Birthday Keyring Book

This is a home-made gift guaranteed to let a loved one know how much they mean to you.  It's ideal for a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas, Valentine's day or mother or father's day.

For my keyring book I chose the theme "reasons I'm glad you're in my life".  You can choose any theme you want for the book, such as "reasons I love you", "precious memories", "our first year together", "funny moments" and so on.

For birthdays or anniversaries you could number the book by age or how long you have been with the person you are giving this gift to.  I did exactly that, choosing 29 pages: one for each year of my boyfriend's life.

You will need a set of old playing cards that you no longer need, a hole punch, a keyring*, scissors, glue, card or colour paper, colour pens and bits and bobs to decorate your book with, such as stickers, print outs of photos and memorabilia of your life with the person you're giving the gift to such as cinema tickets, airline tickets, cards you've kept from them and so on.

*If you're using a lot of cards, ring binder rings are probably better.

Since I had chosen to make my book 29 pages long, I used 16 cards in total: 15 ( for the pages of the book and the back cover and 1 for the front cover and title page).

I've seen people do similar projects on various websites using a pack of playing cards which they stick things directly onto.  That is certainly easier, but I wanted to make my book a bit different and I didn't have proper playing cards, so I decided to glue colour card and brown envelope paper onto my cards instead to give it a unique look.  

Depending on the person's taste you could make your book look very different using gift wrapping paper with different patterns; just make sure that it properly overs up the playing card underneath.

 First I traced around the edge of the playing cards on different pieces of card and paper, cut out the outlines and glued them down using a normal glue stick.

I placed each one under a heavy book as it dried. 

Then I made a hole at the corner of each card, making sure the holes were all placed in the same spot by using the size guide on the hole punch.

I have seen other people make two holes and use ring-binder rings instead for a more conventional book look but I liked the look of the one hole at the top, and it was easier to make sure all the holes were in line.  

 I carefully attached each one to the keyring, making sure not to rip any of the paper as I did so.

I made sure that I wrote down a draft of the 29 things I wanted to write before starting so that I could make sure not to make any silly errors in spelling. It was helpful to do this to be clear exactly what I wanted to write.  This was also really useful in deciding what order to write everything in and where to place the pictures I had printed out.

I scanned in to my computer cinema tickets, train tickets, photographs and drawings which I associate with the 29 reasons I'm glad he's in my life (such as "we share a love of books" and a picture of him browsing a book market).  I copied the pictures into a Word document, using that to make some of the photos a little brighter in colour, cropping them and shrinking them all down to the correct size.  I made sure I had the page at 100% size to get a good idea of how big the images would be once printed and held up the cards to the screen to make sure non of the pictures were too big.

I then set about decorating the book with the printed pictures and stickers.  I numbered the pages too.

 As I had one too many sides for the book I made a front cover and then the title page on the back of it.

 To finish off I made an origami box big enough to wrap it in and cut small pieces of crepe paper to fill out the box.

Painted Mini Chest of Drawers

Today I'm going to share with you my before and afterwards attempt at decorating a mini chest of draws which I got at a craft shop.

I discovered my love of painting boxes when I redecorated a sewing box I received for Christmas last year.  Since then I have developed an addiction to painting the wonderful range of wooden boxes you can find in hobby stores.  I like finding boxes which are useful, and this lovely set of drawers is certainly that!

My mistake with this project though, was that I didn't plan ahead enough.

When I decorated my sewing box it was my first box-painting project so I was weary of starting and doing something wrong.  I drew some different designs and asked the advice of others to decide on the best design for the box before even buying the paints for it.

With the drawers I had an idea in my head but didn't do a drawing of it first and didn't mull over my options.  I picked bright colours that I really liked and just went for it.  The result wasn't bad, but it just didn't feel right and I knew I could have done better.

Here is how I first painted the box:

I loved the colours, but I hadn't considered what I was going to use it for or where I was going to put it.  These are very important questions.

Even after realising that I wasn't happy with the outcome of the box it took a few weeks to find the inspiration I needed to find a design I was happy with.

The inspiration came in the form of a little bottle of buttons!

I bought a little bottle of buttons because they were just too cute not to give a home to.  It was then I realised that the mini chest of drawers was quite obviously a buttons and thread container and then I thought it would be nice to decorate the box itself with buttons as a visual for what was inside the drawers.

I played around with the buttons, seeing what patterns I could make, and with the help of my wonderful man decided on the new back-ground colour for the chest of drawers.  Obviously I needed one which complemented the button colours, and cream seemed like the way to go.

So, I set about taking most of the paint off by sanding down the box (wearing a dust mask, of course).

 And using acrylic paint, I painted it in just the one uniform colour for both the box and the drawers.

Next, I played around with different patterns with the buttons and took some snaps to choose which I liked best:





















Next I plugged in my glue-gun and practised the best way to glue buttons with a couple of spares I had on a scrap piece of material.  This was very useful as I discovered it was better to use a pair of tweezers to apply the glue directly onto the button rather than place a blob of glue where I wanted to place the button.

Remember to always be extra careful when using a glue-gun and read the instructions thoroughly before use.











I had to be careful not to press directly in the centre of the button when securing it on the box as the glue could come up through the holes of the buttons, but pressing the edges and using tweezers worked really well.

I was very happy with the finished project and finally feel that I got it right.  I am pleased I did the first attempt anyway because I think the bold colours would work really well for future projects, such as decorating a box for a child; and now I have the photos of my first attempt to draw on for inspiration.

Here's the finished project:

So what do you think?  Was it better before or crafterwards? 

Fête des mères - French Mother's Day

In France Mother's Day is on the 31st of May this year, so I'm sharing a Fête des mères craft today.

Here's what I made; a colourful pot of crepe paper tulips:

Tulips are my favourite flower and very colourful.  You can make these flowers in any colour you want!

I found the idea for the flowers on Youtube here and then decided to also paint my own pot to put them in.

The instructions on Youtube are all in inches, in France it's not easy to get your hands on a ruler with inches so in my explanation below I've used cm.

First, here's what you'll need for the flowers and leaves:

Crepe paper in different colours (including green for the stems and leaves), scrap paper or newspaper, a glue stick, sticky tape, thread, scissors, a pencil and a ruler.

In the video they use newspaper which gives longer, thinner stems.  I didn't have any newspaper available so used scrap paper (a great way of not wasting paper) and it worked just fine for my purposes and made nice strong stems.

To prepare the stems:



 Roll up the paper.  

I found the easiest way was by folding down the corner before rolling as tightly as possible.

Try to roll the paper so that at the end the triangle is in the middle of the stem.

Glue down the triangle and trim both ends of the stem with scissors.


It doesn't matter if the stems are different lengths as this will make it easier to arrange your bouquet at the end.  

Next you need to make the flower petals before covering the stems with crepe paper.

 Measure approximately 15 cm by 25 cm of colourful crepe paper, making small marks with your pencil and cut out the rectangle.











Next, take your ruler and make a mark every 5 cm along the 25 cm side of the crepe paper.












Fold in a concertina at the 5 cm marks.  i.e. fold 5 cm, then turn over and fold 5 cm again, turn, fold again and so on.

Next, cut along the folded edges to make 5 strips of crepe paper which will measure 15 cm by 5 cm.





Then to make a petal, fold one of the strips of crepe paper to make a crease.  Unfold and pinch along the crease in the middle.

Then twist the middle once and fold over.

Finally, bunch up the end of the petal and twist it.  Tuck your thumb into the petal to keep its shape.

Repeat this for each of the five crepe paper strips you have prepared.  This will be enough to make one flower, so repeat the whole process again to make as many flowers as you want!

Next you're going to attach the petals to the flower stem.  Put the petals in place at the end of the stem, making sure they over-lap slightly.  Wrap thread around the base of the petals to secure them into place and place some sticky-tape on the end of the string to keep it all in place.  This procedure is a little tricky, so take your time and have lots of patience.

To finish the flower, cut a long strip of green crepe paper and wrap it around the base of the flower all the way down the stem.  I advise you secure the first bit of the crepe paper at the top of the stem with some glue.  Likewise, when you reach the end of the stem (or the end of the crepe paper strip), cut the last part of the crepe paper into a triangle and glue down the end.

Repeat these steps to make the number of flowers you want.

Now for the leaves! 
Cut approximately 4 cm by 30.5 cm of green crepe paper. 


Fold it in half length-ways.

Very slightly wet your thumb and index finger and gently curl the corners to meet in the middle of the leaf.



Fold the leaf in half width-ways.

 Holding the folded leaf in both hands, gently pinch the edge of the leaf, pulling it towards yourself and then pinching and pushing away to make a wave effect as shown in the pictures below.

Next, make a stem like the ones you made for the flowers.  I advise you to make them smaller than the flower stems.  Glue down the end of a long strip of crepe paper to the end of the stem and start to roll the crepe paper a little way down the stem.

 Before continuing to wrap the crepe paper down the stem, place the leaf behind the part of the stem which you have already covered in green.  Then continue to wind the crepe paper down the stem, making sure to wrap the leaves into the crepe paper as you go.

 When you reach the end of the crepe paper (or stem), cut a triangle shape and glue it down.

Trim the end of the stem off to create a neat finish.

Repeat these steps to make as many leaves as you want!  I made 12 flowers and 8 leaves for my bouquet.  I suggest you decide how many to make by choosing what container you are going to present them in first; that way you can see how many fit as you make them.

The flower pot:

As a little extra I found a simple wooden pot in a craft shop which I could paint the colours I wanted.  I chose the one you can see in the picture above because it looks like the shape of a tulip.  I decided to paint the pot yellow and red, like the colours I'd chosen for the flowers.

I sanded down the pot a little bit, using sand-paper blocks (and wearing a dust mask, of course!) and then I used acrylic paint, applying two or three coats. 

I outlined the shape of the pot with masking tape while working on each colour to keep the lines nice and neat; but took it off before the paint dried as I've had experience of accidentally pulling off paint from the areas I'd just been working on after leaving the masking tape on too long!  To follow curved lines of a pot with masking tape, make small folds in the tape and use small pieces of tape to create the line you need.

The yellow needed more coats than the red.  Since it's inside the pot and not very visible I didn't worry too much about getting the yellow perfect.

Here's the finished product:

Once it was dry I arranged my bouquet of tulips how I wanted it and it's ready for Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

Joyeuse Fête des mères!