Craftzine.com blog: CRAFT Projects Archives

Archive: CRAFT Projects

February 9, 2010

How-To: Make a Love Shrine

How-To Tuesdays

CRAFT is celebrating love, glitter, and craftiness with the Crafty Chica Love Shrine Challenge. Preserve your memories and tell your love story by building a shrine that creatively reflects your personality and expresses your hopes and dreams.This type of project is all about personal self expression. I began by digging through my collections of postcards and love letters. I sifted through my memories, photo by photo, reveling in the nostalgia of my drawings and notes from days gone by.

Certain things caught my eye, and whatever inspired me was set into a pile. Then I collected all the little treasures that I've gathered over the years — things like old wooden letters from a printing press, the tiny ceramic deer that my grandmother gave me, and a little gift box with a perfect bow. Finally, I went through my craft supplies and pulled ribbons, fabric flowers, pieces of bark, feathers, and seashells. Distill the materials that you've collected into themes. Look for common threads in your items that tell a single story. I didn't have any expectations for an outcome, and I started by just pairing up colors, textures, and associations. I found three distinct stories in my materials, and then selected the core "anchor" pieces for each shrine. Everything went into a big pile on my work surface, and I sat down with a drink and my current favorite playlist on the stereo.

This week I will share each love shrine and my step-by-step process for creating it. I hope that you will join our challenge and make your own individual shrine and add it to the Crafty Chica Challenge Flickr pool. Be sure to include a little story that describes your intentions. The reward is the beautiful shrine, but winners will be chosen to receive great ilovetocreate prizes too.

Read full story »

February 8, 2010

Quilling 101

My Paper Heart

By Ann Martin

Quilling, the coiling and shaping of narrow paper strips to create a design, has been around for years — hundreds, in fact. During the Renaissance, nuns and monks would roll gold-gilded paper remnants trimmed during the bookmaking process, and use them to decorate religious objects as an alternative to costly gold filigree. Quilling later became a pastime of 18th and 19th century young ladies in England, who would decorate tea caddies and pieces of furniture with paper filigree. The practice crossed the Atlantic with colonists, who added quilling to candle sconces and trays as home decorations.

In all of that time the process has remained very much the same, but quilling designs and specialty supplies have definitely caught up to the 21st century. Today some aficionados focus on making incredibly detailed 3-D figures, while others favor wall-sized museum installations. Perhaps quilling is best known, though, as a way of bringing personality to handmade cards.

The short list of necessities includes strips of lightweight paper, glue, and a tool with which to roll the paper — that's it! Even better, there's probably no need to shop for supplies before you try quilling, as a bamboo skewer, round toothpick, or even a cake tester from your kitchen drawer can serve as a substitute tool. Cut your own practice strips from a sheet of ordinary computer paper, using a paper cutter.

Many arts and crafts stores sell basic tools and packages of multicolor paper strips. Beautiful papers and other quilling supplies are available from online suppliers. Oh, and lastly, one requirement that's not available for purchase, but will also be needed, is a fair amount of patience. With a little practice, however, I can almost predict you'll find quilling to be creatively satisfying and fun.

Quilling101 Sampleshapes
The projects in this article feature the teardrop coil, but there are many other intriguing shapes to try — marquises, arrowheads, holly leaves, and all sorts of beautiful scrolls, just to name a few.

Read on for the full Quilling 101 and featured Valentine's Day project tutorials.

About the Author:
Author Annmartin
Ann Martin of all things paper is a quilling enthusiast who loves introducing the craft to others. She teaches, designs projects for books and magazines, and is especially hooked on making paper filigree jewelry.

February 4, 2010

Valentine Tea

By Jessica Wilson

Wanna give your valentine a sweet cuppa lurve? All you have to do is create your own dazzling wee tea bag full of goodness. Here's how!

Read full story »

February 3, 2010

Mixed Media Valentine Applique

With Valentine's Day upon us I thought I'd make a project that would be a fun gift for your valentine. This mixed media appliqué project was inspired by the "I Love You" fabric used for the man's face. I found it on Etsy and almost immediately knew what I wanted to do with it. He has "I Love You" written all over his face, as he blushes with emotion — his mood perfectly fits the holiday. The end result looks a little like David Duchovney, doesn't it?

Materials

Photograph or drawing you like You can also download a PDF template of the image I used.
Marker layout or tracing paper
Red, pink, or orange fabric with a Valentine's-themed print
Off-white silk organza
Wool felt in pink, brown, black, and blue
White cotton canvas
Black thread
White silk thread
Medium brown thread
Dritz Stitch Witchery

Tools

Pencil
Computer
Scanner
Printer
Tracing wheel
White tracing paper
White wax pencil
Scissors
Sewing machine
Needle
Iron
Read full story »

February 2, 2010

Flashback: Woven Map Basket

Maps can be amazing design elements, with all their intricately drawn lines and minute details. But what do you do with a regular paper map that is starting to fall apart from use? In CRAFT Volume 05, crafter Jane Patrick suggested we weave maps into baskets, a fun and interesting way to reuse castoffs and weave a little memory into a functional item. Check out her full tutorial here and pick up a back issue of CRAFT Volume 05, the Paper issue, in the Maker Shed.

Woven Memory Basket
Weave your vacation road maps into an attractive souvenir.
By Jane Patrick

Think of basketry as three-dimensional weaving. If you ever wove paper as a child, that's the basis for this plaited basket. You begin by weaving a flat base, and then upturn the strips (called stakes or weavers) to make the sides, in what is referred to as bias plaiting. You'll be surprised by how sturdy your paper basket will be.

Baskets can be called a true handcraft because almost any basket you'll see anywhere in the world has been woven by hand. It's one craft they just haven't learned to make well by machine.

This project repurposes maps from your travels to weave a practical, attractive basket full of memories of trips taken and experiences had along the way.

Read full story »

Valentine Day Paper Cupcake Toppers

What's better than glitter, hearts, cupcakes and Valentine's Day? A cupcake topped with glitter and hearts FOR Valentine's Day, that's what.

Read full story »

How-To: Velvet Charm Brocade Necklace

How-To Tuesdays

Last week I shared a necklace that I made using some brocade and velvet scraps and simple chains. I love this piece, but I made it in a true creative moment with no camera in hand to capture the steps. Today I've finally got a tutorial to put up. I'm not a jewelry maker, and only have simple tools, so there could be better ways to work, but this is how I put it all together. Simple but gorgeous!

Read full story »

February 1, 2010

Valentine Heart Leis

Cz Valentines-Deer

By Marie LeBaron

My Paper Heart

These fun heart-shaped leis are helping to spread Valentine's cheer. They are the perfect activity for your child's classroom party or to make ahead of time to give out as Valentines.

Read full story »

January 28, 2010

Fabric Corkboard Mosaic

CRAFT: Make Space for Crafting

By Jessica Wilson

Here's a fun and easy project that is multipurpose. Use it to display your favorite fabrics and to keep track of your notes, photos and other bits of inspiration. I got my cork trivets from Ikea but you can find them online and in various retail shops. For smaller fabric scraps and/or space, substitute the trivets for coasters.

Read full story »

January 27, 2010

Gingered Carrot Muffins

In the Kitchen

One of the best ways I've found to introduce new foods to my picky eater is by incorporating the new food into something we both know he already likes. In this case: muffins. A few of our successful experiments have been: Brown Sugar Pear Muffins, Zucchini Apple Spice Muffins, and Apple Banana Muffins. This way he is able to try a new food in a comfortable setting. I often don't mention what the change is. Instead I simply ask, "Would you like a muffin?" The answer is usually yes. If he asks what kind they are, I don't try to hide it. Luckily though, he often doesn't ask until he's already tried the muffin and has decided that it's a winner. Then it's just too late to bother making a big deal out of eating something he didn't like. If he doesn't ask, then I'll ask him how he liked the muffin and then tell him what special ingredient was in it. Often the response is, "Wow! I like bananas!"

This time I wanted to try carrots with him, so I adapted a previous picky-kid-approved muffin experiment into a new recipe. He instantly saw the carrots after the first bite and wasn't too impressed with them, but it didn't bother him enough to get upset. The rest of the family definitely enjoyed these muffins for our breakfast dinner last night.

Read full story »

January 26, 2010

Flashback: Get a Rise Out of Sourdough

When the weather is cold and wet outside, one of my favorite things to eat is a nice hot bowl of veggie chili with a fresh slice of buttered sourdough. Mmmmmm, sourdough! Back in CRAFT Volume 04, San Francisco-based writer and "fermented-food devotee" Eric Smilie offered his clear and easy sourdough bread recipe. Check it out in this week's Flashback and get your bake on. You can also still pick up the full back issue of CRAFT Volume 04 over in the Maker Shed.

Get a Rise Out of Sourdough
The yeasty way to a truly good loaf.
By Eric Smillie

My heart sank as I stared at the dark, deflated crust, hardly the loaf I had hoped to bake using wild yeast from a home-fermented starter. I needed help. I found clarity in Laura McNall, a baker for 22 years with the Cheese Board Collective, a worker-owned cheese shop and bakery in Berkeley, Calif., that uses more than a dozen 14-pound buckets of sourdough starter every day. "When you're dealing with fermentation," consoles McNall, "it's alive and it's got a life of its own ... Sometimes it doesn't work out." Eventually, however, it did. Now my only problem is keeping my tangy sourdough loaves out of the hands of my ravenous roommates.

Materials

For the starter:
Flour
Filtered, non-chlorinated water

For the bread:
Active starter within half a day of climax
Unbleached white flour
2 tsp kosher salt

The magic of sourdough is that you can leaven bread with a culture of yeast and lactobacillus (the same bacteria that turn milk into cheese) drawn from thin air, just by mixing flour and water in a glass jar. The yeast creates gluten and makes the dough rise, while the bacteria produce acid that imparts a distinct flavor and keeps spoiling microbes at bay.

Every place has its own airborne microorganism population, and each can give rise to a starter with a unique character, says sourdough sage Ed Wood, the author of Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker's Handbook. Wood has been baking for some 50 years and sells heirloom starters collected from places like South Africa and Italy through Sourdoughs International (sourdo.com). Contrary to popular belief, he says, a starter can travel. Some people think "that if you send a culture somewhere else in the world, it will be contaminated by the local flora and fauna," he says. "That, basically, is a lot of baloney."

Once established, a healthy starter can last forever. Wood claims he collected a starter in Giza, Egypt, that hadn't changed much since about 2500 BC. The oldest sourdough cultures are in the Middle East, and, he adds, "by and large, were passed from father to son for hundreds of years." Here's how to start an heirloom of your very own.

Read full story »

How-To: Add Style to Your Storage

How-To Tuesdays

"A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." I love to reward myself for little successes, and that especially goes for cleaning, organizing, and other household chores. My prejudice against keeping things neat is simple: I want to skip the cleaning up and move straight to the next fun thing. I think that many people have the same issue. So I've resorted to treating myself with storage that is more stylish, more interesting, and, in turn, more fun. The trick is balancing the crafting with the cleaning. I worked this project with a 50/50 time ratio: 1 hour decorating then 1 hour getting my act together. I hope that my little labels and boxes inspire you, and I also would love to hear about your tricks for motivation in the comments, and see your own storage in the CRAFT Flickr pool!

Read full story »

CRAFT Projects Home | Next >