Christmas Present Adventures, Part 3

Now that my husband and I are finished celebrating our 4 days of Christmas celebrations, I can finally post about what I made for presents! I gave away gift baskets filled with upcycled handmade goodies, and today I am going to cover the paper gifts!

As I hinted in an earlier post, I covered a LOT of pencils in security envelope linings. I am seriously in love with the patterns that are used, and I have to say I really like how they look wrapped around pencils!

Now, to go with the pencils I also made magnetic paper pads. Since my goal was to make everything out of recycled materials as much as possible, these paper pads were no exception!

The idea actually came about when there was a mistake made with one of my photocopy orders at school. I was left with a whole stack of colored paper, printed on one side. So I simply photocopied lines on the other side and cut them up! I used leftover invitations from my wedding for the backing, and used some magnetic strips that I had stashed away.

I bound the pages together using clear Silicone, and it worked great! The pages are held together well, but also tear away really easily. The overall effect was very cute, and I was very pleased with how they turned out.

And then finally, I gave out lots of paper star ornaments!

My house has been filled with these stars for months now, I had so much fun folding them! And they looked just darling hanging in a tree.

Tomorrow I will share the food related pieces that I made! I hope that everyone had a wonderful time with the Holidays, and are looking forward to a Happy New Year!

Adventures in Earring Reconstruction!

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last updated! I promise that I have been very busy with little craft projects, but I'm keeping them a secret until after Christmas :) However, there was one project that I was inspired to make last night and I just had to share with the rest of you!

I call this post 'earring reconstruction' but really I should name it earring DEstruction! My inspiration came about last night as I was going through my overly crowded jewelry box. I have never really sorted through my jewelry box, and I have so many earrings that I never wear anymore. As I was gathering up these earrings, I started to think about how I could tear them apart to make new earrings. Then, for some reason, I was reminded about these paper beads that I played with this past summer. So I decided to combine the two! I was so excited to try this that I put off my big stack of grading and just dived right in!

I created these paper beads out of various colors of paper, and then created the individual earrings out of the beads and the bits and pieces from the earrings I tore apart. I looove how these turned out, so much better than I originally imagined! I will definitely be giving these out as Christmas presents, so if you get one--act surprised!

Crafty Present Adventures!

I gave my friend her crafty present yesterday, so I can finally blog about it here! Remember the Facebook gifts that I blogged about in August? Well, it turns out that I forgot about someone! I felt so bad that I kinda went overboard with this crafty gift. Once I started making fun crafty things I couldn't stop! So here are all the different parts to her present:

First I covered some colored pencils in dictionary pages that had their different colors on them.

This was my first time trying this, and I love how they turned out!

I also covered some more pencils in security envelope liners. I love how they look. I definitely want to continue making these!

I was going to stop there, but then I decided to make a pad of paper to go with the pencils. I took some pages from an old daily calendar and tried a new way of making a pad of paper. This pad will allow each of the pages to rip away quickly and easily!

For the back of the pad I used some cardboard from the packaging for my husband's Kindle. The letters were done in a gloss coating, so they only show up in the light. I love how it looks!

Again, I was going to stop there, but then I got another fun idea. The last time that this friend was over to my house she commented on how my paper butterflies would look really cute as hairpieces. So I decided to do just that!

I like how you can see the word "Introduction" going through this butterfly

And the butterfly with the feathers and netting looked great in her hair!

So this would have been a logical place to stop, right? But then I wanted to make some kind of bag to put everything into. So I went through my fabric scraps and found part of one of my husband's old shirts that I had previously used to make a skirt out of.

I used the existing buttons as the closure for the bag, and then re-stitched the pocket to the front of the bag.

The pocket was just perfect to put the pencils in!

I had so much fun putting together all of these little crafty gifts! Sometimes having a reason to craft is the best way to get inspiration. Right now I'm going to focus on putting together Christmas presents, which I probably won't blog about here until after they have been received. But I'm sure I'll have enough side crafty projects to keep this blog updated between now and January!

Paper Star Extreme Adventures!

I have been so busy lately that when I find time to get some crafting done I can't find the time to blog about it! This last weekend I folded up a ton of these origami stars--I can't stop!

There are dozens of them around our house, it's fabulous! Right now I'm working on a crafty present for a friend, which I will reveal after they have received it. I'm pretty excited about it!

Adventures in Blog Features!

There is nothing like being featured in someone else's blog to make you realize how long it has been since you have posted! Today my wonderful friends over at Sweet Athena featured me on their craft blog, which made me all warm and fuzzy inside. You should definitely go check out their blog, they make amazing jewelry, headpieces, and even cheese!

Now that the school year is fully underway I find myself having less and less time for crafting. But with the Holiday season just around the corner I am going to have to get myself in gear soon! So here are a few projects that I did recently in what little spare time I had:

I love this little flower that I made out of book pages! It's very similar to this hairpiece that I made earlier, but with a slightly different shape. I can't wait to wear it in my hair!

On a whim I decided to make this strand of butterflies to put in my classroom. I made them out of book pages as well, and really like how they turned out!

Very simple, but very cute.

And this picture is just to prove that yes, I do wear my creations out in public! I recently wore one of my paper flower hairclips to a family bbq, and my family members loved it! Here I am chatting it up with my amazing Grandma, who is a major fan of all my crafting adventures :)

And finally, a little teaser. I am currently working on crafting together a Halloween costume. I don't want to reveal what it is just yet, but it will incorporate what you see in the picture above...

Paper Folding Adventures!

Today has been one of those wonderful, lazy days where you actually feel accomplished by the end of it. Sure, all I did was sit on the couch and watch episodes of some of my favorite shows (True Blood and Pushing Daisies), but I also made some cute paper flowers! I really like how they turned out, and I'm trying to think of ways to utilize them. I'm thinking hairpieces, but since they are made out of paper they would only be suitable for dry weather.

I made the flowers out of folded book pages. I really enjoy origami and other such paper crafting, but have been preoccupied with sewing lately. So it was really nice to sit down and let my fingers have some folding fun!