Not-Banners for OWH

Tonight I played with more strips of paper, triggered by this card I saw on Pinterest. (link is to the actual original blog post) Well, I started with that idea, but this is what came out:

Yes, I called these not-banners. :)  I cut strips of paper from my Basic Grey Lemonade 6x6 paper pack and started, you know, sticking them to white card bases. I tried to get four papers that sortof went together, both color-wise and pattern-wise. Where the original card had two hearts, I opted for one, says Captain Obvious. I did, however, punch more hearts out of a piece of thin chipboard/packaging stuff and put two of them behind the white heart for some heft.  The heart is popped up on dimensional adhesive.

Here's another one:

Same papers as the first one, just different lengths.

Next:

Here I swapped out a larger pink pattern for the smaller one. Crazy, I know.

Next:

Here I've included a piece of green. It sorta ties in with the yellow pattern on the right. Plus, since they were all from the same paper pack, I assume that green goes with that blue and that pink.

Next:

This card demonstrates just how crazy and over-the-edge I can be. I used the same blue twine even though there is no blue paper on the card.

I won't bore you with more of the not-banner ones, but this last one is a bit different:

Even though I am drowning in paper, I couldn't bear to toss these strips, so I put them on a card front. I was going to stamp the sentiment on that white horizontal strip, but then I got all distracted playing with twine and decided to wrap it around the piece instead, which would then allow me to put a heart over it. It was kinda fun.

So I've got a total of eight more loooove cards for OWH.

Hmmm, if I do this in small batches like this, I betcha I can disappear some more of that paper pack this week. :)

In other news, a Bobra photo:

 

This was taken against a background of white vertical blinds through which the sun was shining. No, I'm not this artsy - it really is all washed out. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

SOS #79 - Odds & Ends

Happy Tuesday! It's time for another Shopping Our Stash challenge. This week we ask you to use Odds & Ends you have laying around. By odds & ends, we mean use two different types of embellishments in your stash: the lone white pearl and a scrap of ribbon for example, or two red buttons and one green pearl, or scrap of twine and a button, or the left over brad from the package along with a sticker. Any amount/combo is fine as long as two different types are included.

You neat people may have a tough time with this one, but let me tell you: I think this might be our Best. Challenge. Ever. Why? Well, I went digging at the top of my desk where all my "meh" objects land, and I laid out all the s-crap hiding up there. Wanna see it? Here you go:

Yes, all of that was crammed into the space above my pad of grid paper. I have die-cuts, ribbon, lace, washi tape buttons, twine, two eyelets in different colors ... LOTS from which to choose! I didn't even need to go into a drawer to get anything else!

So I made four cards. Yep: four. I'll start with the one I had Carla post on the SOS blog this morning:

See that heart? It's really four hearts stuck together. I found 6 of them on my desk, and I stuck them together in threes, giving me two thick embellishments. I die-cut two more hearts out of Bazzill Avalanche so the hearts matched the background, so now they are four-hearts thick. I used one here and one on the next card. The blue thing is a piece of a washi sheet that was hiding somewhere else on my desk and didn't make the s-crap photo. I also added a bow made out of a scrap of twine.

For my second card:

Here is the other heart stack, this time with a piece of washi tape behind it. That diagonal strip under the heart was already stuck to a piece of white card stock and just ... it was sad. I added a new piece of the same tape under the sentiment so you could see it. So. much. white.  Oh, and another piece of that twine. Done.

Next, I made this:

Admittedly, this is mostly die-cuts and punched stuff, but it was ALL hiding on my desk. That owl was complete. The doily was cut from a piece of card stock I'd colored using the Shaving Cream Technique way back here. Yes, it was still on my desk ... why do you ask?  I punched a 1 1/2" circle of white to put behind the owl so you could see him. The row of hearts was die-cut a bazillion months ago from a Tim Holtz tag I'd been using to clean up ink off my craft mat. I also snuck in a piece of white twine on the upper left of the doily.

 I added black enamel to the owl's eyes, but the bottle spit and gave him a sty:

Poor fella.

Here's my fourth and last card:

My odds & ends here are the brown die-cut, and both pieces of horizontal lace. I did cut into that piece of brown paper from my Basic Grey sugared 6x6 pack, because it was out and the colors were perfect. The lace for the bow hides an unfortunate dark spot on the pink lace. The sentiment is from a Hero Arts set I just finally opened and used. Go, me.

OKAY, now it's YOUR turn. Go into your stash (or, if you're like me, just look around your desk) and pull out some lonely single embellishments and use at least two of them to make a card. Then come pack to Shopping Our Stash and link us up so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!

Products used but not listed below: SU Owl punch, Twinery twine, Taylored Expressions Heart Border die, SU lace, Pick Your Plum lace, Basic Grey sugared 6x6 pad, Bazzill Avalanche card stock.

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Love Banners + A Tutorial

I was moving things around in my craft closet earlier, and I found my Kaiser Craft Chapter One 6.5x6.5 paper pad lying* on a shelf. It was all by itself since my boxes hold 6x6, not 6.5x6.5. I picked it up to fondle it, and a bunch of small pieces tried to escape. ENOUGH, I said, ENOUGH. I took all the small pieces out of the pack, cut them into strips, and made ... you guessed it: banners. I may be in a rut.

I pretty much pulled a repeat of the other day and started sticking banners to white card bases until I ran out of banners. I ended up with 16 more cards for OWH. Whoa.

Here's one:

That's just three pieces of Chapter One paper stuck down with a 3/8" strip of one of the black sheets layered across the top of it. Why 3/8"? First, it's between 1/4" (too narrow) and 1/2" (too wide), and second it perfectly holds a 1/4" wide tape runner with no slop-over. It's just meant to be.

Here's another one:

With that one I got all crazy and overlapped the banners.

Here's a high-waisted model of the previous card:

I had to do SOMETHING to keep it interesting.

And a low-rider version:

These are really easy to make, and if you switch them up a little, it doesn't get boring.

I'm going to take advantage of this banners post to do a brief demonstration of how I cut my banners. I've tried several methods, as demonstrated by many crafters, but this is what works for me.

I'll show my preferred method first. I start by cutting the card stock into strips:

Next, I cut a short slit up the center of the bottom edge of the strip:

I don't draw the pencil line when I do it; it's just so you can see where I cut. I don't measure this but it's about 1/4", or maybe 3/8" or 1/2".

Next, you make the first diagonal cut, from one bottom corner to the top of the center cut:

Then you make the second diagonal cut from the other corner:

Ta-da! How easy was that?

This works no matter how wide your paper strip is; you just do the same thing:

Cut up the center, then come in from one bottom corner:

Then make the last cut:

Ta-da!

Some people like to skip that first center cut and free-hand the whole thing, but I need the guide to know where to stop.

Another method I use when I have squillons of these to cut at once is to use a square punch:

This is a 3/4" punch, but I've used larger ones, too. You need to stick the paper strip into the punch like this:

Make sure the corner of the punch is in the center of the paper strip, and the two bottom edges are about equidistant from the sides, then punch:

Ta-da! Same effect with one punch vs two or three cuts. I use this when I have a ton to do, but it's really a wash for me. I get frustrated lining up the punch, but since I've embraced non-symmetry in my world, I'm good with whatever comes out.

Now, let's say you've cut a banner but you don't like it. Maybe it's too pointy, like this one:

This can happen if you make your first cut up the middle too deep; then the diagonal cuts are on a very sharp angle. This is easy to fix! Here is how I trim mine that behave badly:

I drew the lines for demonstration purposes, but I just cut from the edges to the center on a less-sharp angle. Here's the first cut:

And after the second cut, it's much better:

See? Just like the other ones.

Now you've also seen that you can control the angle of the points based on how far in you make the cut up the center. A shorter cut yields a less-severe angle.

Now go off and play with some scrap paper, then go forth and create!

Thanks for stopping by!

*Yes, I had to look it up. According to this site: Once you lay (put or place) a book on the desk, it is lying (reclining, resting) there, not laying there.