Craftinbish

It's a beautiful springtime, my crafty friends. Are you inspired by all the blooms and greenery surrounding you? I certainly enjoy pressing a few flowers to incorporate into my papercrafts and am loving the energy of growth and renewal that's surrounding us in this season.  Today's item is a quick project and one that you can complete with mostly scraps of paper. If you're like most paper crafters, you have a hard time parting with any usable paper, no matter how big or small. So this piece would be a great item to use all those bits and bobs on. Why not make several at a time while you're at it?  This project starts out with a large book page. What's on the page doesn't necessarily need to be of importance unless you want it to be the focal point of your piece. What really matters is that it's sturdy. You don't want to use a page that's so old it's brittle and cracks at the folds. Make sure whatever you use, it's heavy enough...

 Hello crafty friends. Today's post features some really fun typewriter greeting cards with floral accents. I used Spellbinders clear stamp of the month with an accompanying die set for February 2022. Love this cute design! I began by using my Misti stamp tool to lay down these images with some black versa fine ink. I love using the Misti because it ensures you get a usable stamped image. If you don't have one of these in your craft room yet I certainly think it's worth the investment. Next, I heat embossed my stamped images with Wow clear embossing powder.  A card I'd love to recieve.  Coloring in my stamped images was a lot of fun. I used a combination of alcohol ink markers, Tombow brush markers, and colored pencils. Because my images were embossed the clear layer allowed me to use any medium I wanted without fear of smearing the ink. I even used some watercolor on the typewriters simply because I love the way watercolor looks! I wanted to ach...

      Good morning my paper-loving friends. I have another upcycle project for you today. I call these specimen envelopes because they feature a clear widow like a slide with a "specimen" in the middle. I've had these envelopes in my stash for a while now. I love them so much, that I haven't been able to part with them. These would make a lovely addition to a happy mail for a pen-pal, a swap, or of course, tucked into a journal. I could also see these tied to the outside of a gift package with a note or a little something extra inside. So, let us get into it.        I used some pages from my German English dictionary for these envelopes. I got out my Gelli plate and swiped some Distressed Oxides onto it and misted it with water before I pressed my paper onto my Gelli plate. If you don't have a Gelli plate a regular craft mat or piece of laminated paper (or any non-porous flat surface) would work just as well. I used my h...

 Hi friends. I wanted to share a fun upcycling project with you today. I followed a YouTube video by Pam at The Paper Outpost for turning used greeting cards into journal cards for your junk journal. Not only is this very fun and easy, but it's also a wonderful way to give a second life to the beautiful notecards you may have from friends, pen-pals, and family members that you don't know what to do with. This idea could also be used to create postcards instead of journal cards.  So, grab your stash of received happy mail and pick out the cards with images that you like. I wanted to give all my cards an aged look, so after gluing some paper to the back of the card to cover up any writing I decoupaged some used tea bags to the front.  Once that surface was dry I collaged some images to the front of the cards. I distressed around the edges, front and back with some distressed Oxide in Vintage Photo.  I also stamped images...

    Interior of Snail mail folder Greetings crafty friends. Today I'm sharing a Happy Mail I created for my pen pal Renée. We became pen pals through swapbot.com. If you love paper crafting or sending and receiving mail I recommend you check it out.  Outside of the mail folder Embellished Folder The patterned paper of the folder base and coordinating question tag has been pulled from a hot buy paper stack I recently purchased from Michaels at a clearance price of five dollars. (Love me some clearance sales).  I began by pulling out the polka dot type pattern and sizing it down to fit in my upcycled Pipsticks envelope. I did have to widen the opening of the Pipsticks envelope a bit with a craft knife to fit in my folder properly, as the zipper seal makes the mouth more narrow than its interior. Next I die cut a frame from the coordinating paper. I embellished the frame with flowers and butterflies which were leftover from my Spellbinders card kit of the month for...