Category: Crafts

When I was a kid, I used to fold this ring out of one dollar bills. This Money Origami Site has a lot of other tutorials as well.

Click photo for higher resolution

Scrapbook Quilts was the workshop topic for my stamp club this month. The woman who organized it is a fabulous quilter and scrapbooker. Since I don’t scrapbook and don’t quilt, I felt somewhat intimidated by the topic, but decided I could always watch the others work. (The organizer’s reassurance that it was just collage on fabric didn’t help either, since I don’t do collage very well.)

Instead of using small quilts, the organizer provided a selection of quilted fabric placemats that she had bought at department clearance sales. I picked the plainest one I could find, and started pushing Sizzix die cuts around on it. Everyone had brought lots of different items to embellish the quilts and we were all pawing through each others’ stuff to see if we could find anything that would help our own quilt. The buttons at the top of mine came from one woman’s stash, and the Scrabble tiles came from the stash of the organizer, who buys every Scrabble set she finds at thrift stores and garage sales. I didn’t finish mine at the meeting because I had a photo at home that I wanted to use, but most members did complete their quilts.

I know it doesn’t look completely square in the photograph, and I finally discovered after attempts to make it square, that it didn’t start square. The quilting seems to have warped the place mat slightly.

Although this isn’t my usual style, it was nice to do something different for a change.

Beate Johns has written a good tutorial on how to make Faux Postage at Splitcoaststampers. Faux Postage is designed to look like official postage, but should not be used for that purpose.

For Christmas, a friend gave me a page a day calendar featuring origami models. (It is actually five models a week, but who is counting?) One day page mentioned the OrigamiUSA site as a resource.

Else’s Bellas Artes shows some artistamps on her weblog. Click on the scan for a higher resolution view.

For January, the stamp club to which I belong exchanged cards with a theme of Valentine’s Day, wedding, or anniversary card. I made this simple card, which is gold embossed swans layered on gold metallic cardstock. Using The Gimp, I put a black border around the scanned image so it would show up on the background.

For Christmas, a friend gave me a Page A Day calendar featuring origami instructions. I’ve been fascinated by origami since I was a small child, but have never pursued it seriously. I am enjoying the calendar very much so far, folding at least one model each morning. This is my favorite model so far. The calendar called it the pecking chicken, because one can make it move a bit as a puppet.