing room.  The library is home to hundreds of books mainly written in Swedish.  I really wanted to look at them more closely but they were behind locked glass doors.

There are three staircases connecting the first and second floors including this grand staircase.  One back staircase led from the kitchen area and was likely built for servants to use.

The current exhibit is Papercut! featuring psaligraphy by Danish-Norwegian artist Karen Bit Vejle.  Psaligraphy literally means the art of drawing or painting with scissors.  The work shown in the exhibit is stunning.  This photo shows the largest artwork in the exhibit.

The photos do not do the artwork justice, but I can tell you that in person it's just incredible to imagine the amount of time spent making so many intricate cuts.

There were several colors of paper used, and the black paper really made the details more apparent.  Many of the works feature beautiful borders, birds and letters.

One of my favorite pieces in the exhibit was this floral design in red.  The sun was hitting this piece so that there was a beautiful shadow, and it was just stunning.

We really enjoyed touring the mansion and seeing the Papercut! exhibit.  We also had fun looking around in the gift shop, but we didn't make any purchases.

To say it wasn't a great day for travel would be an understatement.  Here in Minnesota we've had a rough winter with brutally cold temperatures, and Sunday almost the entire state was under a blizzard warning.  Luckily Minnesotans are used to driving in difficult conditions and everyone was taking it nice and slow, so I made the 1+ hour trip to and from Minneapolis safely.

If you want to know more about the American Swedish Institute you can view their website here.  You can learn more about Karen Bit Velje here.

school supplies.

I went to Walmart on Sunday afternoon to pick up a few essentials.  I had a list, and before I got out of my car I had a little chat with myself.  My chat went something like this:

Listen, you have a lot of things left to accomplish before you can relax for the day.  What you need to do is walk into this store list in hand, get a cart and then look at and buy ONLY the things on your list.  Don't even go over to the personal care items - there isn't anything in that section on your list.  Do not go into the home goods aisles, you don't need anything there either.  Just get what is on the list and head back home.  If you do that you'll be able to get the rest of your "to do" list finished and then you can actually sit down and relax for a while and get to bed at a reasonable time.  Ok, let's do this.

I got out of my car, walked into the store and the first thing I saw was that the school supplies were out.  Oh, you guys, school supplies!  I love notebooks!  I love folders!  I love rulers and pens and notecards!

Of course my cart headed straight to the school supply aisles and I spent a good amount of time looking at everything.  I reasoned that as long as I was there I might as well pick up a few things before the darn kids buy all the good stuff.  I spent quite a bit of time picking out a pencil case and finally decided on the one that I determined to be the cutest.  Then I thought about it and couldn't come up with one reason to buy it, so back on the shelf it went.

Once I finished in that aisle I wandered over to home goods just in case there was a bowl or kitchen towel that I needed, and then I strolled through the clothing section to see if there was anything that I had to have.

Finally I regained my focus, got the things I needed and headed for home.  I probably "wasted" an hour, but it sure was entertaining.  Now I have a nice new notebook, some pretty folders and some highlighters and really, who doesn't need highlighters?

wedding invitation peek

Most of the month I've been working with a bride-to-be to design and create custom wedding invitations.  My nephew is getting married in August and he and his fiance are having an outdoor wedding.  I was honored when she asked me to help her with the invitations.

Since the invitations haven't been mailed yet (any day!) I don't want to post a full picture, but I'll give you a little peek so that you can get an idea of how we incorporated their outdoor wedding theme into the invitations.

We knew we wanted a birch bark type background for the invitations, but we had a hard time finding card stock that we liked.  The one we found was really expensive ($1.49 per 12" x 12" sheet) and since we needed about 200 sheets that was just too much.

I decided to search Etsy to see if I could find paper and what I found was digital paper that you could purchase for just $5 and it came with about five variations (color and pattern).  I thought about how I could make that work and by the time I decided to buy it the shop was having a sale and I only paid $3.  Steal!

Using digital paper meant that I would be designing the invitations - and RSVP cards, insert and dance post cards - in Photoshop, which made me pretty nervous.  It took me longer than it would have if I was working in a program I'm more comfortable using (like Microsoft Word) but I found that once I had the first design complete I could "save as" rather than starting from scratch on the next design.

Once each of the items was ready to print I loaded them onto a flash drive and took them to Kinko's for printing.  Their print job compared to the sample I printed at home was 100 TIMES better and it was fairly inexpensive.  We printed 100 invitations (2 per sheet), 50 inserts (4 per sheet), 50 RSVP cards (4 per sheet) and 100 double sided postcards (2 per sheet).  They printed them and CUT THEM, which we didn't anticipate, for around $80.  The time and ink cartridges we would have used (and the frustration!) would have been much more expensive.

We spent Saturday putting the finishing touches on the invites (I'll explain that in more detail when I show the actual items in a few weeks) so now they need to be put in envelopes and mailed.

It was a fun project, although we had our share of setbacks along the way (what do you mean that paper is discontinued??).  It was fun to spend time with my future niece and I'm so excited for the wedding!

organization: paper giveaway.

I feel like I'm constantly organizing my craft space and especially my paper supply.  At work we call this "continuous improvement" and that's what it feels like around here when I spend time organizing my space.

I save leftover patterned paper from various projects in a three drawer bin.  I save it all and use it often, but my collection just keep growing.  As I did some organizing over the weekend I decided it was time to part with some of it.

I have three envelopes BURSTING with patterned paper scraps.  The largest pieces are 4" x 6" and the envelope includes a variety of smaller sizes too.  Along with that are some paper shapes, cut using either my Cricut or one of my punches.  There are hearts, flowers, frames, etc.

I'm offering three of my readers a chance to WIN an envelope full of fun papers and shapes.  To be entered in the drawing please leave a comment on this post.  I will select three winners on Tuesday, January 22nd.

paper

As much as I love paper, storing it can be a real a challenge.  You may remember that I bought this armoire to store craft supplies, including paper:

I love it, and it holds a lot of craft supplies, but it wasn't working that great for paper.  I had all of my paper in vertical paper holders and they just barely fit on the shelf in the armoire.  Because it was quite dark inside the armoire I always needed to take each paper holder out in order to see what I was looking for, which was a real pain.

Another problem in my craft area was in a corner of the room where I had stacked several plastic drawer units.  It looked messy and it was hard to get the drawers open because of the weight of multiple units stacked on top of one another.  Here's what it looked like:

In order to solve both of these problems I decided to buy 12" x 12" stackable paper trays, which would store my paper but keep it more visible.  I ordered 20 stackable trays but I knew that I would need something to set them on so that I could see the paper in the bottom tray without laying on the floor.

Luckily I found a table that was small enough to fit in the space but large enough to hold the trays.  I actually found two tables - and I have no idea what I'll do with the taller table but it was so cute I just had to have it.  Here's a look at both tables:

Cute, right?  I'm not crazy about the color of the taller table but once I decide where I'm going to use it I can give it a quick coat of paint and it will be awesome.  The shorter table is the one that I bought for my stackable paper trays.

I sorted my paper by color or theme and when the trays arrived I was excited to get that corner of my room looking better.  Here's a look at that corner now:

As you can see, the table fits perfectly and the trays are almost all full.  To be honest I have a lot of paper that's not in these trays - tablets of paper that I haven't taken apart.  I still might do that, but I kind of like having those tablets all in one piece because it's nice to have a whole tablet of coordinated paper for larger projects.  We'll see, I may end up taking them apart yet.  I was able to fit one of the plastic drawer units under the table and the other two fit nicely under my desk.

Freeing up a whole shelf in the armoire allowed me to fit some miscellaneous supplies inside rather than piled on the floor.  Now that I'm more organized I hope to actually get some crafting done!

Got paper?

This afternoon this HUGE stack of paper that I won in the Creating Keepsakes Handmade Accent Contest was still in my kitchen.  It moved from the table, where I first unpacked the box, to a chair.  I kind of considered it an accent piece . . . some people like fresh flowers, I go for paper!  I realized that it should probably be put away if for no reason other than the loose papers might end up with bent corners.

I bought two Cropper Hopper paper holders (I already have 3 full ones!) and I was able to get most of it in those two holders, but I ended up with 6 of the bound paper stacks with no home.  Guess I need more paper holders.

It's kind of sad to walk through the kitchen and not stop and gaze in wonder at all of the paper I won, but it has been a month since I received it so I did have lots of - oh!  look at all of my paper - moments.  Good times.

Next I need to figure out what to do with the letter announcing my win; frame it or make a layout.  Hmmm.

In other news it's 90 degrees here in Minnesota; very unusual for Memorial Day weekend.  I spent much of the day outside, first weeding my garden and then sitting in the sun reading a book.  Kind of a lazy day which was very enjoyable.

Hope your weekend is full of fun, friends and family!

I won a contest!

I've been telling you for the past few weeks that I won a contest but didn't want to tell you about it until the prize arrived.  By now you've probably thought sure you did *wink wink* and I have to tell you that hurts.  Just kidding!

Today the prize arrived:

The box was sitting in the garage when I arrived home today.  Man was it dusty!!  And heavy!!

So what is this contest you ask?  The Creating Keepsakes Handmade Accent contest!  I entered these flower embellishment in the contest and I was soooo excited to learn I was one of 5 winners!

I did have these cuties listed in my Etsy shop but they have since sold.  There are lots of other fun things in my shop so go take a look!

Back to the contest.  The prize for the contest was listed as "more than $250 worth of paper".  See why I entered?  That's a lot of paper and for a paper lover like me, too good to be true.

Here's what it looked like when I opened the box:

And here's a close up of the letter:

There is so much paper in the box it's just unreal!!  There are several 12" x 12" paper stacks from DCWV:

• Nana's Nursery Stack - girl
• The Linen Closet Stack
• The Metallic Stack
• The Music Stack
• The Madly in Love Stack
• MI CASA Stack
• The Glitter Card stock Stack
• The At Home Stack
• LA CREME Stack
• The Value Stack -Card stock
• The Card Stock Stack - Textured Neutrals
• The Latte Stack

There's also paper (card stock, patterned paper and die cuts) from:

• Glitz
• Stampin' Up
• Anna Griffin
• doodlebug Design
• American Crafts
• BO BUNNY
• Basic Grey
• Creative Memories

Here's a look at the whole stack of paper once I removed it from the box:

I just bought a third paper organizer because the two I had were full . . . I think I should have bought a few more!  I can't wait to look through this stack of paper again and to see what I can make with it.

I don't think I'll ever have to buy paper again!  Ahem.

Have you ever wondered . . .

. . . what 200 pieces of paper looks like?  Yes?  Well, here's your answer:

I recently recieved my order of 202 sheets of 12" x 12" paper from Scenic Route.  If you aren't familiar with Scenic Route they are - or have been - a supplier of very fun paper and embellishments.  Their papers are almost all double sided, excellent quality paper.  Unfortunately, they are going out of business so they are selling off their inventory.

I had purchased some items a few weeks ago, and then I got an email announcing 70% off most of their products.  I ended up buying . . . 202 sheets of paper!  Most of this paper was .15 or .23 per sheet - that's double sided 12" x 12" paper people!!  There's no way I could pass it up.  I tried to get papers that would work well for background of scrapbook pages or themes like Christmas that I know I can use.  The box arrived weighing 8 pounds!  I love each and every piece and can't wait to spend some time sorting through it and coming up with new projects.

I've been super busy with orders since last Friday, which has been fun but exhausting!  I have only one Valentine Mini Album kit left as of right now.  It's been so exciting to wrap up each album and send them off to locations all across the country.  I can't wait until they start arriving at their destinations - I hope that the buyers will post some photos once they put their personal touch on their album.

I'm having a busy week at my "day job" too so I should really think about going to bed.  Back soon!

Oh for the love of paper!

I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . I love paper! It's truly my weakness when I stop at a scrapbooking store. I have two standing paper holders that are FULL of paper; one patterned paper and one solid colored paper. They are so full that it's hard to find what I'm looking for, so I sometimes have to pull it all out and spread it out on the floor. As if that's not enough, I currently have 3 packs of 12" x 12" patterned paper, 3 packs of 8" x 8" patterned paper and 2 packs of 6" x 6" patterned paper.

My biggest hurdle when it comes to picking a piece of paper to use on a project is that each piece I see inspires me to create something - a card with this piece, tags with this piece, etc. I get so carried away looking at all of it that sometimes that's all I accomplish in an evening!

Even with all that paper, I'll stop in a scrapbook store to get a specific thing (not paper) and the next thing you know I have a handful of paper that I just have to have! I could seriously work with the paper I have for the next year and never run out . . . but I keep buying more!

I recently bought a pack of Amy Butler paper. To be honest, it's not my favorite! However, her designs are very popular and I felt like I needed to have it to be HIP! I've been working on some tags tonight using some of this paper and they are turning out pretty cute I have to admit. I'm using my new Cricut to cut out some shapes and I'm still learning how to use it so it's taking me quite a while. Hopefully I'll get them listed tomorrow.

The tags shown in this picture (from the set of tags shown above and listed in my shop) were made from a pack of paper called The Daily Grind. I love the colors and the look of the paper. I was going to use some other pages from the pack tonight but I went through the whole pack and I wasn't ready to cut into any of the pages tonight . . . they are just too cute! That's another reason why I have so much paper; I get attached to it and don't want to part with it!

I guess you could call me a paper addict, or in more current terms a paper whore. Oops. Did I just say that??