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Gift Wrapping

Jive Turkey: Kid’s Art Turned into a Seriously Cool Thanksgiving Centerpiece

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Do you have a lot of leftover kid’s art hanging around the house?

Because I sure do.

I don’t even have any kids and my place is littered with gobs of their paintings, drawings and doodles.

People just give it to me. Everywhere. They know I love it, and more importantly, they don’t have the heart to throw out their children’s art work. They would rather give it to me, their token hoarding friend.

Nice.

With all the munchkin art on my mind and in my house, I decided to do a new version of the old classic Hand Turkey, but, instead of tracing my hand on a single plate and filling in the fingers with color, I decided to cut out lots of hands and cobble them together into one monster turkey masterpiece. The end result is a cross between my previous post Cher and Ruffled Chicken, and a Turkey Table Topper from Disney’s Family Fun Magazine.  The end result is seriously impressive, and even better — the process to make it could not be easier!

Best part? Total cost on this: Zero Dollars.  That’s right folks, you own all this stuff already. No kid’s art laying around, use scraps from some other project.  Or food wrappers. Or cereal boxes. Or make some….

Create the foundation by stapling paper plates to the shoe box. Click here to see a handy diagram for the folks at Family Fun. Their pictures explain it better than I ever will. 
Note: Any sort of paper based kids art will work with this project, but I suggest using thicker pieces if possible (think construction paper or heavier). Paper plate doodles are excellent. If you have lots of light-weight paper, I suggest decoupaging wrapping paper onto the back to stiffen things up. Everything with a white back will need a quick smear of paint — I like watercolor, but you use whatever you have on hand (no pun intended).
Technically, you can skip the glazing and the curling, especially if you are working with impatient munchkins, but I think they add a special touch. Plus, the Mod Podge will strengthen and protect each hand, turning this from a one-time craft into a lifelong family keepsake. Something you can keep out on the coffee table every November. Because that’s just what your livingroom needs — a giant, sparkling turkey.  
Oh hush. I know you want it.
The final product came out far more impressive than I imagined. Initially I thought I would make this as a gift for my friends, the parents who gave me much of the art I used along the way…but now I see the end result, this turkey is not going anywhere. This one is a keeper! 

Cultural Osmosis

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Last Saturday morning, without even thinking, I grabbed a bunch of paper bags, cut some spirals, and went to town wrapping a waffle iron as a bridal shower gift that afternoon (read: I was in a rush and had given up on trying to make a waffle iron look cute). No idea what I was doing, I just had a mission and ‘brown spirals’ on the brain. Twenty minutes later a parcel emerged looking swell, and yet, slightly familiar.

Fast forward to this morning, as was uploading my photos to Flickr while reading the news, the picture above flashed up in contrast with Princess Beatrice’s celebrated (and hated) Flying Spaghetti Monster Hat. 
AND LOOK Y’ALL, THEY COULD BE SISTERS. But this sister is a waffle iron. Who knew?
Isn’t it crazy how these ideas seep into our subconscious and come out in the funniest places? I had no clue I was wrapping that waffle iron Flying Spaghetti Monster style. Guess there is no getting away from cultural osmosis. 
  

DIY Custom Patterned Paper Tape

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Years ago, tape came in two varieties: clear and semi-clear. Vanilla colored masking tape was relegated to garage sales and cardboard boxes. Duct tape was something people used to attach broken-off rear-view mirrors.

…But somewhere along the way folks realized they could get colored tape in the electrical section down at the hardware store. Then some crazy kids made prom dresses out of duct tape. Then it was only a matter of time until some fancy stationary suppliers started printing patterned tape….and before you know it, it’s 2005 and  I’m standing in line paying $7.00 for a roll of aqua blue polka dotted tape, a roll which remains, to this day, untouched.

Don’t judge.

Those little polka dots are too precious to waste!

I felt so clever when I came up with this idea last week….then I googled around and discovered, well, I’m not so clever after all.

Several people have made their own fabric tape, mostly using glue to adhere to another base, (I’m especilly fond of this one from Annekata, btw, gosh what a lovely blog)…No doubt the paper tape and glue approach is an excellent way to go, however, I am lazy and have no problem shelling out $3.00 for a large sheet of double-sided contact paper knowing it will give me 30+yards of custom tape.

Aren’t you impressed with my math skills? I sure am.

Double sided adhesive paper is the critical component to this project. You’ll find it in art supply stores in the drafting section, or in the scrap book section at most craft stores. It looks just like regular contact paper, only it’s sticky on both sides.


Because the adhesive will stick to everything, you can make your custom tape from just about anything; paper, fabric, faux fur, chocolate wrappers, raffle tickets….I’ll show you something fun with faux fur in a couple days 🙂


To demonstrate, I started out with a piece of double sided adhesive paper and a piece of decorative paper, roughly the same size.

Remove one layer of protective coating from the double-sided adhesive paper and use a ruler or bone folder to adhere it to the backside of the decorative paper.

Decide how thick you want your tape and mark lines accordingly. I chose to have my tape the same width as my ruler.

I told you I was lazy.

Use a scissor or an exacto to cut the strips. And yes, some of us have scissors with painted tips. It’s a pretty thing.

Make it easy on yourself down the road and use the tip of some dull scissors to score the waxy backside of the tape. This will make it easier to remove the backing later on when you want to expose the stickiness.

Two bucks says my friend Jillian is still sniggering at the term waxy backside.

I haven’t figured out a great way to store the tape just yet (ideas anyone?) Spools seem tricky so for now, I’m just pinning the stack against the wall so I can snip pieces as needed.
Now comes the fun part -making more stuff so there will be little gifties to wrap up and give away.
Hooray!

One-on-One Challenge with Michele: Gift Wrap

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Michele is one of my favorite bloggers. I think I have sung her praises before, but I can’t help it. Every time I go to her site I come away with a dozen ideas on what to make next. She is like a sugar rush of creativity. 
A few weeks ago we decided to challenge each other to find new a glorious ways to celebrate something leftover from Christmas. Something wasteful. Something in abundance. What could be better than gift wrap!
The rules of the challenge were wonderfully open ended. As Michele explains 

“We emailed back and forth. Picked a day (today). Decided on a challenge. Created a post with a link to the challenger’s post, and that’s it! Now all you do is check out what I made, check out what Peaches made, and Bob’s your uncle, your work is done! No winners, no losers, just happy happy all around.”

HaHa “No winners, no losers” she says. Michele is diplomatic. It’s easy to be that way when you are clearly the winner. Just wait until you click here to see Michele’s AMAZING Childhood Charms. They are like happy little stained glass pieces made from her children’s drawings. Stunning.

I like my plaid bowl just dandy but honestly, it could not be more plain jane next to Michele’s project. I’m OK with it, but honestly, it has been a long time since anyone has out-glammed me. A LONG TIME. Something tells me I will be eating sequins with supper tonight!

Well, today’s challenge clearly boils down to form vs. function. And while my giant plaid produce bowl isn’t nearly as snazzy as Michele’s charms, it is something I have been hankering to make for years. Years I tell you! I have wanted a giant pedestal bowl to keep on my kitchen table, to hold fruit and veggies that don’t go in the fridge… problem with giant bowls is that they usually come with a giant footprint and take up half my table. No good. Enter paper mache!

Materials

  • One old beat up paper lantern 
  • One large chili bowl (you can skip this if you don’t want it to be a pedestal bowl)
  • duct tape
  • flour
  • water
  • carpenter’s wood glue or mod podge
  • A Whole Boat Load of leftover wrapping paper, including some brown craft paper or old paper bags (for the base layer)

Warning
This project is messy and takes a while. The kind f thing you do for 30 minutes a day, every day over the course of a week. The goods news is, this project is hard to mess up and kids love to help out. Just be sure they don’t expect immediate results. This one drags out a bit but the rewards are beautiful and will last a long time 🙂

1. Make a paper mache paste. My typical recipe is: one cup flour + two cups water stirred constantly over low heat for two minutes….but you can also buy it commercially or just google up our own recipe.
2. For the base layer, run brown paper under the faucet to moisten. Squish, crumple and tear into pieces no larger than your hand.
3. Put all your pieces the paste pot and beat it around with a wooden spoon (note: kids LOVE this step!)
4. One by one pull pieces from the pot and use your fingers to ensure they are fully coated (Note: kids LOVE this step even more!)

5. Prop your lantern up on an old bowl. Be prepared for a mess. As you can see, I left my kitchen messy to match the craft today. Yeah, that’s it.
6. Lay pieces on the lantern, overlapping heavily. Let it dry thoroughly.
7. Once dry, use scissors to cut the lantern in half.  Now you have your basic bowl shape in place and you can go back and repeat steps 1-4 with wrapping paper, building layers as you go. The more layers, the stronger the bowl. If your bowl is going to be just for decorative purposes, you could probably get away with just a layer of craft paper and single layer of wrapping paper, but since mine is going to hold some heavy duty fruit and veg, I made 5 layers over the course of a week.

8. Cover/Reinforce holes using paper plates and duct tape.
9. Duct tape a chili bowl to the bottom of the larger lantern bowl. Note: Any bowl will do the job, but try to choose something heavy enough to balance the weight of whatever you plan to put in the bowl. 
10. After your final layer of wrapping paper is on and 100% dry (at least 24 hours dry or in the oven at 200F for 30 minutes)…coat your bowl with a water-resistant sealer. I like to use a 50/50 mix of mod podge and water, but I recall my old art teacher saying a 50/50 blend of wood glue and water is a far more thorough sealer. Wood glue can also give a slight yellowy-antiquey finish that is really nice for certain things.
11. And there you have it!  A happy and robust, not to mention PLAID produce bowl you can use all year round! 
With this little challenge project, I have saved space, found storage, utilized some otherwise discarded paper, and had such a fun time working with Michele!  Again, I urge you to check out her AMAZING Childhood Charms and leave a comment on either of our sites. There is no winner here (ahem!) but y’all are certainly welcome to weigh in 🙂  Many thanks to Michele for coming up with this wonderful idea!  Until next time….

Snowstorm on a String: $3 and 10 minutes (updated!)

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Do y’all know Tord Boontje? He’s a Dutch designer and just about my favorite living *artist. Have you seen his stuff? If not, you should take a look.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you.

One of Boontje’s best known commercial pieces in this beautiful Garland Light. If you have visited a museum gift shop in the last 4 years, you have probably seen one in person. They usually retail for around $100.00, which is surprisingly affordable considering all the awards its won, but still, I knew I could make one for less. Actually, $97 less.

Yup, this light cost exactly $3.00 and all materials can be purchased from the dollar store, or in my case, Ikea.

Materials:

  • $1.00, string of white twinkle lights (50 bulbs)
  • $2.00, two wire garlands (5 yards each, 30′ total)
  • Free, one wire coat hanger (I like the skinny white ones)
  • Free, dental floss or thread to hang

No tutorial here. It came on me like a bolt of thunder and I didn’t bother to document along the way. It’s just as well because it is SO EASY. This is one project that would be hard to mess up, but just in case, I’ll break it down.

  • Disassemble your wire coat hanger and wrap it around an old vase or pot, forming a very loose cylindrical shape.
  • Cut your wire garland into 20″ stretches, bending them in half and twisting onto the coat hanger. Repeat.
  • Hang your twinkle lights down the center of the cylinder, occasionally using the garland to twist and shape it to the coat hanger.
  • Curl the ends of the wire around the neck of an old bottle.
  • Tada!

Hope that makes sense. This took about ten minutes, so if it’s not clear and anyone needs a full a photo tutorial, let me know. I’m not opposed to making another one down the road 🙂

You know, I made this as a Xmas decoration, but I like it so much that it might stay up all year round. Or what about using colored metallic garland as a New Years party chandelier? Or what about making a pink one for a little girl’s room? Or what about one big magnificent ball of collected garlands hanging in your powder room?…You could add to it as years go by and eventually people would start giving you gifts just so they could wrap the box in wire garland and contribute to the fun!

You see, it’s not just a party chandelier, it’s the gift that keeps on giving!

The white leaf garland above came from Ikea and retails for 49cents a bolt, year round. If I get my act together and get back to Ikea, I might just make this lamp a twin sister and hang them on either side on the bed. Or what about three of them hanging above a long, rectangular dining table?  Oops, I better get a long rectangular dining room first 🙂

* sadly, in the realm of “living artists” –the painting cat does not count.

UPDATE 12/17/10: several people asked me to clarify some points on this project. Apparently it’s a little more confusing than I thought. I didn’t have time to recreate from scratch, but I took some photos that might help illustrate  the process…

 Start with a base shape of strong wire shaped into a funnel/tornado shape. If you have a hard time making a circular shape, use a pot or vase for help.

 Wired Garland is cheap and plentiful this time of year. Look for non-holiday stuff and you can hang it up all year long. Get at least 30′ or (that’s about 10 meters, right?) …the more the better.

 You will need a strand of twinkle lights. Chord or battery operated…you decide, just be sure if you are using paper garland that it doesn’t generate a lot of heat.

Note: As I have had this piece for a few weeks, I have seen it in the day often enough to realize it really doesn’t “need” lights at all.  It’s pretty cool as a simple decorative object all by itself.

 Wrap some of the garland around your wire base. If your base shape is droopy, use the garland to shape/support the base how you want it.

 Once your base is set, cut up the rest of your wire garland into 20″ (or so) pieces.

 Use the 20″ pieces to twist and attach the Christmas lights to the inside of the funnel/base shape. Just tack it in 3 or 4 spots, no big deal.

 Attach the rest of the 20″ pieces by twisting them onto the base wire. They will stick out and look odd –don’t worry, that’s a good thing.

Now use the neck of a bottle to curl the ends of your wire pieces. Don’t make them all crazy tight like you are curling your bangs for the friggin prom. Just round them off a little to give them some shape. By the time you are done with ALL of them, it will look like a mass of swirling snow drifts. Wahoo!

Friday Flowers: Dahlia Gift Bags

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Inspiration strikes in funny places. These gift bags were inspired by three things this week…
  1. Birthdays. Lots of them lately. Apparently I am drawn to Pisces. Who knew?
  2. Dahlias. Specifically THIS story on Design*Sponge on the glory of dahlias, courtesy of Studio Choo. Gahhhh, aren’t they gorgeous?! What would I would give to live in a floral studio like that…
  3. Buttermints. Do you know about buttermints? I think they might be a Southern thing. Or maybe an old lady thing. They aren’t so popular anymore…

Buttermints are those powdery, pastel colored candies that melt in your mouth. You used to see in a big bowl on the hostess table at restaurants, or, if you came over to Grandnana’s house, you would see little piles of them in cupcake liners all over the place…the coffee table, the end tables, the dining table, the breakfast table, the ledge in the hall, by the front door…even on the back of the toilet tank.

Help Me Rhonda, how that woman loved her buttermints.

She thought keeping them in a single candy bowl would breed germs, so she used little disposable cups instead. Not a bad idea, only problem was, Grandnanna was obsessive about everything matching. It would be a cold day in July before a blue cupcake liner made it into her pink kitchen. The woman refused to serve food with ketchup at the kitchen table because it clashed with the décor. I’m not even kidding.

Needless to say, she always kept a variety of cupcake liners on hand. They didn’t make a lot of color/pattern options back then, so if you saw something nifty you just picked them up and saved them until Grandnanna’s birthday. She would get mad if you bought her a real gift, but simple indulgences like cupcake liners and heavy duty aluminum foil were greatly appreciated.

Ramble Ramble Ramble…because I inherited every breed of crazy from Grandnanna, it’s only natural I also inhereted some of her cupcake liners and started a collection on my own. Eventually the collection got so big I had to curb it by setting a $1.00 a packet limit on all new acquisitions. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, the fancy department store down the street, the one with the great kitchenware departments where I’m always buying registry gifts, is always selling cupcake liners on clearance and they are always priced 89cents. Polka dots, checks, and stripes…it’s different every time. I can never pass them up. One time, I passed up on buying some Laura Ashley style pink pansy print cupcake liners, and I swear to you, an hour later I was craving buttermints so bad I had to take two buses to get to a greasy-spoon diner where they keep them at the hostess stand.

It was totally worth it.

Making these is so easy. Just grab a lunch sac, some twine, hot glue, and of course, cupcake liners! I make bag handles just by gluing the twine to the inside of the bag. This is gift wrap y’all, no need for long term quality here.

If you want to be thorough about things, use an existing shopping bag like the white one above. Whatever you do, don’t just go out and buy a gift bag! True Craftmeisters never buy bags or ribbon. It’s the law, y’all.

Ruffles work wonders! Just pinch a cupcake liner or two and hot glue to end of some rustic old twine. Ta Da!

Friday Flowers: Riboon Rose Rehersal Bouquet

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Excessive alliteration – it’s a good thing.

Confession: I haven’t thrown out a ribbon out since 1988. 

Y’all, I’m not even kidding. It’s nuts. We are talking eleventy hundred random ribbon scraps stuffed in drawers and boxes and hanging from hooks in the wall of my dining room. It’s not like they are especially impressive in quality, I just can’t bare the thought of throwing them out. The hoarding obsession started the first time I saw the ‘evil ribbon peddler’ scene from Faerie Tale Theater’s Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, produced and hosted by the fabulously peculiar Shelley Duvall.

What ever happened to Shelley Duvall anyway?

I heart Shelley Duvall.

She’s got those crazy eyes.

The eyes of a fellow ribbon hoarder.

I can tell.

OK, enough about Shelly and her crazy ribbon hoarder eyes….So, tradition dictates that the Maid of Honor collects ribbons from wedding gifts at the Bridal shower. This was right up my alley. Usually people tie them to a paper plate to be worn as a hat, or a bouquet to be used at the wedding rehearsal. Try as I might, BFF did not go for the hat. Poo on her! That hat would have been Hello Dolly! awesome.

Most of the bouquets I have seen are just pinned/stapled randomly and come out looking great, but I wanted something sturdy. Something that would last. A memento she could add to her children’s dress-up cupboard down the road, or to stick in a vase in the hall bathroom. Nothing too precious, just sturdy with the silhouette of a traditional bridal bouquet.

Enter ribbon roses!

Instructions.
These are so easy, I feel stupid posting a tutorial but the results are really satisfying. I have been collecting wire edge Xmas ribbon for years in hopes of one day collecting enough to cover an entire tree with these ribbon roses. It’s a lofty goal, but I’ll get there one day. These babies are fast!

PS: If you are working with ribbons without a wire edge, make a simple running stitch instead)

1. Throw a Bridal Shower and collect the ribbons. All of them. Even the plastic purple ones. Make cat toys out of the not-so-pretty ones.
2. Pull the wire out (demonstrated on a 21″ length of ribbon, but you get the drift.)
3. Keep pulling until it gets all rumpled up.
4. Wrap the wire around the end of the ribbon forming a stub.
5. Swirl the ribbon around like a cinnamon bun.
6. Pull the two stubby ends together and wrap with a pipe cleaner. The pipe cleaner will keep the shape pretty well, but if you are worried about long term use, reinforce with a safety pin or a dab of glue.
7. And there is your rose!
8. Repeat on all the ribbons and pull them together into a dense cluster. Dangle some longer green ribbons on the bottom if you like.
9. Give it to the bride and be prepared to sing She’s Getting Married in the Morning allllllll night long!