Creative Hobby Supplies: April 2013

Friday 26 April 2013

Altered Frame Mini Tutorial

Hello and welcome to our 2nd tutorial. Today I am going to give you a mini tutorial on creating yourself a piece of wall art. This is what we will be creating:

To make this altered frame you need:

1 wooden frame (Mine is A4 and came from Wilkinson)

Selection of papers

Chipboard butterflies or other chipboard shapes of your choice

Black Thread

Needle

Decorated edge scissors, punches etc.

Paint

Ink

Glue

To complete the project:

Firstly decide what colour you want your frame to be. I painted mine with Ranger Picket Fence Crackle Paint. But you could always keep yours natural or go for a glossy coloured paint. It’s also a good idea to make sure that it matches well to your papers.

Cut a piece of scrap paper/card to the size of the glass in your frame.

Using decorated edge scissors, die-cutting machines, punches or drawing round objects (Bazzill just the edge strips and Sassafras Papers are good for this) cut strips of your papers with pretty edges. You want each of your strips to be about 2 inches wide so that you can layer them easily. I used a total of 8 strips for my frame but you can go as few or as many as you like. For the text paper strips I joined 2 pieces together to make it long enough for the frame.

Starting with the strip that you want to go at the bottom of the frame, start layering and gluing the papers on top of each other leaving a few centimetres gap between each.

Now cover your butterflies. Using a wet glue stick each butterfly to a different paper. When cutting the butterflies out make sure that you use a very sharp craft knife so that the paper cuts and doesn't tear. Also make sure that you wait until the glue has thoroughly dried.

Ink the edges of the butterflies (I used a Walnut distress Ink).

Arrange them randomly on the right side of your background and stick down.

Using a pencil draw some little dotted lines out from your butterflies, make them wiggly and loopy!

Now using a needle or paper piercer, pierce the holes in the paper and sew with the black thread.

For the left side of the frame type out (or write on strips of white paper) a saying or poem that you like (I used ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost) Then cut out and ink the edges and stick down randomly.

Your finished! Well you don’t have to be! You can add gems or stickles to your butterflies, add flowers or other chipboard to the outside of the frame etc etc.

I hope you have enjoyed this little tutorial and I would love to see if you create any wall art based on it, feel free to share a link in the comments below.

Instructions © Maxine for Creative Hobby Supplies, Please do not reproduce without prior permission. 2013

Friday 19 April 2013

Button & Paper Flower Bouquet

I am going to start off our first blog tutorial by reviving this gorgeous Button & Paper Flower Bouquet project that I originally wrote for Truly Madly Crafty.

This is what we shall be making:

For this project you will need:

- Buttons in various sizes (you can find a selection on our website here)

- Wire (ideally 0.6mm+ we have jewellery wire here, when I originally made these I used garden wire)
- Pipe Cleaners

- Double Sided Patterned Paper - 1 12x12 sheet will make 3 flowers (You can see our Paper here, I used the Echo Park Dots and Stripes Candy Shoppe for my flowers)

- Wire Cutters & scissors

- Glue (I used Glossy Accents)

- Mica Mists (you can see our range of colours available here)

- Glitter Glue (I used Diamond Stickles)

Making the Button Flowers

Step 1: Make up piles of buttons going from biggest to smallest (5 or 6 buttons works best for these flowers)

Step 2: Cut your wire to double the length that you want your finished flowers to be. Mine measured 18". And fold in half.

Step 3: Start to thread your buttons onto the wire starting with the smallest first.

Step 4: Twist the wire close to the bottom button a few times so that they stay in place.

Step 5: Repeat for however many you want to make. I made 16 for my bouquet.

Making the Paper Roses

Step 1: Cut 3 4"x4" squares of paper. Fold each square in half on the diagonal 3 times (to create a small triangle)

Step 2: Cut each triangle into a petal shape and snip off the point.

Step 3: Unfold and you will have 3 - 8 petal flowers with a hole in the middle.

Step 4: Ink the edges of your flowers if you desire.

Step 5: Cut the flowers as follows:

Cut 1 flower in half, cut 3 petals off the second and cut 2 petals off the third.

Step 6: Now you need to start gluing your flowers. Apply glue to 1 of the end petals on the 6 petal, 5 petal, 1 of the 4 petal pieces and the 3 petal piece. Fold the other end petal over the glued one and hold until it sticks!

You will end up with the following:

Step 7: Now take your 2 petal piece and curl the ends back. I used the end of a paint brush.

Step 8: Curl the petals around the paintbrush (or your choice of pointy stick!) and glue in place. Make sure you leave a big enough hole in the middle so that you can fit the smaller single petal inside it.

Step 9: Take the half flower that you have left and cut 1 petal off. Now curl the end back and around your pointy stick as above. You will now have the following:

Step 10: Curl the petals back on each of the flowers.

Step 11: Now you can start to stack your flower. Start with the 2nd largest petal piece and apply glue to the bottom around the hole. Then place into the larger flower and hold until it has stuck!

Repeat the gluing until you only have the 2 smallest pieces left. Apply glue to the smallest piece and push into the other piece. Before you apply glue to that piece check to see if you need to trim it down by placing into the centre of your flower. If it sticks out the top too much just trim a bit off the end.

Now your flower is complete!

Step 12: Now you want to make your flowers shimmer and sparkle! I used a Mica mist to spray each of my flowers (let them dry) then added some stickles or other glitter glue. Apply to each petal and then spread with a paintbrush or your finger!

Step 13: Now you need to add your pipe cleaners to the flowers. I started off with 12" ones and trimmed them down to 9" to match my button flowers. Make sure the hole in the bottom of your flower is big enough (you may need to trim it slightly) and thread your pipe cleaner into it. You can simple leave like that or apply some glue to the top of the pipe cleaner to hold it in place.

Step 14: Now arrange your flowers and buttons in your vase and you have a beautiful arrangement that won't die and that you can make to match your decor!

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and I would absolutely love to see if you create any bouquets yourself, feel free to leave a comment here or join us on Facebook.

For now, Happy Crafting ~ Maxine

Welcome!

Welcome to the Creative Hobby Supplies Blog! Hopefully I will be able to get some tutorials and new products on here every so often. For now I thought I would pop some pics on of the shop. Remember you can purchase from us online or visit the shop on Canal Road, Trowbridge, Wiltshire if you are local!