…our new blog is now live! Come visit us and make sure you update your bookmarks and RSS feeds!
Amy Noorda
Come check out our new digs!
We couldn’t be more excited to let you know that all the inspiration from the Scrapbook Trends, CARDS, and Simply Handmade blogs is going to have a new home on a single, awesome blog. You can count on tutorials, videos, challenges, ideas, projects, hot new products, and lots more.
In celebration, we will be throwing a housewarming party of giant proportions. Watch for lots of freebies, including online subscriptions and cool prizes from your favorite manufacturers. We want you to be part of the fun! More details to come.
Tammy Morrill
Spellbinder’s Smile!
Our friends from Spellbinder’s sent us this very cute layout. Debbie’s gorgeous daughter beams in this easy to make scrapbook page. What a wonderful way to capture this special time in her life.
To start, Debbie cut the blue grid side of My Mind’s Eye patterned paper to 4×11” and attached it to the blue background paper. The green textured paper measures 7×11” and goes just below the blue grid, allowing a ½” border of blue all the way around.
Tammy Morrill
Star Spangled Banner & Americana Lollies
For those of you that will be celebrating the great US of A this weekend, we’ve spotted some fun projects over on Hilary Kanwischer’s blog. Show your patriotic spirit with a Star Spangled Banner of your own — Hilary gives instructions and detailed photos.
Hilary also has some fun 4th of July lollipops, in the same style as her famous (seriously) Halloween & Christmas pops. They look good enough to eat, so you’d best keep the corn-on-the-cob and watermelon wedges coming to avoid temptation.
Sprinkle a little Americana around this week and enjoy your summer celebrations!
Amy Noorda
Quiet Book Instructions
Such a darling quiet book from the June-July issue of Simply Handmade, dreamed up and brought to completion by our own Kate Ryskamp. Templates, general book construction directions, and flower page directions are in the book itself; here are the directions for the remaining pages.
Tammy Morrill
Tutorial – fabric flowers
Freshen up a plain headband, make fancy baby barrettes or add a perfect detail to pillows with fabric flowers. This tutorial will show you how to make 3 different types of flowers with one simple technique.
- Scraps of cotton fabric
- Needle and coordinating thread
- Straight-edge fabric scissors
- Decorative-edge fabric scissors (I used pinking shears)
1. Cut your fabric to approximately 2 x 8″ (this is a good size for a headband flower, cut it smaller for barrettes and larger for bigger applications, like pillows.)
2. Use the needle to fray one long edge of your fabric. Pull up one or two threads at a time and pull them from the length of the fabric.
3. Sew a simple basting stitch along the long, non-frayed edge
4. When you have sewed all the way to the end, pull the thread tight. The fabric will ruffle up. Stitch the two ends together to make a complete circle.
Vary the look of the flower by cutting the fabric strip with decorative-edge scissors. For this flower I cut about 2/3 of the way through the strip and frayed all the edges.
This flower uses the same technique, only I used pinking shears to trim the fabric.
This strip looked so wonky and weird when I was cutting the scallops that I was a little worried, but it ended up being my favorite!
You can trim off your threads and finish your flower here, or you can add beads, jewels or buttons to the center to add some extra bling. Or you can repeat the process with another pattern of fabric (or tulle!) to dress up your flowers even more.
These make such a pretty hair accessory for my kindergartner and they’re so easy to whip up, I can match one to her outfit while she’s having her cereal in the morning. Also great for those “how many birthday parties were you invited to?” emergencies. Pretty much there is nothing to limit your creativity but the quantity of fabric scraps you have on hand. Trip to the fabric store anyone?
