orange peel flowers

I discovered these beautiful flowers made of orange peel!
Very simple and very effective!


Found on beautiful blog Blomsterverkstad full of lovely ideas!

Posted by Martina. x x

Another Cuttlebug Candy Holder

Maybe some of you remember a similar post by me here.  Well here is my Christmas version!

I CASEd myself and made a Christmas treat holder!

This time however I kept the sticker label on the front of the package, because it was a holiday image. I just added some bling to the holly wreath label. I replaced the back packaging with red cs, cut to fit. I also added 3x3 and 3x3.75 embossed pieces for the inside to hide the Dove chocolate bar!

A blinged up tag was tied on with a scrap of narrow green satin ribbon and it's good to go!


Happy Holidays!

I invite you to visit my blog here.
Paige

More Folded Books

I'm a big fan of folded books.  I even shared my first folded book project right here.  You can see the post here.  Well, on my other blog I feature an artist of the month.  I wanted to share the post with you.  What a great way to recycle books!

But I wanted to showcase Heather this month.  I am a big fan of Flickr, so many great artists post their photos of their artwork there.  That's where I met Heather and let me tell you, her folder books are gorgeous!

  I started doing folded books but nothing compared to her works of art.  They are amazing.  She also has an Etsy shop where you can purchase them!  Here a few of her works from her shop and you really should go visit the rest.

Scrap Fabric Bookmarks

I've been collecting scraps of fabric for ages now and often use them in mixed media projects. I'm not really a quilter, more a re-purposer of textile scraps. I can't resist the feel of fabric and often come home from the Resource Centre where I volunteer with bits of netting, kite fabric and other fabric remnants I just can't resist, because they feel lovely!!
So, being a thrifty artist, I decided to make some fabric bookmarks to send to arty friends for Christmas this year. I used an old batik hanging, (that had seen better days), for the reverse and some dark floral upholstery fabric for the front. I cut 4 pieces about 6" x 4" of each fabric, pinned them together. I knew both of these would fray nicely, so I merely stitched them together, leaving about half an inch round the edges. I'm not the neatest stitcher, so it doesn't matter with these!
I used the separated flowers and leaves from fake bunches of flowers and leaves for these three...

You can buy them fairly cheaply at thrift stores, boot /garage sales and just pull them apart. The plastic stems will pull off too. ;o) The roses are from bunches of florists' wire-stemmed flowers. Just separate them and use them singly. They're easy to stitch on too, as they bend wherever you want them to! I use a zig-zag stitch for these.



I made beaded cords for the others, trying to co-ordinate with the small images or the colour of the fabric. The cord is recycled from an old plaited belt that I took apart - did it whilst watching TV one evening!



The small images are stitched under plastic film - recycled from packaging or clear plastic folders... I started to stitch plastic over them to protect the images and it also saved me from having to print out images on fabric.




You're probably thinking that they don't look as though they're 6"x4" - no, I stitched them up in 2 sections per piece and then cut them in half straight up the middle. It saved time and was really less fiddly.
One last thing: I used a thin piece of foam instead of wadding to make them ever so slightly padded. I did cut that to the size of each individual bookmark and pin it in place before stitching. If any showed through beyond the frayed edges, I just trimmed that with a small sharp pair of scissors!
I hope you try this - it's fun and if you have friends who read, it's a very individual gift, as the possibilities for personalising and embellishing are only limited by your stash and your imagination!

Rosie Rowe - Altered Art & Stuff...
ArtFire Studio

Quick N' Easy Recipe Cards

Do you like to clip recipes from magazines? I prefer to copy mine out on 3 x 5 index cards so that I can use abbreviations and made modifications as necessary. I've started to embellish my plain boring index cards with pictures from the magazine, so that I feel more inspired by the recipe itself. This can be involved or simple, depending on my mood. Here are three--two handwritten with a picture of the food incorporated, and one wherein I clipped the entire recipe and reassembled it on a 3 x 5 card. If you have old index cards lying around, this is a great way to reuse them, by covering them completely with the magazine image. These also make great gifts for those who like to cook. If you have original recipes you want to share, incorporate images that match from magazines.

Happy Holidays!
Lyra

Up-cycle a jar for the holidays

Anne is a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and one of our authors on our blog.  She has a great idea for decorating a jar for the holidays.  She has all the stuff you need to get started.  Visit her blog and see what she has!  What a beautiful Eco friendly gift to give.  Here's how:

 

Pine Cone Turkey Card

Can you say gobble, gobble? In a continuing effort to use the gazillion pine cones we have at our mountain property in Colorado, I decided to create this guy just in time for Thanksgiving.

Details can be found on my blog: http://www.stampingwithbluemooncreations.com/

Thanks for looking! Anne