fiat lux - let there be light!

Earlier this month, I made a kitchen tealight holder. It all started in a nearby Second Chance Store, where I purchased the components. The initial idea was to cover the structure with some crazy bright, Mexican colors, but somehow the copper paint made its way onto the craft table and I ended up faking a semi-precious metal. You know, sometimes you just can't control the will of the materials...

Here are the parts, all wooden: a spatula,  two egg cups and an incomplete pepper mill, after they have been sanded and gessoed.

And here are some details - very simple, shapes from paper punches glued onto the surface (note to self: next time, attach the cutouts BEFORE gessoing :)

So there you have it - a little bit of light for the long, dreary evenings!

Before dyes and bleaches were invented...

... there were a lot of "natural" materials, in all shades of brown, beige and off-white. Here is a little album entitled "Life is a journey", where I tried to use these colors and also do some recycling:

The four pages were made from toilet paper rolls (I've been thinking about this technique for years!), covered with brown paper, and then embellished with various scraps, including burlap, handmade paper and manila folders (which I tend to call vanilla folders); add some stamping (map stamps acquired in Poland last year), some fibers and a button... and here is my little Journey Album!

recycling musically in January

In January a few music-related items based on recycled materials have passed through my craft table. The most recent one is a result of a find that happened on a cold and windy morning, when on the way home I spotted an old electric organ by the dumpster. The instrument, beautiful as it must have been in the days of its glory, looked broken and damaged beyond repair... so I allowed myself to partake of it as well. I still felt like a vulture yanking off parts of a carcass (by the way - did you know that vultures have such strong stomach acids that they can eat putrid meat, which potentially includes anthrax and botulinum, and it won't hurt them? What's more, they can also use their stomach content as a weapon, vomiting a defensive projectile at the enemy. Gross, but interesting.)

Back to my find... the most exciting key was "vox humana" - human voice", which I used incorporated into a necklace. I'm no jewelry expert, so it's not a perfect piece, but in my opinion it qualifies as "good enough" :)

Another musical craft was a little album made from an old cassette tape. I had to find one I wasn't emotionally attached to, because I still occasionally play some old cassettes I dragged here from Poland.

And then I converted the box from the cassette into a little stand for inspiring Scriptures and other thoughts:

Yay for recycling!

between the kitchen, the bathroom and the home improvement store

The card below, which I started about two months ago and finished this morning, includes some regular scrapbooking supplies (like a punched flower, glitter and shiny cardstock), but then we also have some less obvious materials from my stash, like the blue mesh, which I intercepted when a little piece was heading to the dumpster when our office was being insulated.

For the bathroom, there is the shaving cream snowflake, and also paper dyed with the same plus food coloring. The semi-glossy paper is a scrap from a press where some of my friends work (and bring me the said scraps). Finally, the silvery background for the bauble has been cut out of a fancy envelope we received at work.

And it's all good and fun... as long as you don't mind packratting odd materials at home, and walking from one room to another while constructing a simple card :)

a pate box altered

There is this popular Polish pate that comes in a tin made from thick aluminum foil, silvery on inside and golden on the outside, and every time we finish one, I have a hard time throwing the container away because it could be turned into something. Realistically, though, I wouldn't have the time to treat all of them, and what would I do with a pile of altered pate cans? So - no, I don't hoard them.

Recently I've turned one into a pretty gift package - painted it with gesso and acrylics and created a lid out of cardstock.

The lid is covered with semi-glossy paper dyed with shaving cream and food coloring. The snowflake is slightly 3D from home-made puffy paint (shaving cream again, plus while glue).

chase bank cooperating with panera bread

Chase Bank used a leafy picture in one of their documents, which I was unable to throw away... (This happens way too often!) Panera Bread, in turn, has those awesome bags made of thick brown paper, really nice to the touch, with subtle pattern imprinted on the front and back.

And here is how they melanged with a few pieces from the scrap box and a quote found in the trusty Quote Garden:

Also on my desk - work in progress on a bunch of post-it-notes, which will be wrapped into purses made from recycled Christmas cards:

And as for the larger sticky notes mentioned in the previous post - they've gained a bunch of siblings, represented here by four members:

Needed a couple of cards for today...

...one of them from the all-occasion category, so I decided to combine a painting by Van Gogh...

...with a little chipboard lantern that a girlfriend from Poland sent me last summer. I have a whole sheet of them, and I'm rejoicing, because they are fun! I didn't have the time to experiment too much, but just putting two coats of acrylic paint on it did the job.

The second card needed to be music-themed. I used a bunch of recycled materials here - I'm an incurable, genetically-predestined packrat (which has its pluses and minuses), and sometimes my craft room discoveries surprise even myself. This card includes the following:
- background from cardstock donated by a friend who was destashing;
- music from a Second Chance Store;
- chipboard intercepted in our mail center while on the way to the recycling bin;
- coffee cup wrapper;
- paper towel used at school to clean paintbrushes, gifted by a ten-year old ("Here, I'm sure you can use it somehow", he said, pulling a crinkly ball of paper out of his coat pocket. Yes, I can.)

A linguistic bookmark

My attempt to learn Spanish was going so well... until I stood on the shore of the Ocean of Verb Endings. And there is no way around it - you just have to jump in and memorize them.

Still far, far away from any sort of success in this matter, I made myself a bookmark with all possible forms of a very popular (and regular) verb - hablar. Of course, it's not going to teach me everything, but at least I may be able to recognize the tense when I attempt to read Spanish texts, and in this way I will familiarize myself with the endings in general.

I used a cover from some old brochure, by now recycled, and papers from the scrap box. And a bunch of beads and buttons for the danglies. Danglies are so fun :)

Floral experiments continue

This morning I experimented with a crepe paper flower based on this recipe - I just changed the button in the center to a little felt circle with some beads. And yes, there is glitter on the edges...

I'm wondering how to incorporate this flower into a card, where it will most likely end up - I've tried some felt components, but I'm not satisfied with this arrangement. Incidentally - the background is the guidebook about Canada, since we are going there next week (hoping to see a lot of nature, including some wildlife encounters, and some man-made highlights, like perhaps the Royal Mint in Winnipeg?)

And here is the whole family of recent experimental florals - the two smallest ones are made from used dryer sheets :) I think they need a little more umph, maybe a bead or at least some stitches.

busy weekend

I got to play with sooooo much paper last weekend - I don't recall the previous instance of so much time spent in my craftroom (which looks like a tornado has passed through). It's all in preparation for a craft show this Saturday, so the marathon is no over yet.

Product one - post-it note purses, one of my fave crafts to make. And a way to use up some of the scraps from the Tiny Scrap Box.

Notepads big and small - a friend who works at a printing press has brought me neatly trimmed stacks of leftover paper a while ago, and they have been converted to notepads:

Some Christmas cards, using components left over from last year...

...and autumn-colored cards from lovely papers produced by my favorite supplier - K& Company.

The close-up shows the special coating on this paper, and the three-dimensionality of the embellishment (store-bought this time, gotta use up the box).

More to come... Christmas stars and cards; also need to make some business cards and bags to package the goodies. Oh, and the table setup - which has been already invented and piled up on the bed, but needs finalizing.Yay for Teapot Creations!

a couple new cards

I've been working on some new cards the last few days. They will all be added to the picasa album. Here, I would like to show just a couple.
This one is a simple, "duplicate" cutout from cardstock, with scrapbooking paper on the front. The flowers have been stamped and cut out from scrapbooking paper as well. The idea popped into my head yesterday at work, so I had to quickly make a model out of some used manila folder, so that I wouldn't forget :)

This card features fragments of images from some marketing pieces. I love the colors and i couldn't possibly let such bright materials go straight to the recycling bin!
I also used buttons and my favorite "cotton" lace. I'm not sure if it's really cotton, probably not, but that's what I'm calling it in my little crafting world.

For the weekend, I'm very much looking forward to a trip to Indiana Dunes - we are trying to get a group of seven people from our Polish church to travel together first time EVER. Should be exciting - there is a lot of nature to see there and also some old farms and artefacts. Yay!

salt dough hearts - almost ready...

The items for the animal shelter are almost ready. Here are some of them - there is another stack which will need the ribbons, and then I'll attach the tags, and then deliver them tomorrow!

I've also made a few cards. I'm trying to incorporate some recycled materials in each of them. This one, for instance, features a photo cut out from a promo we received at work, and also the grey/silvery layer came from a folder sent to my office by some company.

Here we have a clean and simple design utilized in order to follow the Asian inspiration. I used the pizza box lining painted with acrylics.

I have materials cut and ready to go for a few more cards... and then on to the next project!