It's a Creative World

12 days of Christmas - Nesting

Crochet baskets. When I saw a tutorial for a set of seven nesting crochet baskets, I wanted to make them right away. Delving into my crochet cotton drawer, whilst I hadn't the rainbow colours of the one made by Marinke (Wink), i found seven bright colours which would do for the urgency I felt overcoming me.  

Here's how mine turned out:

The largest is 5 inches across, the smallest 2 inches. I rather like the idea of making 2 consecutive sizes and using them as a wrapping for a small gift, such as a pretty soap, or jar of face cream. 

In fact, because Marinke's tutorial is so easy, you can make these baskets as wide as you like and as short or tall as fits your need. The only things I changed were to omit the top border, and not to add a chain 2 before each round, it didn't work for me.

I love working with crochet cotton as there are no fluffy strandy bits to split and spoil the shape of the stitches; it's easy to see where to insert the hook and we all like easy, don't we?

Come back and see what else we have for you in our 12 Days of Christmas.

Cheerio for now.

Eleanor

x

Quick cards

Hello, this is not my project, it is a quick easy and very effective card made by my friend Faye. We had a day crafting together and I liked this so much I asked her if I could take some photos and share it on IACW.

This is an ideal way to use up 'gloopy' paint, Faye had some blonde moments pink and purple paint that was thick so decided to use it to make these cards.

The white heart in the middle is a mask from white paper.

Faye used a few stamps to build up a texture and added a few punched flowers and butterflies.

Thanks for stopping by IACW and thanks Faye for the fab idea.

Debbie x

Cyclin' Sunday - Storage solutions

Hi Dolly Here

I thought – as I seem to have spent the last few days reorganising my scrap room – I’d post about storage ideas and hope that some of our regular readers will comment with ideas of their own too.

If, like me, you seem to acquire stash at a somewhat alarming rate, then I am sure that you too are always on the look out for storage ideas that work for you.

I am lucky to have a dedicated scrap room, but it is small and so best use of space is key. I love finding cheap storage that certainly wasn’t meant for scrapping but works really well for crafters. Here are a couple of my ideas.

I love ribbons and have a Pull-eaze for some of them, but this is a storage idea I have found works for me. I bought three kitchen roll holders and a mess of book rings and little zip lock bags. The total spend was probably under £10.00

I then put the ribbons into little bags – many of the bags have two different ribbons in. I punched holes in the bottom and threaded about 10 little bags onto each book ring and then popped them round the central spindle.

They are really easy to get to. You can see them all and they look pretty in their colour coordinated way too.

The ribbons are rolled rather than folded, but if they are a little kinked when I want to use them I just hold them for a few seconds over the bulb in my desk top lamp and they straighten perfectly.

Another neat thing I use is a pill box  OK so in all honesty I have several of them! The pill organiser was 99c on holiday from Walmart and each little section seals perfectly. It works well for brads and eyelets and buttons. This happens to be the brad box (well one of them!)

 

These are also really useful as they have moveable compartments. They were from a local DIY store and have handles –which I removed – so they can be carried really easily. I have 4 of the carriers making 16 trays/drawers in total and Nigel wall mounted them for me. They are incredibly useful.

  Inside you can use them for whatever you need and the dividers move to make either 24 small sections or fewer if you make them doubles or triples.

 

And I have yet to see if this last idea works or not, but it cost very little. I have a LOT (and I mean a lot) of clear stamps. I have tried lots of different ‘systems’ and not found one that works for me. The most recent failure was a 7 Gypsies carousel which looked gorgeous but took up so much room and irritated the heck out of me. So this weekend I bought two pretty boxes and have sorted out all of the stamps in them. I made card dividers to categorise the stamps and made sure the boxes were big enough to store even the Autumn leaves sets that were still in their original packaging and almost never got used as they were not easily accessible. The smaller box stores the small stamp sheets like Hero Arts etc. and the large box takes even the Autumn leaves sets. Oh and they do, of course, have matching lids.

I am, however, still a  little sceptical and will wait and see if this method works. I have more pictures of various storage things in a photo album on my blog here 

Here at IACW we would love to hear your storage ideas so do share what you have found works.

 

 

Recycled Swap Storage

Hello again :)

At the moment there are a great many swap sites around, and - thanks to Sir Tim of Holtz - current swap trends have moved from ATCs to Tags.

Now, for those of us who like a change, this is great.  Quote swaps, technique swaps, all good inspiration for our crafting.  But many people hit on the problem of where to store them.  ATCs fit in their own little storage albums, clip cases, and even trading card albums - not so tags :(  Over the course of a year on UKS, for example, you could receive 120 tags or more - and your other half may not be happy to have them dangling from the rafters!

Of course, if they are, you're fine.  But if not, what do you do then? I envisaged a washing line with them pegged on, or a wire rail with IKEA curtain clips.  However, my darling husband wouldn't be completely thrilled, because my craft space is the dining table, and my storage is one wall of our kitchen diner.  I tried using book rings to hang them on hooks, but found I couldn't get to my shelves. Rifling through boxes was annoying and time-consuming.

Now, I'm not saying these ideas are bad, just that in my limited space (and decor of duck-egg blue) this wasn't going to work for me.  Then I stumbled across a blog (and cannot find the link!) where the crafter had revamped heavy-duty cardboard washing tablet boxes, and they'd made very good lidded crafty storage for inkpads, misters, punches, and other tools.  Brilliant!

I found, for the tags, that washing tablet boxes were the wrong size, but cat food ones were perfect - sized for pouches, they are pretty much tag-sized!  I pulled it all apart (carefully) and flattened it out, before decorating with a patchwork of old papers and stamped images.  Then I hot glued it back together, and stood the tags up like library cards, which is so much better than having them in a box, having to pull them out and trawl through.  Now I can flick through my tags for technique inspiration without damaging them, or pulling them all out and having them clutter up the dining room. 

It still needs a coat of gel medium to seal it all down, because the paper shifts when you reassemble the box.  But you don't have to disassemble it if you'd rather not - you could give it a wash of paint first and th cover with paper, and the paint would hide joins, or awkward shapes you couldn't cut :)  Next I think I'll make one for my SU inkpads, as they don't stack well - and turn it on it's end the the front flap drops down for access... then another for the SU/EK Sucess punches so I can keep them neat... I'm hooked!

I'd love it if you would share your storage solutions with us- Pop a link in your comments, and help spread the inspiration!

Thanks for popping over!

Leanne x

www.craftaholicleanie.co.uk  *  www.beautfulimpressions.co.uk

Vintage boxes

Hi Debbie here with a really quick and easy project.

These were plain and wooden,I covered the base with a mixture of colours using babywipes and cheap watercolour paints from the pound shop.

I  used decopatch glue with a few sewing patterns from magazines and pages from books and a couple of stamps to finish the boxes off.

There are some fabulous ephemera websites online I found the cotton reel images on FLIKR. The great thing is that until I find lots of things to put in them, they all stack inside eachother.

Debbie x

Altered Magazine racks

At the end of term I like to make my colleagues something that will make them smile or be useful.

This year I decided to alter some wooden Ikea magazine racks so they would have something functional and pretty.

This is what they looked like before.

I started off by painting the background with cheap watercolour paints applied with a baby wipe. Mix and match colours and put it on randomly for the best effect.

I used yellow red and green, but you could use any combination at all.

Add some stamps in different colours and you have finished.

I hope you will try paints with baby wipes and stamping, it's really easy to do and you can get good results very quickly.

 

Debbie x 
 

Retirement Survival Kit

Two people recently retired from work after 50 years service between them. I wanted to make them something special so I googled retirement survival kits and got loads of ideas. Some of them were a bit American so I just altered them slightly.

These are the sturdy cardboard boxes. I covered them with watercolour paint and then stencilled over with red using sequin waste

.

A little brown stencilling and stamping gave me a good base. 

I grunged the edges a little with brown paint and then stamped some sentiments on the top and sides. I finished it off by spraying with a pearl mist and sealing with craft varnish.

Thanks for stopping by Its a Creative World.

Debbie x

Weekend Workout 18 - UPCYCLE/RECYCLE

After losing some weight (25lbs - so far!) I decided to take some clothes to the charity shop. However I am always having a little potter sewing so I thought I would use some fabric from the clothes rather than always buying new.  I am teaching my daughter to sew and I thought this would also be a good, cheap way for her to practice as well.

I started with my jeans...........

and we ended up with this bag.........

The new kitten loved it ..........

Let's see what you can upcycle in your house.  We will certainly be creating some more items from my jeans.  Have fun  Joy

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello, Eleanor here.

Joy's workout theme gave me the perfect excuse to get out the Gesso and Modpodge.  First I read some interesting thoughts, here, so that I could use the correct term.

(I discovered that I'm not upcycling, as that would be now useless products into new ones, with a greater value, neither am I recycling, as that would be making something into something completely different from the original. I suppose the tea caddy is re-purposed, but the chest of drawers is simply redecorated!   Never mind, I had a go, and enjoyed it!)

I acquired an old wooden tea caddy which didn't go with anything,  so I painted it with white Gesso

 

and covered it with scrapbooking paper. A few coats of Modpodge and it's just what I need for storing hair elastics and clips.

With the materials still out on the table, I looked around for something else to cover, and found this:

Which, by the same process involving matt white gesso and modpodge, became this:

for organising more of my dressing table clutter.

Now then, what else can I find...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh those are fab projects.

Claireliz here, I have a large basket filled with things that I've saved to alter over the years, one of these was this little tin....

 

My husband bought it when it contained some toffees & then told me he'd bought them because he thought I'd like the tin for something, he was right, as it's the perfect size for those little sheets of paper you get in memo blocks & it seems that we're always scrabbling round for a bit of scrap paper (well, I am anyway)

I covered the lid of the tin with some American Crafts polka dot paper...

 

And glued some lovely strokeable ribbon around the sides of the tin...

 

To embellish the tin I used my Banana Frog Pharmacy Stamps to stamp the word Notes onto cream card, cut them out, inked the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink, then glued them down.

 

The large cream flower was actually a ring that I picked up for 99p from The Works, I just used pliers to pull the ring part off, then glued it onto a Kraft Journaling spot (Jillibean Soup), & attached to the tin...

 

I've now filled it with paper & put it on my desk, so I can always find a piece of paper to write down those random thoughts as they occur.

C xx

Faux Crackle Paint

Hi Lynne here

I was given a biscuit tin at a local crop  with the challenge to decorate it for the next crop.  There would be a vote and the best decorated tin would win a prize.  I don't know about you but when a prize is mentioned I always get excited.

I'd heard about a cheap way to get a crackle effect so thought I'd try it.

I painted the tin with yellow acrylic paint and left it to dry overnight.  (It needs to be dry for the technique to work.)

Put some dries clear PVA glue in a dish and spray several times with water.

In another dish have your second colour of acrylic paint, (I used Adirondack lemonade.)  You also need two brushes.

Cover the tin in the watered PVA mixture as quickly as possible.

Immediately paint over with the lemonade acrylic. (You need to paint with the second colour before the PVA glue has dried.)

I then sprinkled ultrafine glitter in places, while the paint was still wet.

You can see some paint has been scraped off the top, this was because the lid wouldn't fit! (I should have thought about it before painting)

It looked a little plain for my taste, so I decided to add some stamped images.

To stamp the image I put the stamp on the table and rolled the tin across it.

As a final touch I put a crystal in the cente of each large dandelion clock.

I then coated the tin with decopatch glue to seal it.

I didn't win the prize, the one that won was beautiful, but had great fun trying a new technique, which I will use again.

Thanks for looking, do try this yourself, it's great fun.

Lynne x

It started with a hat box

Hiya Claire here with a hat box that I've been altering

It started out looking like this...

So I removed the string & got some old book pages, which I covered with Antique Linen Distress ink then I ripped them into sqaures & inked the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink, by this point my fingers were very inky. I then covered the hat box with the sqaures of book pages...

I used bull clips to hold the foldy bit over the edge in place whilst the glue dried...

When the glue had dried I used my Tattered Rose Distress Ink to swipe around the box adding a bit more colour, then a quick spritz of Antique Gold Cosmic Shimmer Mist, allowed it to dry & gave it a quick coat of Mod Podge to seal it...

The flowers were easy but messy to make, the flowers were cut from really thin cotton using a Tim Holtz Alterations Die, then I coated each side with Gesso & waited (not so patiently) for it to dry...

I wanted to make purple & pink flowers, the pink ones were inked with Tattered Rose Distress Ink, with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink around the edge & a spritz of Antique Gold Cosmic shimmer Mist & the Purple ones were inked with Milled Lavender Distress Ink with Dusty Concorde Distress Ink around the edges & a spritz of purple Cosmic Shimmer Mist

Then I layered the flowers & added some pearls, I also made some vines & leaves by painting the fabric with Ranger Willow Green paint & inking the edges with Peeled paint Distress Ink, then cut the vines into strips &  twisted them a bit, the leaves were just cut by hand...

Then all that was left to do was attach them to the box with Glossy Accents...

So now my only question is... what do I put in it?

Hope you like this project & I'll see you soon take care

Claire

xx