Hall Poster

I have seen several takes on the sign saying "In this house", and then some lines about what they do in the house, for examples "we do grace", "we learn from mistakes" and so on. I have also seen a few "In this classroom", either as a poster, a sign or vinyl directly on the wall.

The best thing is that you can remove and add as you want what best applies to your house. I did that. I had a nice scrapbooking paper and did the title in pink stickers and then added the text with a black felt 2.0 calligraphy pen. I hung it in the hallway next to the mirror.

Hope you like it!

Something new and something old

I made a necklace for my brother once upon a time, but I do not think I chared it with you. If I did, see this as a "favourite re-run!". Its a Mustache on a string, made out of Fimo. I saw something like it in acryllic plastic but since I do not have that or the tools, I decided to do one in Fimo. I liked the result :) He did too.

And then there is the necklace I did today. Or, "did", its more recycled, or upcycled :) I had a plain mocca thread around that I sometimes used as a necklace all on its own. But then today I saw my fiancees glass-chess :) Bingo! It started out with a normal white pawn, but then I decided to go with the Black Queen instead! I wrapped the thread two times around the chess-piece and voila! This way I can also change the piece if I feel like it :)

An Apple for the Crafter Altoids

Yesterday my mum came over with a package I got from Jenny ( An Apple for the Crafter ) all the way from USA! I was so psyched after seeing her Purse Organizers. She even included a small note of my countrys flag! I felt so proud. And again, thank you so much!

I got to thinking what I should do with them. But then I thought what do I NEED? So I turned my purse upside down and found this:

1 Almanac
1 Bike key
1 Cellphone
1 Horse charm
1 Pencilcase
1 Red Nailpolish
1 Small tube of hand creme
1 Small tin of mints
1 Tinted lip balm (sunscreen 15)
1 Tiny tube of salve
1 Wallet
2 Needles
5 Thin metallic bracelets
Headset to my cellphone
Keychain
Some small trash

Hmmm, I can't figure out what could be useful at this point. Just somehwere to store away all my small, tiny things? Maybe. But I loved the idea Jenny had with the Boo-Boo box. The Altoid tins are bigger than you would expect (at the least I thought so) ! So I guess I will just have to wait for the insirational flare to come too me. I guess I could also store spare change ect in them. Hmm. We'll see.

Graduation and Pinterest

Just a quick update. I "graduated", or rather, quit adult school (komvux) last friday and I am now looking for a job. I do not know what the outcome will be.

I made a card for a friend that is one year younger than me and graduated from upper secondary school and is going to a university this autumn. I wish him the best of luck. I made a card for him but it was so bad I did not bother to take photos of it. He was happy anyway :) I am not used to making cards like that.

Oh! And also I've been invited to join Pinterest! I am so excited and I will make sure to share some of it. I have just put it up so I havent "pinned" so much yet, but I am sure I will!

Thats all for me right now.
Over and out,
Amy.

Gold-plated plug necklace

Well, meine lieblinge, I have had my eyes on a special necklace for a while, the charm for the necklace is the kind of gold-plated plugs you normaly have for musical/computer/television purposes on different type of cables. Dj plug you can call it I guess (Just google it if you want pictures).

And since I am extremly cheap thrifty and creative, I thought "Maybe I could do that!" and I asked my boyfriend, who got a huge bunch of computer parts laying around, if he got one of these and he did! But I could not figure out how I could make a hole on the plug and we do not exactly have the tools for it, so I made something closer to a other picture I had seen somewhere.

















Step one complete.
Now I needed a chain or a rope, and it turned out I had a old black necklace left from some old jewelry that got lost in my drawer. Score! So I tucked both ends into the hole and it was a snug fit. Perfect. Maybe I do not have to glue it into place, so I can change the rope when I want? I will try to wear it at school and see how it fares.

This is how it ended up looking. Neat, huh? (Feel free too click the images for a bigger view)

I think it is a bit too long for my taste, so I am trying to figure out a way to shoten it up a bit. I am thinking maybe a small knot in the neck :) But I really rather like it.

Two tincans

I've recently come over two really nice tincans, one that used to preserve chocolate and (I think) the other one was used for hard candy.

The first one is a Anthon berg chocolate tin box that looked old to begin with, but when you turned it over you saw a very modern "ingredients" sticker. But the vintage look of the box got me

Anyway, here's the box (you can always click the images for a closer view!):

Isnt it gorgeous?

The other one is all in french:

With the help of Google Translate (My trusty companion), the text at the top says: "Anise of Flavigny Abbey" and the black text at the bottom of the box says "True mark of Anise", but I do think that even Google Translate makes mistakes (THE HORROR!) when it comes to grammar.

And at the bottom of the top lid was a what I first thought to be a pink sticker a kid or something had once put there, because you could not see what it was supposed to be, so I rubbed it gently with my fingers under running water and then filled it with hot water so maybe the sticker would be easier to remove, but then I saw that there were TEXT on it! Plot twist! So I took a photo of it and flipped the image in photoshop (because it seemed like the text was mirrored)


"Anise of Flavigny Abbey, single real/only true mark/brand. Anise scent natural / Natural anise scent."

Edit: They are now renting space to my stamps :)

Jewelry box: Update. Oh! And a bottle.

I am soon going to start to paint my jewelery box, I am going to use white hobby-paint
, but I still do not know what to do with the insides. I cut away a little bit and noticed that the fabric was actually stuck on pieces of cardstock or cardboard. Help! What to do?

Something I am hoarding saving, is this plastic bottle. It was perviously used for fabric softener, but now it is empty, so I am going to take good care of it until I can come up with something to use it for. Maybe some kind of vase? I just love the shape of it!

Lavender Seed Package

I have done a little seed package with the lavender flower on my computer. I was sooooo inspired by these vintage pictures that I just could not pass the opertunity up to make something with them.

Resources:
The Graphics Fary - For both the flower and the seed lables.
Panduro - A free seed package template that can be found here.

The outlines are slightly faint, but you will be able to see them if you want to print it on paper to cut and glue it together. I have tried and it worked for me :) I hope you will enjoy it. I am open to requests for different types of flowers.

French Wall Art II

I thought that the last wall-art I did was a little bit too little, so I did another one. There have been complains about my weight lately, so I decided to make a french wall art gâteau. And then I hung all three of them above the stove. The light-blue color gave a nice sort of "theme" in the cake wallart and I am really happy, it took me a while to decide over what paper I was going to use without it looking too "cake" like. This is how it turned out:

Rustic wooden chest

A really really early project of mine. It's been standing in my parents basement for a long time but now I've brought it home. I got the inspiration from various pictures on the internet and now that my fiancee has got a airbrush, maybe I could add some embelishment / text on it. We'll see.

This crate was originally a stash for holding different types of firework, it had a warning-lable on one side and the kind of spray on letters that was kinda charming, but it lacked that extra "oomph" and that being the paint. So I removed the lable as much as I could and then sandpapered the whole thing. The problem being a small wooden stick sticking out from inside of it.

I used some leftover white paint my parents had and everytime I dipped the brush in the paint, I also dipped it in a little bit of water. Wanting to save muself some work, I tought I would only do one layer of paint but that did not look as good, So I ended up doing maybe 2 or 3, I can't really remeber. And I didn't know what to do with the wooden part sticking out, so I just kinda left it and didn't paint the insides.

I still don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

French Wall Art

Some French Wall Art. I got the idea from crafts by amanda. I used some left-over scrapbooking paper, just like she does, but however I did not use a wooden background since I did not have any at hand, I used a few pages from a old photo-album.

Latest project: Jewelry box makeover.

So. This little white box has been with me for forever, I got it when I was a very young girl (Probably when I still was in the phase where I wanted to be a princess. Or thereabouts) and I think it originally came with a mirror attatched, but I am not sure if I ever had a mirror too it, if it broke, or if I just didnt get any.

Anyway, It's been with me a long time and when I was younger (slightly older than the princess stage) I tried repairing it with color and nails, since the hinges were coming off, but as I didn't really see the difference between the whites, I repaired it with a white that had a slightly more yellow-tone to it. Hm.

I saw it and I thought that I needed to freshen it up a bit, since I still do wear and owe some jewelry and I do not want to keep them in a carton box where they currently are, seeing as it does not seem worthy for some of the heirloom jewlery.

So I started off to Sandpaper the white away and then two things hit me. 1) I need new hinges and 2) What to do with the pink velvet inside? It is really nice and it smells of nostalgia, but it is pretty discoloured by unidentifiable stains as well as some spots from pens and the like. So what to do? I could probably get over some cheap velvet at the local fabric-store anyway. And I think that would be best. Should I also keep the white-pink color scheme? I think I actually will. Since it is a nice piece of my childhood and instead of reconditioning it, I could restore it to what it somewhat used to look like. Yeah. Here are some pictures of what I've done so far (click if you wish to see a larger picture).

Some creativity

My creativity has been low the last days but today when I looked through my "Paper Craft" bookmark folder I found some new, creative sites. That is always fun! I got so inspired when I saw THESE very cute free printable monthly calendars that I had to try to make my own

Please pardon me for the bad quality. These were taken with my webcam seeing as my digital camera is in hiding somewhere.

The text by the flower is from a swedish childrens song that is supposed to teach the children in what order the months are, and roughtly translated into english it means: "March April have buds in their hair." (to emphasize that spring starts now).


This is the result:

Watercolour

A little dress I did with watercolour. I wanted to do a dress with a bit of a bigger skirt, kind of a baloon-dress, and I got so inspired by looking at some cherry-blossoms, so this is my fist piece in my collection. I call it "Japan" or "Flowers of Japan" or something like that. I have not named this one yet ;)

(Click on them for a bigger picture)

Grunge Birds

This is a small piece of accordian I made last summer sometime. The accoardian is from a 7Gypsies collection and I picked it up when it was on sale - the best way to shop! I worked on it a bit, the bird I printed out and added some chalk to the sides after I had gone over it with a sanding stick. To make the faint stamp underneath it, I stamped a few times on a other paper so most of the ink would dissapear. The leaves I went over a bit with the chalk. I kinda wanted a "raw", "grungey" and "used" look. What do you think?

"Front" (The side I started on first):

"Back":

It's now a kitchen-decoration at one of my friends' :)

To my guests: A toilette sign

I picked up a make-it-yourself toilett sign kit at a second hand store and thought I would do something fun with it. It took me a while to figure out, at first I wanted to cover it all in paper, but at last I figured out what to do. I had some hobby-paint and a scrapbooking stamp so I just came up with a simple design. I added some plak paint where the black ink made gaps or did not seem so clear. I am very happy over the result.

It now hangs where our guests can see it, so they know where to go ;)

Sewing creations

Sewing, something I thought I would never do. This is the fruit of my labour. A red jeans handbag (made from a pair of old jeans) and my pen/brush case made out of bamboo and 95% Viscose and 5% Elastane (from an old dress).

2 pieces of jewelery

The first piece out is a bangle/armband I made out of Scrapbooking paper, white hobbypaint and a leftover tapeholder in cardboard (Scotch 3M).
The pink text says "Live Love Laugh".
The green paper is originally from a christmas paper that I found little use for and I loved the color of it. I started off by painting the tapeholder white, all of it, and then I cut out a long strip from the bottom of the paper. I tried to pattern match it so the color and pattern would not suddenly just cut off into something completeley else. Then glue and decorate.

The second piece is a set of earrings. It is fairly simple in a brass/copper tone on sterling silver hooks. I am quite proud of them myself :)
I still do not know if I shall sell them, keep them for myself or give them away.

... Creative blog

Did this just turn into a creative blog? I guess it did!

I always loved to occupy my hands with different crafts; writing and drawing/painting. Later, it became Scrapbooking which I enjoy so much. And now, jewelry and sewing. Sewing I never guessed I would do, it just never appealed to me. But now, in retrospect, maybe I would end up there anyway, since I am a very creative person and enjoy making things with my hands.

I have also gotten so inspired by other peoples blogs, like "craftapple", "happy young wife", "V and co" ect, ect.

I guess I will start posting about my (miss)adventures in the world of crafting.

Because, sometimes, you need a reboot.