You're a Gem

I've been playing around with jewel tones and February's amethyst.

You Rock

"If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person." 

--Fred Rogers   

New Fabrics in Shop

New fabrics are up for sale in my Spoonflower shop! They are also available as wallpaper, decals, and gift wrap.

Parisian Stroll in Fresh (at long last I made a Parisian design!)

Mechanism

Pagoda Garden

Daffodils

Rock Exhibit



1st Blogiversary!

 

 Today's the day! The traditional gift for a 1st anniversary is paper and the modern gift is clocks, so here you are: a paper clock, paper slice of cake, paper flower, and paper diamonds! In response to my PaperLove post I received a request for a tutorial on how to make paper flowers like the one on top of the slice of cake. So, for some celebratory crafting:

Materials:

String

Scissors

Thin paper (I used blank newsprint. Weights between tissue and multiuse paper work best)

Step 1: Cut about 8 rectangular sheets of paper and layer them on top of each other. They don't have to be exactly the same size (the imperfection makes for more realistic petals), and obviously the bigger you make the sheets the larger your flower will be. The width is the approximate diameter. These pieces are about 3'' wide.

Step 2: Accordion fold the sheets, parallel to the width.

Step 3: Knot string around the center of the folded sheets, perpendicular to the width.

Step 4: Carefully separate the sheets to arrange them into petals.

Step 5: Sometimes the paper tears slightly on the folded ridges, so cutting the sharp corners off the petals makes the whole flower look more natural.

Also, if you are interested in making these satisfyingly geometric diamonds, I used this post's template, which I printed on cardstock, painted metallic, cut out, scored, and glued together with hot glue. Here's to the coming year of creativity!

Pssst! You can now follow my blog with Bloglovin!

Rock Exhibit

Here's my fabric for Spoonflower's Geodes and Gemstones design challenge of the week. I made marker and watercolor sketches and then altered them in Photoshop to create the design. It was inspired by my childhood visits to the nature museum, where I would drool at the giant, sparkly geodes.