PAPER SCRAP EARRINGS

Here's one for folks who can't bring themselves to throw out even the tiniest scraps of handmade and Japanese papers......buy some earring backings and little glass cabouchons and go wild.

Due to a slight misreading of quantities on ebay,  I now have enough to wear a different pair each day for, oh, well, give or take.....about a year!!  (But I have used up a lot of little bits of paper!!)

Some polystyrene packing provided a nice stable base, whilst I was gluing the bits together.  The black, gold and burgundy examples were made by colouring the base of the glass with Sharpie markers before glueing them to the base, but the rest were all made with scraps of paper.

WASHER NECKLACE

WASHER NECKLACE

I love hardware shops - just giant craft stores by another name.

This is just a giant washer wrapped with layers of handmade paper, and sealed with a coating of Mod Podge.  A ribbon makes a hanger.  I wish I'd been a bit more careful now, as it could easily make a very wearable necklace.  For this example now, perhaps I'll tie it to the spare house key, to make it a bit easier to find!!

STAMPING ONTO BUTTONS

STAMPING ONTO BUTTONS

You might have noticed that I've been doing lots of experimenting lately with inks and various surfaces. This is another example.

I was fairly confident that Versafine would work on wooden buttons but as most of them are plastic, wondered how Staz-On would go.  (I know that this does not involve paper but my intention is to use the buttons for papercraft projects so......)

The red button was fairly flat and the stamp was OK, although it was really hard to stop it slipping on the shiny surface.  The second button, even on the reverse (shown) had a bit of a curve (as do most buttons).  I tried using an acrylic stamp without a block so that it could bend with the surface, but wasn't able to hold it well enough and as you can see, I ended up with a blodgy mess (its supposed to be lace).

I think my conclusion is that unless there's a compelling reason I won't be stamping onto plastic buttons and if I need to add some pattern I'll just reach for my Sharpie pens and draw on the design.
After all, how hard can it be...................

STAMPING ONTO METAL WITH STAZ-ON

BLACK INK STAMPED ONTO METAL

....Just thought I'd share how cool Beethoven stamped onto the reverse of a Diet Coke can (using BLACK Staz-On) looks.......Lots of jewellery potential here!!!

PAPER BEADS

PAPER BEADS

CLOSE UP

I made these a little while ago and have in fact worn them to work a couple of times (after all if you can't wear paper beads in a craft shop where can you wear them? )

One sheet of 12 x 12 paper will be enough to make all of these grey beads, as long as you end each in a point which becomes the edge of the wide end of the next bead.

I've just used a glue stick to add a bit of body as I wound them up and then coated the finished beads with Mod Podge to glue them properly and provide a protective finish.

After a bit of experimenting, the easiest way to do this seems to be to wind the elongated diamond shaped pieces of paper around a bamboo skewer  (you can make several on the one skewer).  After that if you rest the ends of the skewers across a shoe box or plastic container, you can brush the sealer over all the beads at once, and they will turn as you brush so all sides are done at once, and you can just leave them in place to dry.

For this necklace I've used white shell beads as a spacers.  I think the extra weight helps it hang better.

MORE PENDANTS

MORE PENDANT IDEAS

I'm still enjoying playing with wearable paper.  Two of these are photos (the red and gold round picture is the ceiling of a local church, the other is one of my touristy snaps from London.  The top example is a bit of a "ring in" as it is made from wood veneer.  For the record I'm not super keen on the end result with this one as the glue reacted strangely - I think that perhaps sealing it first would help.

The same is somewhat true for the photos - the London one in particular (printed on my home inkjet printer) went a bit blurry as the dimensional magic I used as glue dissolved some of the printer ink.  It was a bit of a happy mistake in this case as I don't mind the end result at all.  I used less glue on the other photo and there were no problems.

All of these so far have glass tops, but the remaining pendant features a cut out from a Kaiser paper pad, and is topped with an acrylic sticker.  This worked way better than I would have predicted.  I was going to use it as a card embellishment but am now thinking it might have an outing or two around my neck before I consign it to the craft box.

PAPER EARRINGS-

Here are some earrings made with cardboard and paper and I think quite wearable.

I cut six circles of the same size out of very thick card with my Cuttlebug. I then stuck some text scrapbooking paper to another piece of the the card with double-sided Jac paper, and cut two more circles.

The circles were then divided into two groups and stuck together with Jac paper to form a really thick base.

A thick coating of Dimensional Magic was put on top of the patterned paper, and when it was dry, and earring post was glued to the back.

I decorated the top of a paper mache box with a book page, and smudged some brown ink over the top.  The rosette is made with layers of punched  flower shapes secured in the middle with a split pin, and the packing is scrunched up book pages.