The ABC's of papercrafting techniques...

So it's obvious that I am a horrible blogger! I can admit failure, as hard as that is! But there may be hope for me yet! I think I may have figured out a way to help my "slackerness" (I know-it's not a word but it fits how I feel).  I was surfing through some other blogs when I came to one that caught my interest (www.simplyscrapping.wordpress.com) ...she (Shellie) is doing the ABC's of Techniques. I figure that I could challenge myself and do something similar to this. I think that by using her concept I hopefully will not only learn some new techniques (and help others learn new things as well), but it will also help me to be more active on my blog. My hope is that I will be able to post a different technique each week...maybe even more (I won't commit to that though...life does happen fast).

A = Altered Items

 

 

For my first technique I am doing an altered item. One of my favorite things about paper crafting is the fact that you can take a plain piece of paper and make something amazing out of it. It's even better when you can take what would otherwise be known as trash and transform it into something usable!

Here is a picture of a few examples of the "trash to treasure" concept...



On the left is a yogurt container on top and the same style container decorated to be used as a desk caddy or a gift container. In the middle is a penny bank that was made out of an oatmeal container (one of my favorite projects ever!!!)

For today I altered one of the inexpensive wooden frames from Wal-Mart (only $1-how can you beat that!) Here is what it looked like fresh from the store...

The first thing I did after picking out my paper was to trim it to the needed size (just lay it down on the backside of the paper and trace around it's inside and outside). There are a lot of different adhesives that you can use but today I used the Liquid Glass.

The great thing with using the Liquid Glass is that you have a little bit of freedom to move the paper around if you didn't line it up right. It does dry fast though so don't take to long! After the paper is adhered to the frame you can trim any extra paper and around the corners if necessary. I also go around the edges with a nail file to smooth them out.

 

Now starts the fun part...the decorating! I don't know about you...but sometimes I will start a project with one thing in mind and somewhere along the way...it takes a wild turn and you just have to go with the flow! That is totally what happened with this one...and I LOVE the results! Originally I was planning on just using the paper to embellish this. There are beautiful flowers on the backside of this paper and I was just planning on cutting them out for the decoration...

This idea went away as soon as I decided to use the Cocoa colored ribbon around the outside and inside of the frame...the colors together reminded me of fall...and then I remembered this BEAUTIFUL picture of my Cousins daughter-I knew then what I had to do!!! The ribbon technique used around the inside is called "ruching" (not sure if I spelled that right)...maybe that can be a technique for you to look forward to in the future :)

This is the final project...I have to say a huge THANK YOU to my cousin Stephanie for letting my use Avery's picture...this frame would be nothing if it wasn't for the BEAUTIFUL young fairy inside of it! (This picture does not do her justice - my camera is not very good...and the lighting in my house is even worse!)

I also want to say Thank You to Shellie at www.simplyscrapping.wordpress.com for inspiring me to be more creative and more proactive on my blog!!!

Thanks for taking the time to follow along and hopefully you will join me for the rest of the alphabet! By the way...I still need ideas for the letters U, X and Y if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!