Craft #6- Kaisercraft Large Desk Organiser

Last year I became addicted to Kaisercraft’s ‘Beyond The Page’ range. This is how I decorated my large desk organiser 🙂

The first thing you start with is a flat pack- its surprisingly heavy! There are no instructions inside, so its a bit of a ‘make it up as you go’ project.

I began by putting together the wooden pieces so that I could understand which way they would face, and what needed to be covered with paper rather than paint. I wrote on each piece with pencil, but really you could use anything- it’ll get covered up in the end!

Then I painted the edges and ‘plain sides’ with a purple paint I’ve used a lot of in my room. For the paper I used Kaisercraft’s ‘Magic Happens’ range (they stopped making this a while ago, but you can sometimes still find it in craft stores) as well as two other sheets of co-ordinating paper.
I used Mod Podge to coat the paint on the outside of the organiser, but not the inside, as you can see here, it is a slightly different shade of purple.

To get the shape for the curved paper, I just laid out the (still flat) piece of wood and traced around it, then cut slightly inside the marked line. I was saving the striped paper for something special, and I’m glad I did, because now I get to see it all the time!

I didn’t really like the finger pull drawers, so I purchased some unvarnished wooden knobs from Bunnings for about $2 each and painted them the same purple colour (I did consider silver) and glued a gem in the centre. Then I simply turned the drawers around, and used the back as the front. In this photo you can see the back of one of the drawers, with the finger pull gap.

I very carefully used my strongest clear craft glue to stick the drawers together. I wanted all the boxes to be perfectly square. I painted around the edges before sticking down the paper, as I wanted them all to be uniform, and also its very difficult to get the paper neatly to the edge of the drawer- this was like cheating. Then I glued down the knobs. Because they were quite heavy, I left them to dry overnight.

The final part was gluing together the wooden pieces, again I used a kick arse glue. Then I added some paper flowers in positions that wouldn’t affect the drawers being opened. And, surprisingly for me, I was happy with it!

Advertisements

Craft #4 Butterfly Birthday Card

My Mum’s birthday snuck up on me this year, but I managed to put together a card fairly quickly. The most important thing was to magically have my sister write in it, as she is in Canada (we live in Australia).

I had her write out her message, scan and send it to me, then printed it to the right size.

For the card itself: I used a few different brands of patterned paper that seemed to go together, as well as pale blue ribbon (she’s not a pink fan), stamps (sentiment and butterfly) and cutting the butterflies with the Silhouette machine. That way, when I stamped the butterfly pattern, it was dual coloured but surrounded by white. I’m pretty obsessive so when I buy stamps like that, I tend to get the pattern into my Silhouette program so that I can make perfectly sized cut stamp tags.

I used foam stickers to lift the sentiment and butterfly tags to add more height. I also used the same coloured ink to edge the card tags, to add an illusion of height.

A nice, simple and clean card, and Mum seemed happy!

Happy card making 🙂

Craft #3 Cat and Moth Card

The cat and moth (as my friend prefers them to butterflies, and is also a cat lover) card was made using two images from Google that were manipulated (cat and hat) plus created text, cut using a Silhouette machine.
I used basic card stock for the cat, and patterned card for the rest- the butterflies were already foil printed on the Kaiser brand paper.

I also used some glitter glue (I just love the stuff) on the hat and eyes, and a diamante for the ‘pupil’ of each eye.
Its a shame that my crappy phone camera didn’t pick up the foil properly, its a lovely pink and the text is very visible.

Craft #2- Belated Christmas post

45 days since last post- oops. I’ve been very unwell; although I’ve managed to stay out of hospital, I’m barely able to get out of bed. My official Lyme results came through from America, I have an impressive amount of co-infections. I don’t even know where to go from here. But anyway.

So here is, belatedly, the fourth Christmas card design I made for LAST YEAR.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year.

‘Christmas Pudding’ was made using an image from Google that was manipulated, cut using a Silhouette machine, and uses basic and patterned card stock, glitter glue and sentiment stamp.

I felt it was a simple card to give to people who might be more religious and not appreciate snowmen and reindeer as much.
It was pretty simple to make- the sticklers were getting the berries in the right position.

Also, I somehow managed to cut twice as many pieces of the brown as I needed. My bad! Live and learn, people. Live and learn.