My dining room table has been transformed from a nice area to eat lovely meals to craft central, with an intermission of the mail catchall. What can I say? I live in a tiny Manhattan apartment, and I wish I had a "craft room/art studio" where I can live in art supply disarray! For heavens sakes, those very supplies occupy 4 baskets underneath my coffee table, for easy access, but also for lack of space. Oh well...not much I can do about that for the time being.
So, last week, as you know, I went to Disneyland to run in the Tinkerbell Half Marathon with my Aunt Sue. I wanted to make her something that said, good job...way to go...I knew you could do this all the while giving her a good laugh. I decided to make her a pillow out of a T-shirt she had given everyone in my family about 15 years ago that displayed a portrait of my dad's family back in the 70's. It is quite hideous and severely hilarious. I received this shirt during a white elephant exchange during my brother's 30th birthday party, and I knew it would make an excellent gift for Aunt Sue! As they say, what goes around comes around!
I cut out the picture on the T-shirt and sewed strips of fabric to create a frame (sewing the top and bottom first before the sides). Then I used a solid square of green fabric for the back and sewed that onto the front, leaving a small space open so I could stuff it with poly-fill. I closed that very opening with a matching green thread, and voila! A lovely pillow for a lovely aunt.
Another project I began is a paper covered lantern that I will use as decoration at a friend's tea party. This is an adorable Martha Stewart project where she actually uses a paper lantern and decorates it with tissue paper. I did not have a lantern, and those things can be tricky to find here in the city if you do not have the right store in your neighborhood, which I do not. So I was thinking and thinking of what I could use instead of the lantern when all of a sudden it came to me! While at the Tinker Bell Expo, Dannon Yogurt gave me some coupons and a free beach ball! And, in the place of brightly colored tissue paper, I decided to cover the ball with pages from a book, cut into circles. Here is how I made my beach ball transform!
First, you will need some supplies: a sharpened pair of scissors, paper of your choosing, double sided tape, and something that is circle to trace so that all of your circles are the same size...I used painters tape (inside of the roll) as my guide.
I had an old Bobbsey Twins book that I had gotten for $1 at an antiques store. I have used the pages of this book for several other projects, and the discoloring of the pages is so perfect.
Next, find a spherical object such as: paper lantern, ball, globe...that is what you will cover with paper circles.
Cut out your paper circles. Be sure to trace your circle first, and then cut out many pages at once because it makes that step go a lot faster. I would say for the size I used, I had to cut out about 50-75 circles.
Before I had begun taping the circles onto the beach ball, I wanted to tie ribbon on it so I could hang it up. I measured about a yard of white satin ribbon and then tied it around the valve, pressing it down to make it extra secure.
Place strips of the double sided tape at the top of each paper circle. You want the appearance of flower petals, so they cannot be secure on all sides...just one!
Start placing the circles on your sphere, beginning with the bottom and work your way up until the entire ball is covered.
Here is the final product. I added the bow to give it a nice girly touch!
Happy crafting, and I hope you have a great weekend!
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