Anatomy of a Birthday Present

I've been trying to get back into penpalling, so I've been watching a ton of videos about flipbooks and pocket letter and what have you. So I have been very inspired, and since it was my crafty friend's birthday recently, I decided to creatively package the miscellaneous papercraft supplies I got her for her birthday instead of shoving it in a gift bag and calling it a day.



I taped two big envelopes together, added little strips of scrapbooking paper with slits cut into it to tuck little washi tape samples, made a pocket from a coin envelope, and decorated with lots of washi tape and stickers. I also wrapped some washi tape around these adorable wooden bobbins I found at a local store for some fun flair.

The washi tape samples are from this wonderful Etsy shop called LePresentDelicat - I grabbed a couple of her washi sample mystery grab bags and as you can see got so many fun designs.

All in all, I managed to fit a lot of stuff in this flipbook.

Decoupaged night table

The past few months have been really busy, as summer always is, what with exams and me starting to work on my thesis. So I haven't been crafting much, but I saw this link on Pinterest (as you do), and I just HAD to do something similar. I've been meaning to update my bedroom furniture for a while now, so I picked my night table to experiment on.



I used a completely different kind of sheet music for each drawer - pages from a hymnal that I got in a Craftster swap, sheet music that I got from another swap, and a couple pages from an old solfege book from my music-learning days.



I dismantled the drawers of my night table, then I tore up the sides of the pages and crumpled them up a little, glued them on the drawers, and when they dried, I used watercolors to make the pages look even more aged and yellowed.



Here is a close-up of the middle drawer, made with the pages from the hymnal.

Pumpkin Virtuoso

I made this little guy for my friend's birthday that was a couple weeks ago (so, yeah, if you were wondering why I was not posting, this is what I was working on). He uses this picture A LOT as his avatar:



so I thought I'd go about recreating it in reality. (I'm sorry that I have no credit for this icon, if you've made it or know who has, please let me know!) The first thing I got excited about knitting the little scarf (which is ironic because it ended up being the thing I hated making the most), and I contemplated various ways of making the body and violin. I was all prepared to make it all out of clay, but then it hit me. Paper mache!



I shaped the body and head out of newspaper and painter's tape. I used thick string for the 'veins' on the pumpkin, and pipe cleaners for the fingers. I basically folded two pieces of pipe cleaner in half, and inserted the folded part in a tube of newspaper for arms. (Apologies for the messy desk, but paper mache is a really messy craft :P)



The violin is two pieces of violin-shaped cardboard filled with newspaper and bound with painter's tape, and the bow is just another pipe cleaner. This entire process took about three hours while I was rewatching Sound of Music with a friend.



I used PVA glue mixed with water and paper towels, here is the first layer applied. I think I did... four layers? Though the base, for example, only has two layers of glue and paper towels, and the pumpkin head has a couple more. With the breaks needed for the glue to dry, this process took around three days.



I first painted the whole thing with light grey acrylic paint. Then I switched to gouache (mostly because I had way more colors and wouldn't need to do as much mixing, but I ended up really thankful I did because I would be way less comfortable shading with acrylics). I've never really shaded a 3D object before, but I am quite pleased with the results, especially on the pumpkin. Finally, I glazed the whole thing.





Sewing the tiny coat was another challenge, because sleeves confuse the hell out of me. It worked out alright after a lot of trial and error. I used felt and handsaw it.



I used fishing line for the strings, and cut little notches into the base of the violin so I could thread the line through the loop at the neck of the violin and tuck it into the notches so it was nice and secure.



Then I knitted a tiny scarf, and that was basically it. Except not, because aaaaaaaah, I hate tiny scarves. Hate hate hate. It was so tedious, and I ended up being frustrated and having loose ends poking all over the place because there were so many of them and I just had no patience. So the scarf is a little bit crap, but shhh, don't look too closely at it.







I think my favourite part might be the hands, oddly. I just used some really, really watered down gouache a shade darker than the base color I used, and it settled into the grooves and made this quite awesome shading.



From the side and the back.

Overall, I think this entire thing took about... thirty hours of work, maybe, not counting waiting time. But it was worth it, and it was one of the most fun projects I've worked on in a while!

Prettified keyboard!

I haven't updated in ages. I've been incredibly busy with school, and most of my crafting has been for swaps over at Craftster, so I can't reveal anything yet, since my partners haven't received :) I am also working on a rather big project for a friend's birthday.

In the meantime, here's a quick little "craft" I did yesterday!



I saw this amazing post by Kira and I was in love. How adorable is that keyboard! So I checked out Le Box Boutique on Etsy (they are really great, they have a huge variety of gorgeous tapes, and they're really affordable), and an amazing friend of mine bought me a few rolls of tape from them.



Mine is a little more subdued, as you can see. I think I'll leave it as it is and not put tape on the rest of the keys, because I quite like the simple, clean look of it now. I might decorate the caps lock and enter keys, though.

Inchies, inchies everywhere!

All my crafting has been swap-related, and therefore mostly top secret, lately, so here are some of my inchies, all together in one place.



These are the first I ever made. Where the obsession began...



I made these for a personal inchie swap with the amazing Malmow over at Craftster. She was kind enough to take pictures of them for me.



I know this is a horrible, unfocused, crappy webcam picture. These are the inchies I sent out for the inchie swap over at Craftster - seven sets of inchies to seven partners. Some of my partners took pictures of their sets:





Now I feel like making more inchies.