Collage Project: Flooring Catalog

Magazines and catalogs are sometimes the best sources of inspiration, especially when I see tons of little colored squares in a particular carpet tile catalog (we actually used these tiles in our basement).  I was itching to do a collage project and finally broke out the scissors. The tiles would be perfect for covering up one of my sketch books.

Since the squares were all uniform in size, piecing it together was easy… like a cut-and-paste Tetris game! I’d like to do one coat of Mod Podge on the front and back covers soon, and I have enough cut-outs to cover my larger sketch book another time.

Tags: art, collage, decoupage, Flor, magazine, recycled, recycled paper

Celebrating Earth Day

Happy Earth Day! We try to do our part in our home to be kind to Mother Earth, but I know we can do more. It’s not like we’re the Begley family, hehe, but we’re learning. Conserving water and recycling are considered typical now. Last year, I brought the little ones to our local Earth Day celebration, but this year we missed it since we were celebrating First Communion.

So to combine efforts, I transplanted spider plants for last Saturday’s favors. Spider plants are so easy to take care of and have been known to actually help purify the air! I’ve started plantlets by rooting them in water and had good luck with planting them direct into soil which it what I did this time around. To dress it up for centerpieces, I used squares of plastic wrap (to keep water from spilling out, not-so-earth-friendly, sorry) and gift wrapping paper to cover up the plastic pots I saved from last year’s gardening. Reusing is good, no? They look like little Chinese take-out boxes, and looked cute on the tables. Even Martha’s doing it – check here.

Other earth-friendly projects to try out can be found below! Check them out! Let me know which ones you’re trying. You know me, I’ll try everything I can.

Earth Day Carnival at Craft Critique (my latest review is also here)

Gift Bow from a magazine at How About Orange

T-shirt necklace from chictopia.com (saw something similar on Martha Stewart recently)

Tags: crafts, earth day, earth-friendly, party favor, party ideas, recycled

Recycled Cardboard Box Notebooks

This is too much fun and too easy. I love making little gifts for little friends. These recycled cereal box (snack box, pasta box) notebook is just too cute. They’re all drying right now in my kitchen because my basement crafting table is completely cluttered with other projects in progress. (This is why I think I have crafting A.D.D. but that’s for another time.)

So… I was cutting and breaking down all these boxes and saving them in a container (not cluttered). I’m sure my husband thought I was nuts, becoming a hoarder. (See honey, I’m using them!!) I took all the scrap paper I was using for computer printer paper (like backs of school notes, school homework, junk mail with blank sides, etc.) and cut them down to the sizes I needed. I tried to stay with either half sheets (5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″) or quarter-size (4-1/4″ x 5-1/2″).

My dilemma was figuring out how I wanted to bind the books. I actually tried handsewing one book. There are tons of how-to’s online (like here or here), but in the end, it just didn’t look the way I wanted it to. I could have (COULD HAVE) just gone to the office copy place to have them bind the books with a comb, but I really wanted to stick with an all-recycled type of project and, dare I say, I’m frugal. Here’s how I chose to bind.

Just pick your covers, take your sheets of paper and clamp together. I kept these to 25-30 sheets each so clothespins are perfect. White glue is an amazing thing. Just squeeze some down the side you want as a spine, let dry a little, and then do a second application. The book is practically done at this point, and that’s where I am in the picture. What I have left to do is to make a nice, skinny spine cover with solid colored paper like craft paper or maybe even brown paper bag? We’ll see what I have in my paper bin.

Happy recycling.

Tags: crafting, fun, gifts, kids, recycled, recycling, tutorials

Crafting with Leftover Paint Chips

I’m sure we’ve all collected paint chips or paint sample cards from home improvement stores at some point. I’d pick some up just for inspiration when I was rubber stamping. The picture above is of a sample case from my days of working in construction… what a fun tool to have there. But more recently, I’ve collected paint chips for our home and didn’t realize that I doubled, or even tripled, up on some of the sample cards. Like the pack rat that I am, I thought that I might someday figure out how to use or re-use them in a crafty sort of way. So, for even more inspiration, I found these sites and now I can’t wait to make projects like these!

Paint Chip Card Holders at DesignVerb

Embroidered Paint Chip Cards by Lisa at Craftzine.com

Punched Dot Cards at Elegant Musings

Tags: art, cards, paint, paint chips, recycled, recycled paper, recycling

Recycled Paper Coasters

This is what I do when my kid doesn’t want to go outside, wants to snuggle and watch The Wiggles, Sesame Street and Little Bill. I have a hard time sitting still. So, I took apart a catalog that just came in the mail and made these coasters. Can  you see Martha Stewart’s noggin? Heh. Wish I could take credit for these little paper projects, but I found this tutorial a while ago on Jess Jones’s blog, How About Orange. After following her blog a little while, I actually met her in person this past Spring at the first Craft Social. My coasters need a little work because I didn’t exactly follow her directions, nor did I have the computer by my side, but they work!

While this is a departure from my seemingly endless conversation about food, it’s made me think about how this journal is evolving. I’m contemplating extracting all the food (and some entertaining) entries and starting a separate blog. I really thought I’d be talking about crafting more often, and no doubt, it has a special place in my heart, but somehow I take more pictures of food and have this want to share it online. Not only that, I’m finding it difficult to make time for crafting, but hey, everyone has to eat, right?

I have no name ideas, I don’t even know how to do the task. WordPress for Dummies seems to be a good purchase right about now. But, I haven’t yet made the executive decision to lop off the food conversations. There are pros and cons to having everything in one place.

Tags: blog, crafting, paper, recycled, recycled paper, websites

Should I Use These for Grocery Bags?

You know when your family or relatives go on vacation and they bring back a little something as a momento from their trip? It’s a nice gesture, right? I think it is. Normally. But why these designs? Seriously, is my sense of style that hard to read that my relatives purchase these very, uh, unique totes?

It’s not that I don’t appreciate my family’s thinking of me while away on their tours. The tote on the far left is beaded, crazy beaded. Where would I use this? And the tote with the woman came with it’s own makeup/satellite bag. My daughter thought that bag was slightly creepy. And, the one on the bottom is newly acquired, even though the date on it is the year 2000. Note to family: if you feel like you want to buy something, really, just spend it on my kids. They LOVE it when you come with small treasures from abroad. They have stories to tell their friends like, “My grandparents got this for me in Paris.”

So, do I take these totes to the grocery and use them until they fall apart? I suppose they could be good dress-up material for the kids. Library book bags? Ooh, white elephant gift!

Tags: bags, gifts, grocery, purses, recycled, strange gifts, tote bags