Category: Scrap Material

Under the Dome

Using Cloches for Centerpieces

I know that one of the biggest things to make right now are shadow boxes. And I LOVE them just as much as the next person. However, the one disadvantage they have is that they only have one viewing direction. So while shadow boxes are great for decorating homes, they lack greatly when it comes to decorating for events.

And that is where Cloches come in!

Think of a cloche as shadow box that can be viewed 360°, perfect for centerpieces.

What I have for you today is a spring cloche that can inspire you for whatever you are looking to create unique decor for your events. Whether you’re looking for a wedding, a Princess birthday party, displaying an heirloom or memory… you are only limited by your imagination.

Supply List

  • 5.7 x 3.6 inch / 14.4 x 9.1 cm High Cloche Dome
  • 3 meter fairy lights, battery operated
  • Floral Moss
  • Hot Glue Gun and Glue
  • Card Stock
  • Butterfly Cut File
  • Flower Cut File
  • White glue (I prefer wood glue)
  • Fabric (optional)
  • Green Floral Wire
  • Needle Nose Pliers with Wire Cutter
  • Tension Tweezers
  • Masking or Painter’s Tape
  • Flat-back Rhinestone Crystals
  • Jewelry & Metal Glue

Cloche Base

The perfect thing about this cloche, when it comes to lighting, is that there was a hole that I could thread the fairy lights through. This made it possible to hot glue the battery pack/switch to the bottom of the cloche, making it invisible. If you choose to also go this route for your lighting, I recommend that you glue the battery pack in such a way that you can unscrew the battery pack and change out the batteries without needing to remove it from the cloche base.

Once the pack is secure, you can flip the base over and position the wires on the top of the base.

Tip: before securing down the wires, place the cloche dome down on top and see how it’s positioned in relation to the base. With this particular cloche, the dome rests inside the lip/edge of the bottom. So if I had put one of the bulbs right up against the lip/edge, then my dome would not be able to sit flat when place over the finished project.

After trying a few different gluing options, I found the best way of securing the wires and moss was the following way. Bend the wire how you want the lights to go. Avoiding the bulbs, you will put dabs of hot glue on the wire and press the moss down on top of the glue. (If you have a silicone finger cot, you can press down directly with your finger without being burned by the glue.

Tip: To maximize the amount of light shining up from the moss, make sure you do not cover the bulbs. You may think you will have holes, but if you look in later pictures you will see that these holes are absolutely not visible. So work with the lights on. You will immediately see true blank holes vs. light holes.

With the base now complete, it’s time to move on to the paper components.

Flowers and Butterfly

With your cutting machine, cut out 2 Butterflies, 4 Flowers, 1 Leaf, and 1 Stem. Because I already had green floral wire, I did not cut out the paper stem. I included the paper stem in case you did not have green wire but wanted to have a cover for a different wire, or even wanted to make the stem completely out of paper. If you choose to make a paper stem, roll it cigar style and glue the edge down. You can use masking or painters tape to hold the edge down while the glue dries.

(Reference Note: The Butterfly I cut was 3 inches tall. As you can see later on the Butterfly takes up all the space. So for this size of cloche, a larger Butterfly is not going to fit. And you are more than welcome to make the Butterfly smaller and even add a few of the smaller size.)

Butterfly

The two Butterflies are the front and back of your Butterfly. Inside these cut out pieces you can place cardstock, tissue paper, fabric, or whatever material you are inspired to use. Glue your first Butterfly down, trim that inner section the Butterfly. This will make it very easy to glue down that second Butterfly and make everything line up.

Tip: If your cardstock has a white core, you can take a marker with a matching color, and make a coordinating edge.

Set the Butterfly to aside and let dry.

Flowers

Using tension tweezers (or other coiling took of choice), roll the flower. At the end of the line, apply an L-shaped dab of glue, and close the flower. The tension tweezers are great for holding that edge down while the glue dries. Or if this is the first of the flowers, masking or painters tape can hold your edge in place for the glue to dry while you move on to the next flower.

To shape the leaf, run a crease down most of the length of the leaf, from the bottom up. At the top of the leaf, coil it around a finger. This will give a gentle bend. If you make the gentle finger coil go off to one side, you will find that you give it a realistic bend.

Stem

While the glue dries, let’s prep the Stem. This picture is a little deceiving; I had cut it before measuring how this size of Butterfly would fit inside the cloche. For a 3 inch tall Butterfly, all you need is a 2.5″ wire. On the bottom of your wire, use your needle nose pliers and form a circle, to make a stand.

When the Butterfly is dry, use your weeding tool or other thin object to bend the wings of your butterfly up.

When the glue on the flowers is dry, it’s time to shape the petals. If you keep the petals flat, but spread them downward, you will have a mum looking blossom. I chose to curl the petals downward and then crease the center. If you can keep the edges a little rounded downward, it has a chrysanthemum appearance. Either way, I wanted the white cardstock as an accenting color, and there are so many white flowers that have this shape, that it has a simple generic look that is just pleasing. Especially if you’re new paper flowers, this one is easy to play with and assemble.

Assembly

With hot glue, apply the glue on the bottom of the first blossom and insert the tip of the wire into the bottom center of the blossom. With the second blossom, add glue, and attach it to the side of the stem. The third blossom, add glue, and position it on the other side of the stem a little lower on the second blossom.

There is a little crevice between the second and third blossoms. Add glue to the wire and position the Butterfly. When these components are set, glue dried, position the wire circle base around a light bulb. (This will cause the light to still give an up light effect and not be covered.) Once you have the wire base where you want it positioned, apply a liberal amount of glue on top of the wire. Before you press down, apply more moss on top of the glue. Now when you press down, you will secure the stem and hide the glue at the same time. Near the base of the stem, add a drop of glue and place the leaf.

The fourth flower can be glued anywhere on the moss covered ground.

For further ground embellishments you could add anything you can imagine; a car, Poly Pocket accessory, miniature figurine, rock, sea shell, anything. In the second picture above you will notice what looks like a gold stone. In fact, my husband thought that I had added a gold nugget from of the boys’ games. In truth, this “stone” is the gold glitter stick that I had to clean out of my hot glue gun. I just let that pool on my desktop and dried as a puddle, instead of throwing it out.

This cloche is ready to go as is or you can further embellish it.

Further Embellishments

I always love to add more. In fact, this butterfly was really begging to be fully blinged out. However, for this moment I chose to show some restraint so I don’t look like the crazy bling lady.

From here on out the jewelry & metal glue works perfectly. It holds while wet and dries quickly.

Please take note on the first picture above. If you haven’t worked with crystals before, these tools description might help you have fun placing the stones. The two tools that came with the crystals that I bought were the tweezers and the white “pencil”. In my opinion, the tweezers were the most difficult tool. The problem with them is that these tweezers didn’t have grips on the tip. These ones were the smooth tip tweezers. If you think this is going to be slippery work for you, I can promise you it is. I shot a handful of stones across my work space before giving up. The white “pencil” doesn’t feel sticky, but when you press down on the stone with the tip, it grips the stones. Kind of. I couldn’t get the “pencil” to pick up the small stones that I used on the edge of the wing. However it was absolutely perfect for the larger stones that I used near the center of the wings and on the body.

Fortunately for me, I had another tool in my craft room. I do the crystal paintings and had one of those complementary placement tools (the pink tool in the picture). It still had a little residual glue in the gap and it was a dream picking up the smaller stones that I used on the wing edge.

However, the tweezers were the perfect tool for placing the pearls in the center of the flowers.

Tip: If you’re new to paper flowers, and noted to yourself that some of the blossoms look a little wonky, pearl placement is going to be your life saver. In the close up picture, above, you will notice that there were three pearls that I used. Yes, that was a wonky flower. It got away from me. But the great things about flowers are that they can grow in clusters. And so there is no shame in strategically placing flower centers so you can make a misshaped flower into a cluster of two or three flowers.

Now that we’re finished with the assembly, we’re ready to put the dome on.

The only thing left to talk about is the difference between plastic and glass cloches. As you can see here, even though you don’t have to worry about the dome breaking when it’s plastic, you will note that it’s definitely not as clear looking as it would be if it were glass. If you are looking to just do a fun project, a project for a beginner crafter, or need to be particularly frugal, the plastic dome is probably going to be the cloche of choice. If you are looking for a wedding or to have a high impression impact, you most definitely want to opt for the glass cloche. My personal preference is the glass cloches, but realistically I live in a young child home with curious boys.

Everyone’s choices are going to be different. But I cannot stress enough…

IF you are doing a wedding, please do not opt for cheap. The wow factor is going to be from glass or higher quality of plastic than you find at the dollar store. However, if you are on a very tight budget (Absolutely No Shame Here!!!) and the dollar store cloche is the only thing in your budget here are my tips:

  • Select only the domes that are clear and free of scratches.
  • Between now and your event, try to not handle the dome.
  • You will be tempted to try your dome over the decor. Buy one extra cloche and use that dome as your dome tester.
  • While you are working with glue, keep it away from the dome. Especially the jewelry & metal glue. You may think you didn’t get any glue on the dome. …and then it dries.

In fact, it’s a good practice, whether glass or plastic, to always have one extra dome on hand. Accidents happen, especially on site.

Please email or comment below with pictures of what you create! I want to see what cloche you make.

Thank you for crafting with me!

Files Used Today

Cloche Butterfly & Flower are found here.

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New Twist on Carrots

Making a new style out of throw away materials

The one bit of insight you have, when working for someone else, is just how much a business throws out. And the quality of their garbage. And you also gain insight as to what kinds of businesses subsidize other businesses for you marking your product down for their employees.

I personally know of a few companies who have switched to the Lean Operational method of running a business. And even then it still, somehow, manages to amaze me how much gets thrown out.

Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up where we didn’t have as much as other people around us. Maybe it’s the fact that my mom created magic when she made the gifts we were given on less than a shoe string budget. Maybe it’s the fact that I carry on that frugality because our family budget can go farther and do more things when I reallocate and make do with the little I have, so the hard work of my husband can go elsewhere for family provisions.

This craft here is me on a plate, for you. This is me thinking outside of the box. This is me using materials where half of what you see is stuff that most people throw away.

If you are looking for a new infusion to your farm house style or Easter decor, this project is for you!

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Materials

  • 8×10 Canvas Frame
  • Teal and Metallic Gold Acrylic Paint, with paint brush
  • 2 Complimentary Ribbons
  • HTV Vinyl (Permanent Vinyl is another option)
  • Garden Now Open SVG
  • Leaves from Silk Flowers
  • Hot Glue Gun with Glue Sticks
  • Pliers
  • Crafting Knife or Scissors
  • Staples (optional)
  • Sandpaper (optional)

Prepping the Frame

First you want to remove the canvas from our frame so you can paint the frame for your reverse canvas. (If you’re new to Reverse Canvas, hold on for a moment and I will circle back to help you through this process.) Paint the front and sides of your frame with Teal paint. If you keep the paint very thin, you will notice that the paint is dry to the touch in about three minutes. For this example, I went in a circle around the frame twice with the minimum amount of paint (dry brush method, where it look likes and almost feels like you’re brushing on already dry paint) and ended with full coverage of color with no waiting time to apply the Gold paint. It’s really not in my budget to play with Gold Leaf. I would use it for a client. But for the rustic feel I went for, metallic gold paint was enough to add a smidge of class to an otherwise rustic feeling project. And the gold, I used somewhere around a nickel size drop of paint and hit the corners and some edges. Then I set the frame to the side to dry while I added the HTV to the canvas.

First Time Creating a Reverse Canvas: From the back side of the Canvas remove the staples with a pair of pliers. (There are two different methods of putting the canvas back on the frame, which I’ll cover in steps ahead. I just want to let you know from the beginning, if you remove the staples right from the beginning, it can save you from potential problems in future steps. It’s not mandatory, but definitely one of my highly recommended steps.) If small holes next to the staples happen, don’t be afraid, you will not see them later on. If the staples are stubborn, feel free to cut the canvas next to the staple, with a crafting knife, and release the canvas. Set the canvas to the side and move forward with painting your frame, mentioned above.

TIPS: If you’re keeping with the rustic look, there’s no need to sand your frame. If you want a smooth looking frame, you will definitely want to sand your frame before you paint it. If the frame staples are visually unappealing to you, I highly recommend dry wall spackle. You can find some that is purple when you apply it and turns white when it’s dry. It’s very easy and convenient to use, with next to no guess work. A palate knife or even your finger is all you need to apply the spackle. Once it dries, you’ll quickly run over it with sandpaper a couple times. This will smooth out your edges. And when you paint your frame, no one will know that you used putty to fill in the frame cracks. (This is the same method I use when I want to use a frame that for one reason or another was gouged or dropped.

Applying Vinyl to the Canvas

When you go to cut your HTV (High Temperature Vinyl) from your cutting machine, remember to mirror your image. Once you’ve weeded your vinyl, you will place your frame on top of your canvas, so that you can see exactly where you want to press your carrier sheet down on the canvas. (This step is mostly important if you have a few small holes in the canvas that you’re working around. If you’re canvas came off the frame undamaged, than feel free to skip using the fram as a point of reference.) Follow our vinyl’s directions for heat and pressing time. These settings vary. Once you’re vinyl is attached, proceed to reattaching your canvas to your frame.

What if I choose to use Permanent Vinyl? I have successfully used permanent vinyl on canvas. I prefer HTV over 651 (or permanent) because once I have it adhered I do not have to worry for one moment about humidity causing the vinyl to lift. But please do not be shy with using permanent vinyl. You will still want to use an iron to press your Canvas. If there’s any moisture in the fabric, the iron will get that dried out and prepped for your permanent vinyl. Once you place your vinyl, you will want to make sure to have your project on a hard surface that you can press down with a scraper or squeegee. The more attention that you use with burnishing that vinyl down will pay off in the end with a longer life to your craft. Remove your transfer tape and then move forward with attaching the canvas back onto the frame.

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Reapply Canvas to the Frame

There are two ways of doing this; hot glue gun or staples.

Method Hot Glue Gun: Apply a liberal amount of hot glue to the back of your frame. Flip it over and position it over your canvas before pressing down and attaching the two together.

The benefit of this method is that it is so quick! Any skill level of crafter can do this application. The important thing to remember is that you have to move quickly so your glue doesn’t cool down on you. AND you will want to try and manage how much glue you use. Too little and the canvas won’t want to stick to your frame. Too much and you will have guaranteed seepage of glue that you will have to clean up. My recommendation is err on the side of a little too much and keep the glue a little off center. It’s better if it seeps out of the outside edge instead of the inside edge. With an inside edge seep, you will need to try and scrape the glue off the canvas or risk having what looks like slug trail on your canvas.

Method Staples: Flip your frame upside down. Position your canvas on top of the frame. Take your staple gun and staple at the top center of your frame. Gently pull your canvas down and place a staple in the center bottom of the frame. Gently pull the canvas to one side and staple in the center of that side. Gently pull on the other side of the canvas and staple in the center of that side. This is called Stretching Canvas. You will then go through the whole rotation again, moving out from center. On a frame this size, you should have about 5 staples across the top and bottom. And about 7 down the sides.

In my opinion I recommend stretching your canvas with the Staple Method. Anytime you add anything to canvas, if it’s not taunt, the weight of your project will warp the appearance of your canvas.

I’m in a crafting group where many of the crafters there swear by the hot glue gun method. In that group I withhold this information because in that setting it’s more important to have these ladies soak up the success of accomplishing a craft that they might not otherwise have attempted.

Here, I want to give you further information because I want you to make an education decision based off of the goal you are after. If you are making this to sell at a craft fair, or you’re decorating for an event that you want professionalism for, I want to set you up for success in these moments. And I know we are not face to face so I can’t use my tone or non-verbal cues to fill you in on this. I am by no means dogging on the hot glue method. In fact, in this example I’m showing you I couldn’t find my staple gun and so I in fact used a hot glue gun. I know the value of stretching canvas and so even with a hot glue gun, I still stretched my canvas. It took much longer than with a staple gun. And if I were using something of more weight than paper carrots, I can assure you that I would not trust hot glue to keep my standard of professionalism to clients. (I know my limitations with hot glue guns, and I’m woman enough to admit that there are many other crafters out there who are geniuses with hot glue. I have skills, but I am not a hot glue gun goddess.)

I want you to feel comfortable with your skill level and what goals are for this project. If what you have available is a hot glue gun, you’re not at all comfortable with stretching canvas, and you’re new to reverse canvas making–PERFECT! Know that you can make a beautiful and professional looking canvas using this method. If you want the challenge and extra security that staples offer, than stretching your canvas is exactly what you’re looking for.

Once your canvas is attached, you will want to trim off the extra canvas. You can either use a crafting knife and cut away on the outer edge of the frame. Or you can use a pair of scissors, angle you blade into the back of the frame, and trim the canvas back.

With clean edges, it’s now time to add those carrots!

Carrots

This is the part that I’m most excited about. These carrots are made completely from scraps that most of the times end up in the trash or recycling bins.

Most of these segments are made from triangles and parallelogram scraps about 3″ wide. Some wider, some less. All of these were from scraps from an explosion box I made a few months back. The card stock was 5 different textures and shades of orange. In fact, one of the orange papers was actually faded from being left out in front of a window. The segments you see above were not triangles and so I pre-folded them in triangular forms to make it quicker to shape and hold with a small drop of glue.

These single cones I then stacked with each other. On a few of the carrots I placed the glue on the back of the cone. Most looked better with the attachment point being at the front of the cone.

I made a few extra carrots than I had space for on the canvas, because I wanted to have some choices of which ones looked better than others. In fact, one carrot had a herringbone look to it. And since it didn’t have the same feel as the others, that one got set aside for a future project.

Once I got the length of carrots that I was happy with (a few were 4″ long and others were as much as 8″), I went into my bin of silk flowers that have seen better days. In fact, they were part of the flowers that I bought from a wedding planner who was selling all of her inventory. I was after her roses, but she gave me her entire flower collection. These leaves were actually from some geraniums and daffodils. The daffodils were actually really beat up and were just collecting dust, because I couldn’t use them for events. And this was the moment that I could actually give these greens a purpose. Other than purchasing silk ferns, these greens were actually quite perfect.

What makes these carrots so special in the crafting world is that it embraces the cubism element from the art world. I’ve seen a lot of carrots made from yarn and cloth, styrofoam and foam. These paper carrots give talking points and structure. And this structure is what was great for placing in the frame, with the ability to break free from the frame (giving a nod to surrealism).

Finishing Touches

Once I found the placement that I liked for these carrot shapes, I glued them down with hot glue gun.

Due to the light weight nature of this project, attaching the ribbon with hot glue is enough. However, if you’re creating for a professional item, you will want to use a stapler to attach you bottom layer of ribbon to the frame. For the top ribbon attachment, E6000 glue would be better than hot glue. But hot glue does do the job for a non-sellable project.

Please comment below and tell me how this spring time project turned out for you. Pictures are even better. I love seeing what other people make!

The SVG used in this post can be found here

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International Women’s Day & Crafting Month

Created to Make

It really is amazing to think about how much of our world and lives are all about creating something. Sometimes the first thing we think about when we hear “National Crafting Month” are the classic artistic skills of painting, quilting, sewing, crochet/knitting, needle point…everything that you would step into a crafting store to build your supply lists. Maybe you say you’re NOT a crafter because these classic forms of crafting feel as foreign and difficult as learning a language from a country on the other side of the world from you. But there is so much more to crafting.

Crafting is what we learn from others.

In my case I learned how to craft from my mom. She learned from her mom. She learned from her mom. And I’m not sure how far back that goes. So when people ask me, I’m at least a third generation crafter. I learned the old crafts. It’s what my matriarchs knew and passes on.

And while I move forward with new crafting technology and techniques, I’m also mindful of how things use to be done.

For example, the inspiration for what I’m writing today is birthed from current events, what every day women have done for centuries, and how to be creative in unifying these ideas.

For many years, my family has been taking care to learn how to grow a garden. One I have fond memories of my grandparent’s garden. My mom even off and on grew a garden.

I mention gardening because of the events unfolding in Ukraine, worldwide fertilizer production has been drastically cut back. In fact, many farmers around the world who depended on fertilizers to produce food for their local and global markets are not going to have the supply they will need. In fact, it is still uncertain if Ukrainian farmers will receive their wheat seeds in enough time for a spring planting. If they do not, many countries around the world will not have wheat to import, because Ukraine has been their wheat supplier.

Now I’m not a farmer. I don’t supply food for other families. However, I’m mindful of what is going on around the world market because I want to be aware. Knowing what I know, now, it’s becoming important to me to grow more for my family right not. Yes, inflation and the cost of groceries plays into that. It play into any first world country family who is living on a budget. And it’s ignorant of me to ignore the fact that so many other families, in areas not as prosperous as the place I call home. So to honor those families, where I may not have as much influence to change what they are facing, I’m making conscious decisions to change how I’m doing things right now. If I grow more, and use more of the resources that my two hands can produce for my family, than that frees up resources for others to provide for their families. I learned how to grow a garden as a child. Not all families around me learned that skill set. So I use my skills to provide for my family, so there’s less strain on my local market, which has a trickledown effect. If enough local families relieve the food chain, it relieves on a regional level. This in turns frees up resources on a national level. And in an ideal world, governments would not be wasteful and they would take these excess resources to relieve the food vulnerability in other countries.

And that would take me in a new conversation away from what I want to focus on today.

International Women’s Day

The one thing I love about being in the Pacific Northwest is that I grew up in an area where I learned about and ate cuisine from different places around the world. And from these different cultures I’ve learned food preparation that I would not have learned in a less culturally diverse community.

And while the most popular women to honor on International Women’s Day are politicians and celebrities, I want to draw attention and bring honor to the more humble group of women–village mamas. It doesn’t matter if a culture’s history was spent mostly in a tribal setting, rural village, or small townships, Mamas were the ones who made the world turn and kept families alive. They passed down cooking techniques and recipes that kept their people alive through countless seasons and years of famine, blight, war… they put the food on the table. And boy do mamas know how to make food resources stretch.

This week I’m particularly been in awe of all the women who fed their families in a variety of ways with one crop, corn.

Photo by Tran Le Tuan on Pexels.com

I’m not going to lie, I grew up where family recipes consist of cooking corn on the cob. And then you either eat it on the cob or cut it off the cob. Other than cornbread, that is what I inherited in my ancestral cook book. I will also be truthful and admit that corn is my least favorite. So yes, ladies around the world, please feel free to send me your favorite corn recipes. I will gladly embrace them, because I’m educating myself on the uses of corn to become less dependent on wheat for providing for my family. This fall, it is already on my books that I’m going to teach myself to make masa and tortilla from the corn I harvest this year. I have a general working knowledge and it will officially be put to the test.

And step one in my education, today, was shucking corn. Last fall I planted Strawberry Corn because it is a corn that can be popped and pop corn is one of my family’s favorite snacks. So I took my meager harvest that had been drying and doubling as fall and winter decorations, and I shucked.

As a historian, I’ve seen how village Latinas shucked corn by rubbing the ears together. Here is what I learned today….

There is a reason why these mamas use a basket or other larger vessel to shuck into. A soup bowl is not big enough. The kernels on the floor will be processed to germinate and put back into my garden this year. And I will have effectively doubled what I have previously planted in years past.

The easiest kernels to release are the ones at the ear tip. And those first ones take the most effort. Once I got seeds to release, I had a whole side of ear cleared in a couple of swipes. An up and down movement is what I found necessary to start the process. Once I was started a side to side movement seems to make the seeds drop much faster. Then on the last corn (with no other cob to rub against), I found that using my thumb in a downward movement (from the top of the cob), there was not much pressure that was needed to drop those last seeds.

Pacific Northwest Event Design

Another thing that any mama in a resource scarce place will tell you is that you waste nothing.

We as human beings were created to be creative people.

I harvested my corn, but here is where National Crafting Month comes in. What am I going to do with the cob and husks that are left over?

I’m not sure if there was another generation that followed my grandparents in making husk art. I honestly haven’t seen any creations at farmer’s markets for the fairgrounds since my grandparents passed away. I’m going to have to make a husk doll in the upcoming days and show you because they’re not popular hits in Google image search. I have 4 cobs left to craft with. So I’ll try my hand at that and make at least a brief posting on how that turns out. And if you’ve never heard or seen of a husk doll, then I’ll have the pleasure of passing on a little history.

But for today, I took three of my cobs and turned them into fun Easter decorations.

This is one craft that I will definitely do again in the future. In fact, I will have my boys do it. This is a messy craft, so be forewarned.

There are some bits of information that you need to know, if you’ve never had experience with corn cobs before. The husks take paint nicely with no real preparation. However, the paint feels like it takes forever to dry. I tried to keep my paint thin and it still took upward of two hours before the husks were completely dry.

Now you will absolutely love working with the cob portion!

The cob will absorb paint like a sponge. Drying will not be instantaneous but it surprised me at how quickly it was dry to the touch. I had planned on putting my glitter on wet paint, but I had to go with option 2, glue. The dry time is completely dependent on the type of glue you use and it’s dry time. The glitter does not shed easy, but some will come off on your finger if you swipe it (when dry).

Bringing it back around to celebrating women, what is something that you appreciate or want to know from women different from you?

How can you turn that into a craft to celebrate what it means to be a woman?

In fact, please comment below something that you admire about women in a culture different from your own. I’m always looking for new knowledge and skills. If you inspire a creation, I want to give you recognition as well.

Happy Belated International Women’s Day!

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Make A File Do More

If you’ve been in any field long enough (craft, wedding, art, photography, name the occupation), you realize that you can collect files and ideas for eternity and use it once. Or… you can find a way to make one file work for you in countless ways.

For example, photographers take the time to develop their basic settings for editing a photo. With this setting saved, they take a photo, hit the saved button, the adjustments from the saved settings are automatically added, and then they make a few minor adjustments before going to the next photo. So instead of spending 15-30 minutes on one photo, they can have one done in a couple minutes.

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The same can be done with cut files.

The perfect part of working the same basic cut file over and over again is that you create more value for yourself, save time (instead of always starting off from scratch), and you have a primed canvas ready to go for your next idea. Sometimes you have that perfect text or saying that you want to use, but don’t have the inspiration to make something unique to go with it. Think of it like your basics white T-shirt and jeans combo. It’s always ready to go and you just throw on something on top to make it just right for the moment.

If you set up shop at a craft fair, this is especially important for you. How many times have you heard someone comment that they like something, but it doesn’t quite fit them (whether style, color, whatever). By having one item a couple different ways, you decrease the chances of a whole lot of product going home with you AND find out how to optimize your sales by what style sells better. Plus, when it looks like someone is getting a one of a kind (instead of a cookie cutter) item, it’s most likely to cause a sale. It’s the thrill of buying what someone else can’t have.

Cohesion and simplicity work when you have one key element and you work it over and over again. That element is incorporated in everything. But it’s also slightly changed up.

For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to work a simple heart cut file over a few different mediums to show you what I mean by working the same file over again, for cohesion and still find a way to add diversity.

This week I’m going to use paper and vinyl with this Heart Card file.

The craft here is a card. But it has two different ways of decorating built in.

Each year, for Valentine’s Day, I write on hearts what I love about my boys. And I use the hearts as part of our house decorations. As you can see in picture 3, this card is perfect for standing on its side. However, my youngest is at the paper shredding stage. So instead of standing the hearts up all over the house and letting the boys scavenger hunting for their hearts, I will hang some decorative baker’s twine and hang the hearts like bunting/garland.

First things first, decorating. In the past I’ve done solid hearts and lace/doily hearts. I haven’t done a stain glass window style. And the leader, of one of the crafting groups I belong to) posted her heart idea using scrap vinyl. I loved her idea, because I have three small scraps boxes that I keep adding to. (I save scraps to minimize what I throw out.)

One of my scrap boxes

These scraps I cut into glass shard like pieces, triangles, squares… really I just grabbed my scissors and mindlessly cut away. The odd angled bits were probably my favorite ones for this project.

This was the set up for one of my sons’ class valentines. He’s a crafter and went to town, happily making his valentines.

There were a lot of the red heart components (from my Hearts collection) that were left over from prepping for my son to make his class valentines. And I was particularly in love with the thin spiral looking heart. So I couldn’t let those go to waste.

And with a little glue, the finishing touches go on quick and easy. I ran out of With a little glue, the finishing touches go on quick and easy. I ran out of glue stick and used some Elmer’s spray adhesive. Both glues worked great and I had no issue with the card stock sticking to the top of the vinyl (which was a combination of shiny, glitter, metallic and holographic).

After completing my 12 cards here (in addition to the 11 I prepped for my son), there is one bit of advice I want to give with the small pieces of vinyl. It sucks pulling the backing off of all those tiny pieces. If you puncture the vinyl, it really doesn’t show when you press it down and use a scraper to burnish the vinyl down. So you don’t have to worry too much about that. It was easier to take one larger piece of scrap, remove the backing, and cut as you go. However that has its own drawbacks. You don’t have the freedom to lay the piece down to see if it fits in a space. Nor can you adjust it if you don’t like the color combination of a neighboring piece. It is quicker, but you lose out on the control of how everything fits and looks. I wasn’t so much concerned about that in this project, because the red card stock on top framed or covered up areas that I was less than impressed with.

If my 80’s Retro hearts are not quite your vibe, please don’t dismiss this heart or technique. There are so many options out there. If you only use one or two colors of vinyl, you will have a completely different look than what you see in these pictures. If you’re not feeling the vinyl, you could do something If my 80’s Retro Funk hearts are not quite your vibe, please don’t dismiss this heart or technique. There are so many options out there. If you only use one or two colors of vinyl, you will have a completely different look than what you see in these pictures. If you’re not feeling the vinyl, you could do something different. Use Solid or Printed card stock. Paper Mache pages from a novel or sheet music onto cardstock. Or even use photographs for the non-scored heart. Glue on lace or doily on top of drawings, painting, or photos. There are so many ways of making this Heart Card work for cards or decorations for a wedding or other event!

Thanks for joining me today! Be sure to come back next week for the next installment for creating cohesion for an event with one file.

Files Used This Week

Click the links for Heart Card and Hearts to see product descriptions and get these files for your projects.

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