Inspired to try making a button flower vase

Pearls & Buttons

For me, Pinterest has been such a wonderful source for kick starting my creativity and inspiring me to try new techniques. A few months back I saw this cute vase with button flowers using a glass kitchen (I'm guessing) salt shaker. I knew there was something similar hiding in my kitchen cabinets so I dragged it out, found all the old pearl necklaces that were lying around and dug through my button jar. It surprised me how many necklaces were needed to fill my vase but I'm thrilled with the finished product that came from items that were hidden away in drawers. Now they can be seen everyday!

Printing on Ribbon




Printing on Ribbon

   I am still waiting for the book Fabric Embellishing the basics and beyond  I ordered a couple of weeks ago to arrive.  Hopefully, it will be in my mailbox this week.  One of the projects I remembered from looking at Connie's book was printing on ribbon.  I decided to try it this weekend and I am pleased with my first results.   The book recommended to make your design layout, then save and print your design.  This helps for your alignment.  Next, you center and  place your double-stick tape over your printed words or design and then lay your ribbon on top of the tape making sure no tape is exposed. Then I think it said to put a piece of tape over the ends of the ribbon so the edges did not catch in the printer roller.  Next,  you place your ribbon paper back into the printer and print your file again. With a little luck your words or design will be centered on your ribbon.  Some of mine printed a little off center but for a first effort I am thrilled.



Printing on Ribbon Detail

 Along the way I learned that I do not need to anchor all the edges of the ribbon down with tape. Just taping the ends down that feed through the printer works great.  I think when I removed the extra tape from the edges it caused my ribbon edges to be extra wavy. Also, I do not need to bold the font as the bolding causes the ink to bleed more (this could also be due to my particular printer ink or the type of ribbon I was using). The last ribbon on the bottom is the one I used the bold font on and you can see how much darker it is.

Printing on Ribbon Close Up

What worked really well was expanding the font spacing. This kept the letters from blurring into one another.  For this project I used the 1/2 " double-stick tape but yesterday while I was out I picked up some 3/4" double-stick tape and plan on experimenting with wider ribbon and using some of the wing dings or graphics.