April 24, 2013

Quick and Easy Craft #3- Freezer Paper Stencil Tote Bag

April 24, 2013/ Michelle Scheibe

While I am soaking up the rays in Florida (while wearing SPF 50 and a big floppy hat), I will leave you with 4 days worth of quick and easy crafts. You may have seen some of them multiple times. Some may be new. All with be easy, fairly quick and inexpensive ways to entertain your friends. Enjoy!

You know what stinks. When you turn your supposedly non-crafty friends into better crafters than yourself. I created monsters. Our next adventure in crafting was using freezer paper as a stencil for tote bags. I’ve had the freezer paper forever but I had been afraid to use it. My newly created craft monsters were all over it.

Materials Needed:

Tote
Fabric paint or acrylic paint/fabric medium
Freezer Paper
Iron
Paint Brush
Cardboard

Start by tracing and/or drawing the design you want onto freezer paper with the shiny side down. Cut out your design. We used scissors. (And Exacto knife would be awesome too.) Iron the freezer paper to your tote (shiny side down). Pay special attention to the edges. We found that the freezer paper stuck best if you let the iron rest on it for about 5-10 seconds.

Stick a piece of cardboard inside the tote so it doesn’t bleed through.

Now it’s time to paint. My friend, Melissa, choose to stick with one solid color.

Amanda went wild with stripes. (I really should have busted out the real camera.)

Every tutorial I read using freezer paper recommends leaving it on for an hour. The three of us combined have about 8 minutes worth of patience. And that is precisely how long the freezer paper stayed on the tote bags. The both turned out great. I wish I would have grabbed a better picture of Amanda’s because the stripes were so cool.

I totally almost stole Melissa’s. It’s just too cute. (Mine is the striped one in the corner. Boring.) I really like how the stencil paper turned out and I’ll be making one for myself very soon! I think they’d be great farmer’s market or beach totes!

Have you tried using freezer paper for stenciling before?

April 23, 2013

Quick and Easy Craft #2- Home Sweet Home Sprinkle Art

April 23, 2013/ Michelle Scheibe

I have a secret for you. In order to get your supposedly non-crafty friends pumped about crafting, you need to start with a ridiculously easy (yet super cute) craft. It will get them all encouraged and loving paint and glue. Trust me.

I started my best buds out with a little “Home Sweet Home” art that I had been wanting to try.

Materials needed:

Cardstock
White marker (We used a paint pen.)
Printed copy of your state
Glue
Sprinkles

Center your copy of your state on the cardstock. Trace with the white pen. We were cursing Iowa’s river borders but probably not as much as those city workers trying to protect downtown Davenport from flooding. Wait, we were probably worse.

Add your “Home Sweet Home” saying wherever you would like. We all choose different locations. I also like that this craft uses your own handwriting. It’s like a little time capsule. Sort of. It sounds good.

Make a heart in your favorite location using glue.

Dump sprinkles on the wet glue. This was the most fun part. I just love sprinkles.

Bam. You’re done. Your friends think they are crafting masterminds.

I really like how we each did our own take on a super simple project.

Frame that baby. Super cute and simple art. Crating for the win.

April 22, 2013

Quick and Easy Craft #1- Ombre Striped Tea Towels

April 22, 2013/ Michelle Scheibe

How do you entertain two of your favorite people during a cold (and spitting snow) day in April? You make them do crafts with you. And then you take them to look at the flooding Mississippi river. What can I say? I know how to entertain.

In the middle is my best friend from my days at the University of Northern Iowa, Amanda. I helped Amanda pass Physics. Amanda made sure I didn’t study for 4 years straight. Equally important. On the right is my best friend from childhood, Melissa. Melissa and I share a love of Adam Sandler, Sangria and talking about the good ol’ days of being nerdy high school kids. Neither of these fine ladies thought they were good at crafting. I disagree.

Our first adventure was ombre striped tea towels.

I love tea towels. They remind me of the summer days I spent painting them with my brother and Grandma when we were little. Memories. Painted mice/day of the week towels are cute but my tastes have slowly evolved over the years. Thankfully.

Here’s what you’ll need to paint my ombre striped tea towels.

Tea towels (You can find them at Target, Wal-Mart, Joann’s, etc. I got a pack of 4 from Target for $4.)
Fabric paint or acrylic paint plus fabric medium.
- As my supposedly non-crafty friends learned, fabric medium keeps any paint from feeling crusty on fabric.
Painter’s Tape
- I’m not brand loyal. I use whatever we have around. The blue. The green doesn’t matter.
Paint brush
Something to place under your towels.

You will start by taping off your towel. My type A personality makes projects like this hard so I handed this step over to Amanda. She tells me the secret to her taping success is that she “just doesn’t care.” Write that down. It’s a very important tip. She did a fantastic job. She tells me she is available for hire.

Place your professionally taped towel on to something to protect your table. We used cardboard.

Next you will need to pick your color. We decided to start with coral. Who doesn’t love coral? My paints were all acrylic so we picked two parts paint to one part fabric medium. We added some white painting to the coral for each stripe to create the ombre effect. Take your paint brush and cover the striped areas!

Keep adding white paint, fabric medium and painting stripes. When your painting is complete, remove the painter’s tape. This part was terrifying. Luckily we had little bleeding and it looked pretty darn awesome.