What to do with all those empty toilet paper rolls?

You are going to want to make one of these for sure!!!  I had so much fun...just giggling every step of the way!!!  Yes....toilet paper rolls.  Start by flattening them with your bone folder, then adhering paper all the way around.  I  used my xyron 910 for this and loved it!  Then use your bind-it-all to punch holes in the end.  Distress ink all the edges, assemble it and start decorating.

That's a dress form shaped paper clip on the left.  With a stamped face on the top.  Graphic 54 paper and stamps.  Lots of die cuts and stickler.

The paper is "Princes Diary" and I just laughed....a diary out of empty TP rolls?  Just perfect!!!
After all, they do call it a "throne", don't they???

Tags fit perfectly inside the rolls, so just cut paper and cover and add embellishments

You can save spots for journaling, or decorate each page with images cut from the paper

The lace on the far right is a paper die cut

I diecut the dressform in clear acrylic, then inked it with alcohol inks

Ah!  IF you are going to use toilet paper rolls, then  you must do something with the toilet paper!!!  So this is just a fun decoupage tag using toilet paper like you'd use tissue paper to make the crinkles.  Again, I just sat  here and laughed!!!  Who on earth would decoupage with toilet paper???  I sort of like the "end" results!  :)

And just to add a little class, this is a fine silver (Art Clay Silver) die cut dragon fly.  Best not toss this into the trash!

Diecuts behind inked flowers.  I buy them all in white so I can color as I want.

Just love these cut-apart flourish die cuts

More tags made from the same line of paper

Of course, when you ink a paper, it can change what it originally looked like into something so much more colorful!

This pocket has a dressform tag

Really, I promise....toilet paper rolls!

Willing to give it a try?  You could make one and put your 12 tags of 2012 in it!  Much smaller tags, of course....but what a great way to display them!

I gave this as a gift to  my dear friend Judy at Stamp of Excellence.  Come visit and look at it in person!!

A tag for mom

One of my readers sent this bookmark for mom and I wanted to share it.

She loved it when I gave it to her and it's in her Bible now.  Maggie, thank you!!!  I need to get busy and make some as well!!!

Did you ever have one of those days?

Yesterday, I promised to blog the creative process, including my mistakes.  Did my subconscious know something was up???  I woke up to snow.  Ok, you simply cannot create when it's this gloomy outside.  I don't want snow.  I'm too old for snow.  It makes my arthritis hurt.  So of course, my day started off with me in a mood!

But then I happily cut out envelops, tags and pockets from all my revised templates I made yesterday....I was on a roll. Still hadn't decided to ink, pain, or what....but I had stuff to play with!

So I thought, how about decorative punches in the corners?  Of course, my very first punch didn't work and I had to completely tear the corner to get it out.  (Never fear...I'll patch it up!)

Then I decided to try a decorative punch across the top....and it simply didn't punch....

Not only that, but when I tried to open the punch, it literally fell apart!!!

So I pulled out a different punch.....and the same thing happened. You think this is some kind of karma?  Is someone telling me to go back to bed?

Nothing punched and they both just kept falling apart!

So I literally threw them in the trash!!!  I am too old to sit and try to get broken tools to work.  And I'm sure I could have E6000'd them back together.....but no....trash looks good to me!

And in the process of picking paper out of the punches....I broke my needle tool.  (top one).  Fortunately, Amaco has been quite generous to me and I have another tool to work with.  I do love Amaco!!!

At this point, I thought I'd switch gears and paint some of the envelopes.  You guessed it, first 3 jars of paint I opened....ALL dried up!  Hmmmm.....guess I don't use paint that much?  So I ran some water in them, mixed them up, will let them set overnight......praying that tomorrow is a "new" day!

Can't paint, can't punch....I next decided to teadye some stuff.  Well, I did that way before we had Ranger and color wash and distress inks.  Just add Nestea and water....guess what, it still works!

from this rather bright pink and green (have you decided that's my color scheme for this project?)

to a very toned down, tanned piece of satin....

I covered the entire cooktop counter with freezer wrap.....and guess what?  I ran out of freezer wrap!  I am thinking that I need to run to the grocery and NOT buy freezer wrap....just get chocolate!  LOLOL!!!  But then....remember...it's snowing outside....I don't even want chocolate "that" bad!

The good thing?  The cooktop is covered and none of this will be dry til morning.  So I told Kerry he has to take me out to dinner tonight!  LOLOL!  Oh my!  You should have seen the look on his face!

So while I haven't had a very creative day, the word "creative" does have multiple meanings and I was pretty creative at getting out of cooking dinner tonight!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll make better progress!

Getting ready to play

It's time to play again!  I've got stacks of Heidi Swapp paper....and I see that everything is going glitter these days, so I decided to bling up what I have.  The paper by itself is gorgeous....but is it ever enough?

Things to do to alter it:
Hand cut fancy edges (above)
Add stickles dots.....

glitter up the butterflies (the paper comes with the butterflies pre-cut to pop up

outline the veins of the butterflies with glitter:

why is it that cameras just don't photo bling???

Just so pretty!

Loads of glitter on this page.....and what will it become?  I haven't the foggiest!  But this is how "my" creative process works...

I go through my paper and pull out what I think looks good together.  Then I decide if I'm going to ink it, bling it, cut it, paint it....

and if I'm going to make a card, a journal, a scrapbook page.....

I've decided this is going to be a journal.....with loads of tags.....probably shabby chic. I love mint and pink together...

and because today was our first day of snow I decided to "think spring".....I just don't like snow much any more.  But in the summer, when it's boiling hot, that's when I like to "think snow"!

So the next step is to decide if I want to ink the pages...and I think I might like just a faint dusting of ink around the edges.  But do I ink in pink and green....or in white for a shabby look?  or in tea stained browns to give it a vintage look?  Hmmmm.....I think I'll have to sleep on that one!

I'm also planning to do a lot of pockets in this journal.  There's an old post that I wrote (eons ago) that has some hand sketched envelope and pocket templates.  It has been looked at more than any other blog I've written.  So I'm in the process of drawing the templates in a much better format so we could actually print, cut and use them!

If (and that's a huge "if") this turns out like I visualize it in my head, I should be able to make 20 kits and put them in my etsy store for sale.  But I thought it might be fun to blog the creative process of how I put something together.  And yes, I promise to write about the mistakes as well!!!  Trust me....there are always plenty of mistakes!

Nesting Nestabilities, part 2

Yesterday, I showed how to fold the Nestabilities circle die into a cute flower on a tag. I do think you can nest and fold these into unlimited ways. I have a tiny amount of experience with origami, and decided to play some more with this concept.

Once again, start with a half folded circle. Same products, inks, papers as yesterday. You want to bone fold this crease.



Fold up in half again, but do not bone fold or score this fold line.



Pretend the center of the straight side is letter B. One end is letter A and the other end is letter C. The center of the scalloped edge is D.

You want to fold from D, straight down to B. But because this is the scalloped edge you ar folding, don't worry about getting it perfect. Just fold it over like this!




Fold the other side up the same way. They will overlap. Looks a little like a heart.



Open up the scallops and fold the center top down. Again, Don't crease any of this, just do it with our hands. You don't want a scored fold....just what I call a soft fold.



Definitely time for a manicure! LOL! OK, from another angle...open the scallops and fold in the tips



Do that to both sides:



Pull the centers up and it should look just like this. You can shape it to look more like a petal like this:



Look what happens if you set these as a square. Hmmm....I might have to do something with this!




This is 3 circles folded:




This is 4 circles folded:



Next I used the Sizzix scalloped tag die in my Wizard and then embossed it with the new music embossing folder from Cuttlebug in the Wizard. No look at this. Do you see my intentional mistakes?



The paper is upside down and it is debossed, not embossed. Seriously. Would you purposely do this all backwards and upside down? Well, why not? It makes you step outside your box and see things a little differently. Hold on, I think you might like it!

Attach the flower. I decided to go back to just 3 circles. I like it much better



Add a stamp, som swirl stamps, some fiber, and those are vintage paper flowers in the center of the nested nestabilities.



So, upside down paper, debossed music score, stamps, and nested nestabilities. Would you rather make this tag at the show in San Diego? And don't you dare email and tell me you want ot make both tags! There's just not enough time! LOLOL!!!