My England Travel Journal Is... Excessive

 It took an extra six months and a final boost of half of The Crown Season 3 on DVD, but my England travel journal finally went from this--

--to this!

It might be just a tad overstuffed...

The actual travel journaling didn't take six months, but I also wanted to incorporate all of my favorite family photos from the trip and some of the ephemera I'd collected. 

And then at the Half-Price Books Outlet one day I found an old Eyewitness Great Britain, the kind where every page is illuminated with all the little pictures and maps and infographics, and things got a little out of hand.

So the book may indeed be morbidly overstuffed, but now I'll never forget the name of the delicious ice lolly that I got at the ice cream truck after making it down from Glastonbury Tor without having a heart attack--

--or the excitement/exhaustion of our first day in London, and how maybe some of us possibly wanted to curl up on the grass and die in front of Big Ben, but we rallied and toured Westminster Abbey instead:

If I ever want to remind myself of the floorplan of the White Tower, or reassure myself that yes, the Uber Boat schedule IS completely impossible to interpret and no, I do not EVER want to get back on that boat again no matter how lovely the Tower Bridge looks from the water, all I have to do is turn to my travel journal!

I can also use my travel journal to remind myself that I DO want to go back to Canterbury one day!

And, of course, anytime I want to debate with myself about which of the approximately 1,000 photos I took of my family at Stonehenge is the most marvelous, I can just flip through my travel journal and admire them all:

It's the perfect final chapter to a perfect trip!

I don't think I've got any massive trips coming up this year, not with all the fun my partner and I are going to have adding a second college tuition to our bill schedule. 

But we ARE going to New York City for a couple of days later this winter so I can finally see Hadestown on Broadway...

Okay, and my Girl Scout troop IS currently planning a spring trip to Boston...

And my younger kid and I might need to do some college visits after acceptances and financial aid offers come out...

And my older kid might be studying abroad next Fall, and if she does, well, it *would* be nice to go visit her...

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Upcycle Photographs into Stickers: Three Methods That Really Work

 

I first published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

Upcycle your old print photographs into stickers, and you’ll unlock a whole new way to display and enjoy those magical memories!

I don’t do a lot of crafting with print photos anymore, so I was a bit dismayed recently when I found a huge stack of 4″x6″ photos leftover from my scrapbooking days. Gotta clean out my closets more often, I guess!

I recognized all these photos as ones that I have digital copies of (I’m still not ready to talk about The Terrible Hard Drive Erasure of 2017…), so I could have just tossed them all into the recycling. But yikes, how wasteful would that be?!?

Mind you, I have no problem tossing stuff that I truly want to toss, but Past Julie clearly spent time and money on this photo order, and all the photos are of my adorable babies, now almost all grown up, and our fun traveling adventures. As far as I know the Jedi Training Academy no longer even exists at Walt Disney World, so that photo of my tiny padawan winning a light saber battle against Darth Vader himself deserves a fate much more exciting than the recycling bin!

Also, there is genuine terror in her eyes in that photo, and I laugh every time I look at it. Kid was pretty sure she was fighting for her life up there!

I have fun crafting plans for most of these surprise photos, the first of which is stickers!

Here are three easy methods for upcycling print photos (and book pages, wrapping paper… just about any paper works for this!) into stickers, along with the pros and cons of each method.

Method 1: Adhere a photo to an existing sticker.

Pros: Quick, materials are easy to obtain.

Con: Stickers are low-tack.

If you’ve got a sheet of printer labels on hand, you can have your own photo stickers ready to go in minutes.

These stickers will be pretty low-tack, so cutting the photos down a bit will reduce their weight.

Use an excellent white glue, like Aleene’s Tacky Glue, to adhere the photos to the front of the label sheet. Let the glue dry, then cut out the photo stickers.

Glossy photos don’t make the best stickers right out of the gate because of how easily they show smudges. To solve this, laminate the front of each photo by sticking a piece of clear tape to it.

Fair warning: I, personally, am MISERABLE at jobs like this. One of my teenagers even installs all my screen protectors for me because she can’t stand looking at the state of my phone screen, all bubbles and trapped lint, when I do it myself. I had to cut down that photo above right because I somehow managed to trap a giant cat hair under the tape, sigh. So be super careful with your own tape lamination!

Method 2: Paint the back with Aleene’s Tack it Over and Over Again glue.

Pros: Most eco-friendly, least use of additional materials, stickers are repositionable.

Cons: Most time-consuming method, requires a specialty supply.

This is my favorite way to make stickers. It’s super easy, and I used to do this to make re-usable stickers for my kids from old book pages, toy catalogues, and our drawings all the time–tbh, I think the bottle I used for these stickers is the same bottle I was using way back then!

To make these re-usable stickers, cut your photo to size, then coat the back with a VERY thin coat of Aleene’s Tack It Over And Over Again glue. I like to do this on top of parchment paper, so I can brush excess glue off the edges of the photos and onto the paper:

Let these photo stickers dry for about 24 hours, then peel them off the parchment paper. Even though they are repositionable, I like to stick them to wax paper to store them.

Method 3: Use a store-bought sticker maker.

Pros: Makes the highest-quality stickers by far.

Cons: Most expensive, least eco-friendly.

I wouldn’t buy one of these for myself, but I do use the snot out of the Xyron Creative Station Lite that I bought for my kid back when she was a tween. She creates a lot of art, and I thought that she might like to make stickers and magnets out of her own little art pieces… and she does!

But yikes, this machine is made entirely of plastic, and each cartridge is made from more plastic. Please feel free to spam me with suggestions for more eco-friendly models!

I will say, though, that the stickers this machine makes are WONDERFUL, easily equivalent to good store-bought stickers. We’ve worked with materials as thick as food packaging cardboard, and the stickers always come out well. This cartridge even laminates the top of the sticker, so glossy photos remain smudge-free.

Ugh for all that plastic, though!

I wasn’t excited to find these photos in the back of a closet, true, but I have to say that I am excited to have a fun little way to display some of them! It definitely brings a bit of magic into my daily grind to catch a glimpse of a happy memory and a sweet kid or two.

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

November WIPs

 

All this year I've been trying to be more organized with my various craft projects--including, you know, *actually* completing the projects that I start. 

I've been doing a fairly good job with it, too... until November. Things seem to have run off the rails a bit this month.

Here's what I'm currently working on, trying to finish, or at least determinedly not abandoning:

Skull Quilt Block

I actually sewed this skull quilt block back in October, a couple of weeks before Halloween. I was wanting a quick little homemade holiday thing to give to my teenager and put in my college student's care package, and I thought that this skull quilt block would be lovely as the front panel of a zippered pouch big enough to hold their ipads. And while I was at it, I could make one for my nook, as well!

Well, this little sucker was a LOT more challenging and fiddly to sew than I'd anticipated, and it took me two days of seam ripping and swearing to get this one wonky, crooked block.

I DO know what I did wrong, though--when a pattern tells you that the seam allowance is 1/4", they mean it!

Even though it's well past Halloween now, I'm determined not to abandon my project. After all, I have the kind of kids who'd welcome a patchwork skull ipad cozy in their Christmas stockings just as much as they would in their Halloween candy buckets!

Weaving Loom

This was also technically meant to be an October project. In early October, I taught a workshop to Girl Scout leaders on the topic of upcycled cardboard crafts. I'd wanted to include this simple corrugated cardboard weaving loom, but ran out of time to demo it and write/photograph a tutorial. 

I DO actually have plenty of process photos now, so at this point I could write the tutorial up, but now I've gotten wrapped up (ahem) in various weaving patterns, and I checked out a ton of pattern books from the library, and I want to make a few more long braids to use as hangers for all the Christmas ornaments I hope to make.

England Travel Journal

For Mother's Day, Matt and the kids gave me a beautiful blank book and some themed stickers and accessories so that I could keep a travel journal during our upcoming trip to England... which I did!

After I got home, though, I realized that I had plenty of room to intersperse many of my trip photos, as well as other embellishments I'm cutting out from old travel guides and National Geographics. It's... gotten a little out of hand, to be honest. I'm only about halfway done with it, and it's already so fat that Matt's talking about finding a larger set of book rings and rebinding it for me. 

Hand-Sewn Wool Felt Moveable Alphabet

This might be my most unwieldy project to date. I've had a partial package of very nice wool felt (I got it from this shop 11 years ago, and the shop is still in business!) kicking around my stash ever since I got on that Waldorf materials kick back when the kids were small, and I settled on the plan of using it to make a hand-stitched moveable alphabet for my three-year-old niece's Christmas present. 

While fabricating this plan, I conveniently forgot about my extreme myopia and my newly-middle-aged eyesight that means that there are a few specific distances at which I literally cannot focus my eyes... one of them being the distance to a piece of embroidery held in my hands. 

Nevertheless, I am nearsightedly soldiering on! I finished cutting out all the felt letters just a few nights ago, while Matt plied us with cocktails and read me crossword puzzle clues, and my benchmark goal is completing two letters per day--a couple of days ago, I completed three! Alas that currently, most of these letters are being sewn while the teenager and I listen to 12 Years a Slave, which is the most harrowing, saddest, emotional book I've read in I don't know how long. I can't think of a better book for making the human cost of slavery tangible, and it's the best possible book to read with a teenager, but I do feel a little weird sewing away on a three-year-old's toy while listening to Eliza's screams as she's torn away from her small daughter in the New Orleans slave market. 

Hopefully, all these WIPs will be finished by mid-December, and I will try very hard to discipline myself not to start anything new until they are!

I mean, though, I DO need to make some Team Mouse gifts for my own mouseling's fellow Nutcracker warriors, and I've got a couple more handmade Christmas gifts in mind, and we were thinking of really leaning into the Christmas cookie game this year, and I have some England photos that I want to print but first I need to thrift and makeover some frames for them...

Maybe I'll just start the Team Mouse gifts and the Christmas cookies...

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

DIY Washi Tape with Upcycled Materials and Simmering Holiday Resentment

 I ran out of washi tape this week, smack in the middle of trying to get out a bunch of Pumpkin+Bear orders (all of which are packaged using washi tape!).

I really didn't want to go out and face the post-Thanksgiving shopping hordes just so each of my packages can contain its customary three inches of washi tape, and also I'm very much deep in the Consumerist Pit of Despair at the moment, fueled by having done almost all my holiday shopping and OH MY GOD WHY DO THINGS COST MONEY?!?

And then I remembered "Syd's" sticker maker...

In the photo below I've got a wallpaper sample, comic book page, and scrapbook paper, and Syd's Xyron has the Permanent Adhesive cartridge installed:

I squared up each piece, then cut them into quarter-inch strips:

It actually made a lot!

I'm currently storing them in a binder clip tacked to my study wall, and I'm very curious to see how long they last before I get to try out some new papers:

I've just noticed all the washi tape of years past on that wall, lol!

Alas, I finished packaging all my Pumpkin+Bear orders before I had the idea to upcycle ephemera into washi tape (but do not be sad, because I used my favorite measuring tape tape to package my orders, instead), so I couldn't test drive my brand-new washi tape on the packages.

Fortunately, that Pit of Consumerist Despair that I'm wallowing in DOES mean that I've got another very important use for DIY washi tape!

Also, Matt committed my #1 Co-Parent Gift-Giving Foul: when I thoughtfully informed him of the latest Christmas gift that I selected and purchased and wrapped for our children (the one in this photo, actually!), his response was NOT "Thank you so much for this burden of emotional labor that you are lifting, and for the magical memories you are ensuring for our precious children. I've also been thinking about what gifts the kids would like, and my contributions will be wrapped and ready for the tree soon, with their recipients and dollar amounts recorded in the Excel spreadsheet so we can make sure we're under budget."

Nope, instead he wrinkled his nose and replied, "Where are we going to put THAT?!?" He insists that this question, asked whenever I come home with any object, whether it's a refrigerator box or a roll of washi tape, is asked purely for informational purposes, but you and I both know the truth. You and I also both know that from now on, there's only one person in the house who's going to know the contents of 99.9999999% of the Christmas gifts under the tree this year and Matt can be just as surprised as the kids to see the presents that they open.

And THEN he can figure out where we're going to put them!

How to Make Origami Hearts

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World back in 2016.

Curious about origami? Wanting to bust some paper stash? Make origami hearts! 

 These little origami hearts are quick and easy to make, and they look adorable. Here's how to fold them: 

  1. Start with a strip of paper. Any paper will do for this project, from brown paper bags to wrapping paper scraps to bits of your favorite scrapbook paper. You can also play with the size of your strip, although I tend to always use the same size strips that we use for our paper chains: 1"x6". 

 HINT: I work a lot with upcycled papers and scrapbook paper, and I've gotten into the habit of cutting down my scraps at the end of a project into the three types of paper ephemera that I use most often: 1" circles, 1.25" hearts, and these 1"x6" strips. They store more easily and attractively, and whenever the kids and I have the urge to do some crafting, we've already got a ready stash of our favorite supplies. 

  2. Valley fold your paper strip in half. Crease the fold with the back of your thumbnail.  

3. Fold each side down to meet the center line. Crease the fold.  

4. Flip the piece over to the back side, and turn it upside down. 

 5. Fold each of the two top pieces down to meet the bottom straight edge. Crease the folds.  

6. Fold the corners of each of the top two pieces down to meet in the middle. This is the trickiest part to get even, since you don't have a vertical line of symmetry here to guide you. If you'd like, you can always fold that line yourself; you'll have two extra creases on your heart, but it won't affect anything.  

Turn your piece back over, and you'll see your heart! 

 If you'd like to make sure that your heart stays flat, you can always glue those top four corners down.

 These hearts are so quick and easy to make that you'll have a pile of them before you know it, and that's okay! They make good embellishments for Valentines, and cute embellishments or even gift tags for presents. Thread them onto floss for a simple bunting, or stamp your business info on them and hand them out with your handmade products. 

 Or, you know, just hoard them because they're so pretty. That's what I do! 

I Bought My Kid a Sticker Maker

 

I wasn't sure that this sticker maker was actually going to be a hit. Syd didn't touch it for the entire summer after I bought it for her birthday, and I'm the one who actually ended up getting it out early this autumn and messing around with it trying to figure it out.

But if there is one gold standard about parenting, it is this: if you want your kids to get interested in something, ignore them and get yourself interested in that thing. Whether it's dried apricots, The Lord of the Rings, or your latest awesome art supply, if you're into something and act like you don't know they're around, kids show up and try stuff out just to get into your business. 

On an unrelated note, ahem, I have also been woken up by the children from every single nap I have ever tried to take since they've been born. I swear that a kid can need nothing from me, can flat-out reject my company, and as soon as I close my bedroom door, lie down, get comfy, and doze off, I hear, "Mom?" And it's always something stupid, like where are the scissors or are we supposed to be saving the French bread for dinner or can we go to the bookstore this weekend.

Literally TODAY I lay down on my bed for like five minutes to TikTok as my reward for mostly-ish picking up the house, fell asleep, and fourteen seconds later Syd was all, "Mom?"

To be fair, she was calling for me to see if I was ready to drive her to ballet, but still! 

So when I got out the sticker maker stuff for the first time one day, set it all up at the kitchen table, figured out how to load and use the cartridges, and started cutting out some comic book pages that I thought might make excellent stickers--

--Syd found me and immediately figured out all the sticker stuff and off she went, making her own art into stickers:

Because you can't arrive at a dog's birthday party empty-handed!

Here are the sticker maker supplies that Syd now uses every week:

• Xyron Creative Station Lite
• Xyron Magnet/Laminate Roll
• Xyron Laminate/Adhesive Roll

She uses the supplies entirely to make stickers from her own art, and she prefers the simple adhesive roll, rather than the roll that both adds adhesive to the back AND laminates the front, because she likes to continue to add to and embellish her art even after it's made into stickers.

I don't make art, and so I've made stickers from comics, vintage books, and clip art, digital images, and the kids' scanned artwork all printed on plain copy paper. I also prefer the look of the unlaminated stickers, although I suspect that my comic stickers aren't particularly archivally sound.

Syd was mildly horrified to see that I'd essentially made fanart of another one of her projects.

I'd be curious to price out about how much each square inch of sticker costs, but I'm too lazy to do that right now. It feels cheap enough, though, that I wouldn't be sad letting the kids make stickers when their friends come over or bringing it out at a Girl Scout meeting. 

I'm also very eager to try scanning, printing, and then making into stickers the fussy cut graphics that I like to decoupage onto wood blocks. I'd lose some eco-friendliness and the coolness of using the actual comic, but I could use graphics from comics that I'm not willing to cut up and a sticker might be more reliable and less messy than a piece of vintage low-grade paper and glue.

Christmas cardmaking will be VERY fun, too.

And I can't wait to see what Syd makes next, too!

P.S. I can't let you go without mentioning that I'm also super into DIY stickers that I make using repositionable glue. These were awesome especially when the kids were little and sticking stickers everywhere, because they peel right off any surface--and stick right down again somewhere else!