Crafting In The Kitchen ~ Part 1

Parting is such sweet sorrow, isn't it? This is the final tutorial for our month long crafting event here at Joli Paquet. It's been a wonderful ride and we've had so much fun sharing our holiday recipes and crafting ideas with everyone, as well as making new friends along the way. I hope you all have enjoyed visiting our little blog as much as we have in putting it together for you.

Have you ever looked at the things in your kitchen with different eyes? What I mean is, you would be surprised as to what you can find in the kitchen to make ornaments or holiday decorations for your home. I have made ornaments out of wooden spoons, birdcages from wire whisks, candle holders out of egg cups and apples, etc. etc. Well, today we are going to make sweet little photo ornaments out of tiny tart pans. Here's what you'll need to get started:

~ Supplies ~

* Mini tart pans - These come in all shapes and sizes. I used round ones that are 2.25" in diameter from Sur la Table.

* Vintage or family photos that are sized to approximately 3" wide. Print these out on photo paper. I like to use Enhanced Matte Paper by Epson.

* 3-D Foam Dots

* Silver or Red Metallic Pipe Cleaners

* Small Beads or Pearls

* Buttons

* Artificial Evergreen Boughs or Leaves

* Gingham Ribbon

* Snow Glitter or Mica Flakes

* White Craft Glue

*Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks

* 2" Circle Paper Punch - straight or scalloped edged.

(Size of punch will vary depending on size and shape of tart pan.)

Center punch on photograph and punch out circle.

Stack 2 foam dots and adhere to the inside bottom center of tart pan.

Insert circle-punched photograph into tart pan.
Press down gently to adhere the back of photo to the foam dot.

Form pipe cleaner into a circular shape.
TIP: Wrap pipe cleaner around a jar or bottle that is approximately 2" in diameter.
Shaping the pipe cleaner like this before placing in tart pan will make it easier to glue in place.
Trim pipe cleaner to size.

Apply white craft glue to the edges of photograph.

Sprinkle snow glitter or mica flakes while craft glue is still wet.

Shake off excess glitter.

Your ornament should look like the photos above and below at this point.

Pipe cleaners come in a variety of colors ~ Use the color that suits your project the best.

Bend and twist a pipe cleaner, forming a loop on the top.

Then bend the two tails in towards the center to form smaller loops.

Add a dab of hot glue to the top center of back of tart pan.

Press the pipe cleaner into hot glue to adhere to tart pan.

Add a small piece of artificial evergreen bough on top of tart pan, adhering with hot glue.

Glue 5-6 small red beads to evergreen bough.

Add button and gingham ribbon bow to embellish ornament.

Hang your ornament and enjoy!

Here are a couple other variations for the same ornament using different embellishments.

This photo of my mother is adorned with a rhinestone button and vintage tinsel garland.

This snowman ornie is embellished with a pink button and pink gingham ribbon bow. I also added extra snow glitter to the botton front of this ornament to make it look like a snow drift...

... and tiny white pearls instead of red beads.

I printed this photo out in sepia tones and embellished the ornament with a brown gingham ribbon and button along with a bit of vintage tinsel garland.

You can hang the ornaments on the tree or an evergreen swag.

Scroll down to "Crafting in the Kitchen ~ Part 2" for a bonus project!

xoxo

jeanne

Crafting in the Kitchen ~ Part 2

Now here's a quick and easy project you can whip up in no time at all. This time of the year always makes me think of baking Christmas cookies with my mom and grandma. Well, once you are finished rolling out the cookie dough, you can make this cute little garland to use as a decoration for your kitchen or on your Christmas tree.

~ Supplies ~

* Cookie Cutters - These can be vintage cookie cutters or new ones. I bought this set of six vintage-looking cookie cutters at Homegoods for $7.99. I like to use an odd number of cookie cutters (I used 5 of them for my garland), but you can use as many as you like.

* 48"-54" of ribbon - I used 7/8" wide red gingham.

* Red & green buttons - larger buttons work best for this project. I used 3/4 " diameter buttons.

* Glue gun and glue sticks.

Fold ribbon in half and mark the center with a straight pin.
Figure out which cookie cutter you are going to use for the center of the garland. Thread the ribbon through one of the holes in the cookie cutter, starting from the front and going to the back of the cookie cutter. Then thread the ribbon up through the other hole, from back to front of cookie cutter. Center the cookie cutter on the ribbon by using the straight pin marker as a guide.
At this point, your garland should look like this.
Continue to string the cookie cutters on to the ribbon, spacing the cutters evenly along the ribbon.
Apply a dab of hot glue to the back of one of the buttons.

Center and glue the buttons to the ribbon midway between the cookie cutters. If you prefer, you can sew the buttons to the ribbon using needle and thread.

Tie a knot near the end of each ribbon.

Hang your garland on the Christmas tree, or the fireplace mantle, or from a small kitchen tree or wherever you want to add some holiday cheer! Don't forget to post a picture of your garland (and other projects) on the Joli Paquet Flickr site, so we can see all of your wonderful creations.

Don't forget to leave a comment on the post below to sign up for the GIVEAWAY.

Be sure to periodically check back here and on the artist's blogs listed on the left ~ you just never know when another Joli Paquet event may be happening again here in blogland!

xoxo

jeanne

Winter Wonderland Giveaway

Since we are nearing the end of Joli Paquet (boo-hoo) I thought it would be fun to have a little giveaway before we have to bid you all adieu. Just leave a comment on this post or on my blog here and I will put all the names in a hat. Then later in the week I'll draw one winner to receive this pack of 64 pastel Cavallini & Co. holiday stickers. Good luck!

Pink Tinsel Pipe Cleaners! A Tutorial:)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'm happy to show you how to make silver tinsel pipe cleaners a lovely pink color. You can refer to my first Joli Paquet tutorial for basic instructions on this technique. Getting pink is a bit trickier, but it can still be done easily.

You will need the silver tinsel stems from the craft store, Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks in Red Pepper, Terra Cotta and Cranberry and Tim Holtz Blending Solution which is a companion product to the alcohol inks. I will show you how to color one pipe cleaner and how to do a large quantity. If you do one at a time, you will need some felt and a wood stamping block would be handy, but not totally necessary. My first tutorial tells how I get the felt to stick to the block. You can also just hold the felt in your hand. It will be messy, but who cares?

I was able to get a hot pink and a more muted pink doing them one at a time.

I know it's hard to see in this photo. Sorry about that. I guess you'll just have to trust me:) I could not get the hot pink when dying the larger quantity. Less control over the amounts of each ink color.

Cut your felt to a workable size and dot with Red Pepper as shown below. (I searched my studio for white felt so you could better distinguish the colors, but I came up empty-handed. sorry).

Then dot some Terra Cotta around as shown below (a little less than the red pepper).

Finally, add some Cranberry as shown below. Again, a bit less Cranberry than Terra Cotta.

Rub the felt back and forth over the stem.

This will give you the hot pink color. To tone down the color cut a clean piece of felt and squirt on some Blending Solution.

Rub the Blending Solution soaked felt over the pipe cleaner until you get the shade of pink you want. The Blending Solution decreases the color saturation. If you go too far with the blending solution, you will get back to a silver tinsel stem. Just add more of the inks and tone it down again with the blending solution.

If you want to do a larger quantity, place a hand full in a big baggie or cello bag. Squirt in a nice amount of Red pepper and mash/squish it all around with your hands on the outside of the baggie. Your hands will get VERY messy. They clean up nicely with alcohol or blending solution:)

When you get the stems (watching the ends) pretty well covered with Red Pepper it's time to squirt in a good amount of Terra Cotta. They change to a more orange/red tone as shown below.

Now, put the stems covered with Red Pepper and Terra Cotta in a NEW CLEAN bag and add Cranberry. Not as much Cranberry as Terra Cotta and Red Pepper.

So, now they are pretty red. Put these stems in another new bag and squirt in some Blending Solution. Here they are after one wash of Blending Solution (below).

They start turning pink! It's really cool! Put them in another clean bag and wash again with Blending Solution. I did three washes (mushing & squishing the Blending Solution all over the pipe cleaners) to come up with this color:

The reason for putting them in a clean bag several times toward the end is so you can better see and control the color changes. You will also see, after a few washes, that some of the stems still have a bit too much red. Take those stems out and put them in yet another clean bag for an additional Blending Solution wash. Being careful not to take the pink parts back to silver. Lay the stems out on a sheet of paper to dry. Clean up your mess with alcohol because there is no sense in wasting good blending solution:)

Hope you have fun with this. There are limitless possibilities with these alcohol inks. If you like a more purple/pink try using Wild Plum in place of Terra Cotta. These are so much prettier IRL. Wish I could capture them properly with my camera. Try it; you'll like it:)

Hope you didn't eat too much today! Thanks for stopping by:)

xo.....Donna