Wool covered bead necklace

 

To me, wooden beads are packets of promise. They are wonderfully inexpensive and there is so much you can do with them. Here I have covered them with fuzzy wool and added little sequins to decorate them. The process is pretty easy and you can coordinate your newly knitted scarf with a matching bracelet or necklace.

The project appeared in a recent issue of Get Creative magazine. Click here to find out how to make your own version, step by step.

Macramé and button bracelet

Confession time. I really have a bit of a hard time with macramé so projects like this tend to get away from me a bit. I’m ok for the first few knots then my brain over thinks the process and I can’t remember whether I am going over or under. Call me Macramé challenged.

However, I love macramé bracelets so I designed this one for Get Creative magazine. I had to get some  help actually turning my ideas into reality, so Michelle who, by the way rocks at macramé helped out. I measured and told her exactly what I needed and I started the main loop. Then she kindly removed the string from my hands, nodded sagely and began knotting away. Magically the bracelet materialized just as planned.

If you’re a dab hand at macramé or want to learn, here is the link to the project and the full instructions. 

Hand Painted card

What I love to do most is to show people how easy it is to do things that look quite hard. Take this card – it’s hand painted and it looks difficult to do but it really is quite easy. I made it for Get Creative magazine together with full step by step instructions.

The next weekend I made cards for all my family. Each was hand painted in this style and each was customized to suit the recipient. There was a bird decorating a tree with a heart decoration for my mum, my brother who lives in the tropics had a tree which was a palm, my nephew got a tree on a computer screen and so on. They were so much fun to make.

If you don’t think you could paint a card, I challenge you! Try this one, you’re guaranteed to succeed.

 

Turn a photo frame into a mini book

This book features my cat Molly who is just so dammed cute!

It is a photo frame which has had holes drilled on one side and had large wooden tags added to it to make it into a mini book. It stands on a book case in our living room.

It was also featured in Get Creative magazine in Australia and the article includes full instructions for making one for yourself.

Book about Me

This book is titled Unashamedly All About Me and it’s one of my interactive book designs. You can write on it with chalk, stick things to the notice board and hang things from pegs. I love designing these books and this is one of  my favourites of all time.

It appeared in Get Creative magazine in Australia together with full step by step instructions for making it.

Wire worked card

I love working in wire – it’s such a fun medium. I have a cool technique for twisting wire into a bicycle shape which I use every now and then. Here is one incantation of the design on a Bon Voyage card which featured in Get Creative magazine in Australia.

The full instructions  are here including details on twisting some wire into your own bicycle.

Eddy – Heritage mini book

My Great Uncle Eddy was killed in WW1 in France. I made this mini book to celebrate his life.It is made from corrugated cardboard – my all time favourite medium as it is inexpensive, fun to work with and recycling is always a good thing to do.

The book was featured in Get Creative magazine in Australia and here are detailed instructions for making it.

Bottle top jewelry

This was one of my first jewelry (jewellery) projects for Get Creative magazine and the piece featured photos of me and my sister, my mum and my two grandmothers.

Here are images and full instructions for making it.

Yum! I love Ranger Glossy Accents

Ranger makes this wonderful product called Glossy Accents. It is clear and it is not only a dimensional adhesive but it can also be used as a dimensional glaze to give your projects a great shine. It really is all you need to hold the heaviest embellishment to your project.

This is a collage card I made using Glossy Accents to give everything on the card a great glossy coverage.

The card has an angled front panel and I used some cool Australian stamps to feature in the collage. The card was a project in Get Creative magazine in Australia. You can find detailed instructions for making it here. 

Packing tape transfer card

 

I made this  bon voyage card for Get Creative magazine as a simple way to show how easy it is to make image transfers from plain old clear packing tape. I think I used tape I bought from the Post Office – talk about easy to find! It also uses thick twill tape punched with heavy duty sewing eyelets and those metal tags you can get that I seem to have a heap of and never use very much.

Here you simply pull the insides out of the tags and replace them with your transfer. The instructions are on the Spotlight web site here: Image Transfer Card.

Another cover - and I'm hooked

I am officially addicted to having my art appear on magazine covers.

I get such a trip from seeing my work there. This month, Get Creative in Australia has my 3D popup birthday cake card on the cover. I really hoped I would get this cover. The article was perfectly timed, it is the magazine's birthday issue and this cake card is so wonderful.

While paper engineering isn't my forte, this card came together so well and it really is a very smart design. It folds flat and then assembles with two pieces of double sided tape - how cool is that. It comes complete with its own built in candle! It features papers from the wonderful Sassafras Lass collection too.

If you're in Australia, you'll find it at good newsagents and Spotlight stores. Inside, in addition to a template and instructions for the card, I also have a rebuilt notebook project and a method for making cute scrunchy wire beads using packing peanuts.

Enjoy!

I'm a cover junkie

It's confession time, I am a total cover junkie.

It gets like this, you know your stuff will be in a certain magazine in a certain month so that is, pretty much a given. What you don't know is when you will get a cover. It might be a line or two describing your project, it might be a small image or it might be the whole enchilada.

It's the first thing I look for - did I get a cover?

This month, when the September preview issue of Get Creative arrived from Australia, I knew I had some fun pieces. One of them is a minibook on graffiti and I had 'altered' my face in a photo giving myself glasses and a moustache and goatee beard. They published it all! And I had this wonderful painted card which I love more than nearly anything I have done before and a cute felt necklace. But no cover..

Well, it took me about half a dozen times of looking at the cover before I realised OMG I got the whole enchilada! My necklace was the lead photo on the cover - I'd been looking at the panels down the side but there it was! How cool is that?

I loved this necklace and lived with making it through Photoshop World in Orlando and a flight to New Orleans and back. I'd pack a mini sewing kit with all my felt pieces, fiber fill and beads and take it with me. I'd sit on the plane or waiting for classes and sew darts into felt, sew and fill I don't know how many felt strawberries, I'd bead them then top them with little stalks. It took weeks of 'filler' time to complete. And was it worth it? Yeah! it looked so cute on the cover.

Inside they described it as having "an innocent retro charm" - I was so stoked that they 'got it' and they saw it for what it was and went with it. I love these folks, they make a great magazine which gets better each month and they are committed to showcasing a range of stuff from very current mainstream to some funky cool ideas. I don't know if Australian crafters know what a gem of a magazine this is, if you're an Aussie crafter, I suggest you check it out.

Get Creative - Feb 08 cover

Opening the mags that come in each month is always exciting as I love to see how my stuff has photographed.

February was a special month as I didn't even have to open Get Creative from Australia to see one of my pieces - I just love getting covers! And all the more so when they are unexpected like this was.

The photos in this book were taken at Jen's wedding last year and, within a week made into this box and on their way to Australia for the Valentine's issue. Thank goodness her wedding was in September - even a month later and it would have been too late!

The book is really a box that opens out flat with photos around the outside and inside edges and a mini concertina book folded inside it. I struggled a bit getting it to work. I opened one box, covered it and then tried to put the lid back on and nada! Not only wouldn't it fold nicely but also, the lid wasn't going back on anytime soon!

Second try (No. 2 box), I cut and re-folded the box, tested the lid, then adhered the cover paper (retested the lid), and held it until it all set. That time it worked and the look dictated a shabby chic sort of effect which my editor obviously liked!

I'm now all out of .25in black dymo tape so that's back on my shopping list.