Bottle Flower Vase Decoupage

 

This is a great way to recycle old bottles and also makes a great gift.

What you will need:

• Glass bottle
• Newspaper
• Pape Mache Mix (flour and water with a bit of PVA glue)
• White paint
• PVA glue (diluted a little)
• Tissue paper

First clean the bottle and dry it. It doesn’t matter if you remove the label as it will be covered anyway.

Bottle

Then tear the newspaper into strips and mix the pape mache.

Pape mache mix

Newspaper strips

Cover the bottle with the pape mache newspaper. Leave it to dry out, and repeat with a second layer.

Pape Mache bottle

Next, once it is dry, cover it in white paint so you an no longer see the newspaper through the paint.

Painted Bottle

Now use the PVA glue to cover the bottle and tear up some tissue paper in various colours and bush them onto the bottle and paint over them with PVA glue. Cover the whole bottle this way.

Bottle covered in tissue paper

Leave this to dry and you are finished. Now you can decorate it or leave it as it is! Enjoy!

Paper label curls

This is a great way to add your own message to any card. It could even be added to a shop bought card to give it a personal touch.

First cut some strips of paper to the length you want, then write the message on them.

Strips with words written on

Then take a pair of scissors and run the edge of one blade against the paper pressing the paper into the blade gently with your thumb. Experiment with pressing harder or lighter to get different curls.

Curled strips

Finally, stick down the curls onto the card.

Finished

Quilling board animals

Quilling shapes can be made into more different varieties of shapes using a quilling board. It helps with making shapes that have more than one or two points or inverting points.

To use a quilling board, just roll up the quilling paper tightly as normal and then place it inside the quilling board shape that you want and release it. It will uncurl to that shape.

The quill unraveled in the shape

Press the curl into the corners of the shapes and then pinch it into place.

Once this is done stick the end of the quilling paper down.

Arrange your shapes into your desired pattern. You can make an owl out of two triangles for ears, a circle for the head, oval for the body, hearts for the feet, and two smaller circles for the eyes and a petal for the beak.

Lay out your pattern

Once you’re happy you’ve made the animal, just stick it down on what ever you want to have it on.

Finished

Have fun trying out different shapes for different animals!

Leafy Paper Background

Leafy backgrounds are very versatile as you can just have them on their own and then place words over them, or you can put animals or flowers into them for added decoration. They are also really easy to make.

You will need:

• Pre-cut pop out leaves
• Glue

Pre-cut leaves

Take your pre-cut pop out leaves and select a few shapes and colours that take your fancy and pop them out.

Selection of leaves popped out

Then lay them out in a design. Laying them out first helps you to decide if you want to discard any or add some extras and allows you to experiment before you stick it down and make it permanent.

Leaves arranged

Once you’ve chosen your design, put glue on the back of the leaves (it could be on the full length or only part of the length depending on where you are sticking it and how it will rise off the paper).

Glue on back of part of leaf

Glue down whole back of leaf

Build up your design slowly from the back to the front.

Design being built up

Now that you’ve stuck it all down, you can add other things onto it to decorate it more or add words.

Finished

Geometric Felt Patterns

 

Here’s a simple design you can use on anything. I’ve used it to make a couple of birthday cards.

For the felt pattern you will need:

• Felt
• Scissors
• Glue
• Card

First cut out a square or rectangle of felt just a bit smaller than the card you want to mount it onto.

Cut square of felt

Next fold the felt in half in order to cut a square out of the middle to make it into a frame shape.

Cutting square out of middle

Frame of felt

Then use the square of thread to cut into various shapes. You will use these shapes to make your designs.

Shapes cut from square

Lay the felt out int any design you want on your card. Play around with it until you are happy.

Design lain out

Coat the back of the felt with glue and place it onto the card and stick it down.

Stuck down

For thread numbers you will need:

• Wool
• Glue
• Scissors

First measure out the length of thread you will need by making it into the shape of the letter or number. Then cut three threads that length.

Threads cut

Next draw out the shape with glue then lay the threads over it and leave it to dry.

Shape drawn with glue and threads being stuck

Once you’ve done this, you are finished!

Finished designs

Enjoy experimenting with different shapes and designs. Why not try it with a circular frame?

Coloured String Patterns

This technique is really versatile and can be used to make colourful designs out of parcel string that can be mounted on cards or paper, or can be left un-mounted and used for decorations around your home (you could even make some Christmas themed ones to hang on your Christmas tree).

You will need:

• Parcel string
• PVA glue
• Plastic covering – just use a piece of polyethylene that covers magazines that come in the post or clingfilm
• Nail varnish or paint

I find it helps to draw out a design first then  use that to guide you in making this.

My design drawn out

First measure out how long you want the string to be (I did this by tracing the design round with the string) and cut it to that length. Then lay the string out on the piece of plastic covering and put PVA glue over it. This helps stiffen the string so that when you manipulate it into a shape it will hold that shape a bit better. Leave the string to dry overnight.

Strings being covered in glue

Next curl, twist or shape the string into your desired shape.

String curled into shape

Now that your string is in your desired shapes, carefully colour it with nail varnish or acrylic paint. For this a brush is useful to get to the insides of your design (and makes it slightly less messy). Again leave it to dry – if you’ve used paint then leave it overnight, if you’ve used nail varnish leave it for at least twice the length you’d normally leave the nail varnish to dry on your fingers.

Strings curled and painted!

Finally assemble your design, if you want to mount it, lay it out in position first then just stick it down with glue, or if you want to leave it un-mounted, stick each of the parts together to make your design.

Design lain out

Have fun making an array of coloured string patterns!

Oil Pastel Flowers

The great thing about using oil pastels is you can use any colour you want on any coloured background and it will come out just the same colour as the pastel you used. The only time you have to think about how dark or light a colour is, is when you want to put one pastel colour over another. In that case you have to work from light to dark or the lighter colours will become affected by the dark colours.

Oil Pastels

To create your design you don’t have to be brilliant at drawing, you only have to draw the basic outline shapes. I’m doing a flower so I started with the centre then drew the petals.

Drawn flower

If you pick 2 or 3 colours you can then merge them into each other for gradient colour. After putting your first colour down, put the other colours within your design. I coloured mine in with the two other colours I was using, but experiment and see what works for you – you could do it different for each petal or do multiple different designs and experiment on each of them.

Flower coloured in

Now to merge the colours. To do this you’ll need to smudge the oil pastel with your finger. Make sure you follow the pattern of your design (so in the case of the petals I smudged from the point where they meet the centre, up and round, then back down to the point again). This works in the same way brush stokes would if you were painting.

Finished flower!

Once you’ve smudged it, if you feel the need you can add more colour with the pastels until you ware happy with the colour and design.

When you’re done you can protect the image from smudging by spraying it with hair spray or covering it with PVA glue (but this will also make it shiny).

Enjoy experimenting!

Decorative Nightlight Jar

If you like candles, you’ll frequently have emptied candle jars once you’ve burnt through them. Why not decorate them and make them ready to put nightlight candles in? You can use a whole variety of things to decorate them with including peranent markers, beads and other things you can glue on.

Jar with the wax removed

First off you need to prepare the used candle jar. Do this by heating the remains of wax up wiht warm/hot water (fill the sink with some and place the jar in the sink. This will make the wax softer so you can scrape it out. Give it a quick wipe with a cloth to make sure you’ve got all the wax out.

Jar ready to use

Next remove the covering that is round the jar, if it is a plastic covering you may need scissors to help get you started, if it is stuck on you may need to soak the jar for a while to make it come away easily. TIP: if there is an ink bar code/serial number on the jar you can remove this with a bit of nail varnish remover.

My permanent marker design

Next comes the fun part! Decoration. I’ve decorated mine with lines of permanent marker and shells. Permanent marker is great as you can create any design you like, you can even draw pictures if you want and if you make a mistake, or  change your mind you can go back by removing it with some nail varnish remover.

Jar with some of the shells attached

To attach anything like shells or beads you’ll need to use an adhesive that works on glass. always stick these items to the outside of the glass rather than the inside as adhesives are often flammable.

Finished Jar

Now you’re done, just put your nightlight in and admire your work! Have fun creating a variety of designs.

Quilling and Beading Greetings Card

I’ve always made cards for birthdays, Christmas and things like Mother’s and Father’s day. I enjoy using a variety of techniques. On this card I’ve used 3 different techniques: stitching beads onto the card, drawings ‘coloured’ using stripes, and quilling. Obviously you can use any of these techniques in isolation on a card or with other techniques of your own choice.

Beading:

To do this you can use any beads you like, but the size of the beads will affect how large your holes can be to stitch through and may affect  how spaced your beads are. First you need to draw or write with pencil the shape or word you want to stitch with beads onto the card. Once this is done, punch holes in the card using a needle with some blue-tack behind it.

Punching holes in card for beads

Once this is done secure the thread to the card by going through two of your holes and tieing it up on the underside of the card (the bit that would be on the page adjacent to the one you write on). Then thread some beads or one (depending on the size of your beads and the gap between the two holes) and sew them onto the card.

Sewing on the beads

When you get to the end, again secure the thread on the underside of the card.

Beading finished!

Drawings:

Even if you’re not normally very good at drawing, you can do drawings for a card quite simply. For this method break down what you want to draw into its basic shapes to draw it in a kind of cartoon style. I’ve chosen teddy bears which are just ovals, circles and semi-circles.  Draw these shapes in pencil first if you need to then draw it over again in pen.

Bear drawn and has been partially coloured

Once you’ve drawn these shapes, draw in the detail (like eyes, nose and mouth in the case of the bear) and then colour it in using lines. These can be done with a ruler if you want, but I find it works just as well with slightly wobbly freehand lines.

Finished bear!

Quilling:

For quilling you can either buy quilling strips or cut strips of paper to about 0.5cm in width (most people find it easier to buy the quilling strips). When you decide on a design you want to make, work out what shapes would allow you to make it (quilling shapes tend to be variations on circles and petal shapes). I made a present.

Quilling strips

The bow was made of two petal shapes and two circles with tails to join them together to form the knot shape. Combining these made the bow.

Ribbon quilling cross stuck on

The ribbons tying the present were made of two petal shapes joined together to make straight lines. the one down the middle used longer strips of quilling paper to make it longer than the two strips either side.

Only the last two squares of quilling left!

The squares to fill out the rest of the present were made of four circle shapes which were used to fill in the gaps. Once you’ve made all the shapes you require, you just have to arrange them and stick them onto the card with glue.

Finished quilling

Enjoy trying out these techniques on cards!

Valentine’s Cake with Meringue Hearts

With valentine’s day approaching, why not make a cake to celebrate with your significant other. Here’s one idea of how do decorate a cake. You can use the recipe for your/your valentine’s favourite cake. I’ve made a chocolate sandwich cake and covered it with butter icing. The heart decorations are made using a plain meringue recipe and a chocolate meringue recipe (just add 2 tsp of coco powder per egg to the mixture when you add the sugar) in some silicon heart molds (£1/£2 from Morrisons).

Silicon heart moulds

The meringue was cooked for 30 mins at 140°C then left in the cooling oven for a further half hour. If you wanted you could pipe out the meringues into a heart shape on a sheet of baking paper. Remember the meringue will rise so don’t fill the mold up the whole way if you want to avoid it coming over the top and spreading out (you can’t cut meringue easily). You can then use your meringue hearts to decorate the cake in any way you like. You could even add some red food colouring into the white meringues to give them a red/pink colour (but be very careful when adding it as meringues can be quite delicate). Alternatively if you’re using butter icing, you could add the red colouring to that instead.

The finished product

All that’s left to do then is eat the cake!

Yumm!