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Making It: Brown Paper Packages

It takes me a little while to get into the swing of Holiday every year because my Holiday season at work is long over (I'm wrapping up Spring!).
But, one thing I always get excited about it holiday packaging! My hands-down, all-time favorite wrapping material is brown kraft paper. It's inexpensive, easy to find and colors pop off of it like nobody's business. My trusty go-to wrapping usually involves some combination of kraft paper, baker's twine, alphabet stamps and washi tape.

A few packaging DIYs I've made using kraft paper:
Potato Printed Gift Wrap via Craft Stylish
Pretty Preserves Tied up with String via Instructables

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Pom Pom Nation

There's definitely a crafty collective conscience out there. Case in point: at a recent visit to Kinokuniya , my favorite Japanese book store, I bought this pom-pom craft book called, appropriately, How to Make Pom Poms, and became completely obsessed with making pom poms. (It looks like you can also get it here) A few of my friends and I were heading out on a little crafty weekend retreat and I decided poms would be the perfect project! Cut to a week later and I get this email from my good friend Lorelei: "I want to make pom-poms at our retreat. Can you make pom poms?"





Now cut to a month later and we're both hooked. Pom pom making is very relaxing, cutting each little orb into a perfect fluffy circle is meditative in a way. And there are so many things you can do with them! I recommend that, if you want your pom poms to be as lovely as the ones in the book, to use really thin yarn, which I did not do.



Also, I should mention this book is amazing! Have you ever wanted to make a little pom pom hamburger but didn't know how? Fear not- this book teaches you!

Making It: Washi Tape Rosettes

Paper rosettes are so easy to make that they barely require a tutorial at all. Also, there are probably dozens of tutorials for them online already. BUT, a few days ago, I was making some for my book table at Squam and I started adding some washi tape to the process and they looked awesome! So, I thought I would share...

What you need:
Book pages (you can also use any other kind of lightweight paper)
Washi tape in various colors
White glue
Paint brush



Fig. 1: Depending on the size of your rosette, you will need 2-5 pages of a book (or another paper), all the same size. I am going to use 4 full book pages for this rosette.



Fig. 2: Affix a couple of stripes of washi tape to all of your book pages running lengthwise. I made mine random but you can also measure them out.
Variation: you can also have the tape stripes running width-wise for a totally different look.



Fig. 3: Accordian fold your book pages lengthwise roughly every half inch.



Fig. 4: Fold your accordian-ed book pages in half lengthwise and brush glue onto one edge.



Fig. 5: Fold the edges together and press for the glue to hold. This will make a little fan. Repeat to make four fans.



Fig. 6: Now you will put the fans together. You can see here that I have glued three together and am about to add the fourth.
Brush glue on both outer edges of the fan and affix to the other fans. I recommend doing this part on a flat surface.





Fig. 7 & 8: Tada! You have pretty and bright rosettes to play with. They are perfect for parties, gift toppers, decorating walls in a kid's room, wearing on your head...whatever you want!

How-Tuesday on Etsy & My Book!!

On Tuesday, Etsy featured the cardoard chandelier project from my book on their blog! Instructions and templates are all available right here. It's a fun weekend project and when you are done, voila, you have a chandelier!
Oh, and you will hearing a lot about my book tour over the next few weeks. I'm heading out all over the country and I hope to meet a lot of you!!

Paper Made! is available for pre-order on Amazon now.

Making it: Watercolor Striped Cards

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many DIY projects on my blog!

I've been a bit of a nut for watercolors lately so I've been playing with a bunch of different techniques. So when 3M sent me a few rolls of their Scotch Blue painter's tape to craft around with, I came up with this very simple technique for decorating greeting cards. So let's get started!

You will need:
Premade blank cards (or cardstock to make cards)- make sure it's thick enought o handle watercolor
Self healing cutting mat
Craft knife
Ruler
Painter's tape
Watercolor paints
Small paint brush
Containers with water for your paints
Newspaper to protect your work surface
Decorative washi tape (optional but awesome!)

Step 1: Tear off a piece of tape a couple inches longer than your card and affix it to the self healing cutting mat. I love these mats because they have gridlines on them but if you don't have a cutting mat, you can use a piece of cardboard. Use your ruler and a craft knife to cut stripes in a range of widths.


Step 2: Carefully pull up all your tape stripes!


Step 3: Protect your work surface with some newspaper and affix your tape stripes to your card as desired. Make sure they are well sealed to the card and there isn't any bubbling in the tape. Start painting in between the tape stripes. I chose a palette of blues. Don't worry about perfection with the painting- it actually looks much cooler when the stripes look more like a wash of color.


Step 4: When you are finished painting and happy with your colors, let the paint dry for a few minutes and...


Step 5: Start pulling up your tape stripes!!


Step 6: If you would like to, add stripes vertically to the card as well. For this, I chose a palette of greens. It results in sort of a plaid effect.



If you want, add stripes of washi tape too!I loved this for the contrast from the wash of the watercolors to the intense pop of the tape. There are about a million variations to these designs. Add stripes on a diagonal, experiment with the width of stripes, the colors of the stripes...go wild!