Getting Crafty

I am not an arts and crafts person, but this theatre major has spent almost a year without any projects.  All retail, all the time makes a girl restless, so in the absence of theatre I have started (and even completed) a few projects.

Project #1: The Banner
The idea sprung from Rachel's birthday banner.  She discovered this Flickr account, which has a collection of pictures for every letter and even punctuation, and used them to give a birthday greeting for her family members.  I liked the idea of an everyday banner to fill up a blank wall.  This is what I came up with:

Not long after I took this picture the bottom of the letters began to curl because I printed them on regular paper.  Rachel uses cardstock for her letters and laminates them using contact paper.  I plan to do the same eventually and will probably use craft clothespins to attach the letters rather than thread the ribbon through like I did here.  But overall it was incredibly easy to do and is a cheerful addition to my room.

Project #2: The Journals

At the read-thru for The Seagull the director gave each of us a Moleskin journal which she had personalized for us using stamps.  Here's what she made for me (front and back):

With the final pages of the journal approaching, I decided to customize some of my own to carry on the set.  I wanted to stay with the ink theme, so here are the two I made:

The journals came three in a pack, so there's still one left for me to decorate.  I don't really know how else to build on the theme, so I'm planning to recreate River Song's diary from Doctor Who.  But that's a much bigger fish to fry.

Project #3: Paper Flowers

I'm usually pretty terrible when it comes to cut paper projects -- I can never wrap my head around them!  But I stumbled upon instructions for these and thought they were right up my alley.  No complicated folding patterns that turn into a masterpiece with a single snip, rather a few clicks of the paper punch and some very simple folds.  And the instructions are so clear!  Here's the first flower I made:

This one I made the hard way, that is without a paper punch.  I printed out a nice vintage map I found online and backed it with some black cardstock I had on hand.  After this successful trial run, I splurged on a paper punch and some real scrapbooking paper.  With the punch, I had seven sets of petals ready in the same time it took to cut out a single flower's worth by hand.  

Now, gluing became a bit of an issue.  The instructions recommend rubber cement, which I agree is a good choice to start with, but the petals tend to slide off.  I haven't tested the theory, but I think a combination of rubber cement and hot glue would be best -- rubber cement on the bottom and a dollop of hot glue in the center to hold them in place.  Here are a mess of petals waiting for the glue troubles to be resolved and the two I managed to complete:

 

Project #4 is much more complicated and will have it's own series of posts.  But if you're looking for a bit of "Creativity for Dummies" I would recommend any one of these projects.  They require virtually no skill, which is exactly my kind of style.