brecho cheapchic: Tutorials for Above Average

Showing posts with label Tutorials for Above Average. Show all posts

Boo and Joy Banner tutorial

Remember our sneak peek for this month's Craft Night?

I only had the one side done, and it was mostly just to give our attendee's a picture.

Well this is how mine ended up turning out:

Eek! I love my new version! For some reason the witch legs just seemed like they were more "eek" than "boo." And it's only three letters... Anyway, it gives you another option, right?

Here's tags I made to dress it up a little. I used scraps of leftover paper and rhinestones to jazz up what I already had. Plus stamps, glitter, and embossing powder. But you guys are crafter, you know.

So here's a tutorial for this fun banner! First off, let me tell you that this craft gets a little intense if you're doing it for a group. I used cheap cedar fencing, 1"x6" x 6' and cut 18 triangles out of each board. That kind of wood is only around 4 or 5 dollars apiece. Pretty good for 6 banners, right?

Then I used a 3/8 drill bit to cut a hole in each corner, just eyeballing it. (By the way, using a drill bit like this will kind of make you feel ULTRA capable and superwoman-esque.)

This bit cuts cleanly through this cheap wood on one side,

but it will tear up the other side:

So here's my tip you only cut through until the tip barely cuts through like this:

Then you flip the board over, and drill through the other side:

Which will make another clean hole:

Then I painted the edges black:

And modge-podged Halloween paper onto one side:

And Christmas paper on the other side:

We then added the letters for "BOO" and "JOY" and rhinestones to embellish them.

I also used the black paint to kind of distress the edges of the paper. And here's a couple more tags:

So here's my spooky final version:

And here's the Christmas side hiding out through the witch legs.

I was inspired by Lil Luna's project here and these crazy cute witch legs by Design Dazzle here.

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Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! (or smooshed witched legs on my front porch for Halloween!)

My front porch is officially looking pretty spooky! Eek! Is that a ghost??!!

Okay, okay, I know I'm a dork and I had a little too much fun with the editing this morning! But I do want to show you the "Wicked Witch of the East" legs and sign I made for my Halloween porch decorations.

It all started with a bit of inspiration. First of all, the movie, duh. But mostly the ubiquity of cute witch leg crafts I started seeing last fall and have lasted through many a Wizard of Oz themed party blog post. Like this one:

credit: Diary of a Crafty Lady

And then I heard Krylon had this new amazing glitter spray and I had to try it! (It's that compulsive craft addiction! Do they have rehab for this???)

I had a pair of pointy patent leather black heels that were getting too hammered to keep wearing so they found a new use:

disclaimer: patent leather is NOT a good vehicle for this spray. It works, but it bubbles and slips and looks very amateurish. Good enough for one side to show on my porch, mostly in dusky light. I would choose spray adhesive and straight up glitter next time if I was using patent leather.

Then I stuffed striped tights (children's from after Halloween clearance last year) with polyfill and hot-glued the feet into the heels. And I used glue dots to shove the top of the tights into the wedge of patio/wall. We'll see how well that holds through the season...

There they are on the right side! I wanted you to see the full effect minus the special effects:

I made this sign to hang with it on picnik:

If you want to use it, you can. I just saved the image onto my computer, then inserted it into a word document and printed it on scrapbook paper so I wouldn't use up tons of ink:

I was putting the legs near my doorbell and thought I just could not pass up the pun!

Here they are again: I love them!!!

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Wish banner tutorial

If you can't tell, we've gone birthday crazy around here! It started with our Birthday Block Craft Night. We made a "Wish" banner to give away in a drawing and just got carried away!

We made the cupcake embellishments by layering a crepe paper rosette over a mini cupcake liner.

And I thought I'd show you guys how I made the birthday candle embellishment

Just a small roll of turquoise glitter paper, hot glued to stay.

Then I twisted one end of a crepe paper streamer until it felt sturdy then folded a larger piece out to make the "flame." Don't cut it, just bring more down and wrap it around the base you've created.

Then just a dab of hot glue on the base and stick it in the "candle" roll.

These banners are 6"x6" squares, with "Wish" cut out in the "Cindy Lou" font from Cricut in 3", all caps. We distressed the edges with an ink pad of both the squares and the letters. Then the paper was hot glued to ruffled crepe paper streamers.

Like? Let us know :)

Linking here:

Sunday:

http://iheartnaptime.blogspot.com/, http://niftythriftythings.blogspot.com/

Monday:

http://craftomaniac.blogspot.com/, http://makingtheworldcuter.blogspot.com/, http://diyhshp.blogspot.com/, http://www.skiptomylou.org/, http://sumossweetstuff.blogspot.com/, http://marvelouslymessy.blogspot.com/

Tuesday:

http://todayscreativeblog.net/, http://ladybug-blessings.com/, http://tipjunkie.com/, http://www.sugarbeecrafts.com/,

Wednesday:

http://eisymorgan.blogspot.com/, http://www.paisleypassions.blogspot.com/, http://somedaycrafts.blogspot.com/, http://www.bluecricketdesign.net/, http://www.mybackyardeden.com/, http://reasonstoskipthehousework.blogspot.com/

Thursday:

http://www.momnivores-dilemma.com/, http://www.houseofhepworths.com/, http://nightowlcrafting.blogspot.com/

Friday:

http://www.whipperberry.com/, http://www.thegirlcreative.com/,http://tidymom.net/, http://sassysites.blogspot.com/, http://shabbynest.blogspot.com/, http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/, http://www.findingfabulousblog.com/

Saturday:

http://www.bedifferentactnormal.com

Birthday blocks tutorial

Okay, finally getting a chance to post about our last Craft Night, even as we have May's Craft Night happening soon! We don't quite have a picture for EVERY step and all these were taken at night, so please forgive the quality!

1. First you'll need about 80 inches of ruffled crepe paper. We just fed the streamers through the sewing machine, ruffling manually.

2. We made the cake stands by using Gorilla Glue to attach a glass candlestick to a plate. We Modge-podged paper onto the plate, but didn't include a picture of that.

3. Next, use hot glue to attach crepe paper around the outside of the plate. It will cover any uneven cutting of the paper :)

4. For the blocks we used a 4x4x8 piece of wood, and then cut it into an 8" long rectangle, 6" rectangle and a 3.5" square for the top and painted them white.

5. For the middle block, we covered it in two lines of ruffled streamers. Use hot glue to make a line, then press the sewn middle of the streamer into the line of glue. Wrap around all four sides. Then repeat for a second layer of ruffles.

6. The square and 8" rectangle were covered in paper. For the square you'll need 6 different patterns, cut into 3.25" x 3.25" squares. For the rectangle you'll only need two long pieces, 7.75"x 3.25", and two squares, 3.25" x 3.25" The bottom of the block won't ever show and the top of the block is mostly covered by the ruffled rectangle above it.

7. Mod-podge the paper on.

Here's a picture of the blocks finished through these steps so far:

Here's a picture of the Craft Night kits set up and ready to go. (Which, by the way, we will be putting onto our etsy shop in addition to the finished sets.)

10. We added vinyl to the bottom and top pieces of wood. We cut "days until my" in Simply Sweet at 1" and "Birthday!" in 1.5". Then we cut numbers 0-5 in 3 inches