August Cards

August is a busy birthday month in my family.  I try to make birthday cards for everyone but a lot of times I just run out of time and I either make a quick handmade card or they get a "store bought" card.  The good news is I try not to always send the same person a "store bought" card each time. My favorite card this month is the one I made for my sister, Mary.  I used the heart shaped yo-yo to make a mini tulip display.

As I mentioned in last week's blog I send my mom a "card-a-month".  For August her card is one I made back in June.  I saw the idea of the ribbon loops surrounding a button to create a flower and I thought "I could use one of my yo-yo's in place of the button.  This is a real simple card to make and I think I will make a few more to have in my stash of pre-made cards "just in case". The photo didn't turn out as well as I would have liked but hopefully you can see what a fun, simple design it is.

July Craft Play Day

Painted fabric ready to be set in the sun

I am very lucky to have a friend who enjoys experimenting with new techniques as much as I do. We have so much fun when we get together on our craft play days. Part of what makes it fun is that we both have different styles so we are always learning from one another. Connie is more of a free spirit with her art and crafts and I tend to be more purposeful.  By that I mean my art or craft project needs to have a purpose.

Our July Saturday play date involved painting fabric with Setacolor Soleil (a sun printing fabric paint). We had a blast experimenting with blending the colors on the fabric, laying the objects on top of the fabric to create a design and then placing the fabric in the sun.  We also learned some objects worked better than others. 

My sun printed fabric

My favorite fabric is the one I created using buttons placed on top of my painted fabric. I plan on making a book cover with the button sun printed fabric. Other items I used on my fabric were paper doilies, fabric lace with metal hardware and rock salt. I'm still amazed that with so little effort and so much fun I created my own unique fabric.

It would be easy for me to get the fabric painting bug, my only drawback is what would I do with it when it was done?

Salad spinner art fabric

The second half of our play day involved this technique from the Creative Arts Home magazine of using a salad spinner to paint on fabric.  As a child I loved the paint spinners so I couldn't wait to play with this new technique. 

To my amazement it turned out really good and yes, I have a project in mind for these fabric circles.  I think they will look great appliqued onto a pillow cover as holiday ornaments.

Salad spinner fabric art circles

Crafting with Paper Napkins

Flowers in Bloom

Here we are heading towards  the end of August and I'm just getting around to my July creative activities. When I started this blog I had really good intentions of posting every couple of days and like all of you, my day-to-day life kept interrupting. As my parents always said, "anything worth doing is worth doing right", so I have made a commitment to post every Sunday, the other thing they taught me was to honor my commitments. One commitment I made years ago was to send my mom a card a month. For July I tried a little something different as I added a magnet butterfly to the card. The flowers on the card are made with paper napkins using the technique from "Paper Crafting with Carol Duvall". It is a simple technique using Saran Wrap and an iron and it is a lot of fun to do.