Tag Archive for 'tutorial'

Holiday Bunting tutorial

Published
by
robayre
on January 24, 2010
in General Update and Projects
. 1 Comment

Here is a super quick and easy tutorial to make a very adorable festive decoration of flag bunting, sewing machine free.

The other day when I was taking product pictures for the Valentine’s Day yoyo set and I made a super mini flag garland to hang from the shadowbox frame and it got me thinking about these. I made a ton of these before I opened my Etsy shop, back in the day and I thought I had already shared them here on the Inspiration Junkie before, but it must have been on my old blog. They are easy enough to make so I thought I’d share it with you. I’ve seen flag garlands often enough on crafty blogs, but most often they are done with all fabric and require sewing. This method is just as quick, just as cute and only requires the few items shown below.

1. Fabric. I’ve chosen solid and striped red fabics for the purpose of this post, but you can use whichever fabric colors you want. I used to make these garlands using one piece of fabric from my entire stash for variety.

2. Cut out a cardboard template of a triangle. The height of the triangle was 3 inches. As you can see I nip off the top points of the triangles so that I can fold over the edges easily. The resulting final triangle will then be about 2.5 inches tall. You could make your triangles larger or smaller depending on your preference.

3. A pen, to trace the template onto the fabric. If you have a water soluble or disappearing ink fabric pen, wonderful, but as you can see here I opted for a sharpie just because it was close by.

4. Scissors.

5. Glue gun

6. String. I use this embroider (?) string just because it’s sturdier than thread, but not as expensive as embroider floss. But, use whatever you’d like.

Start by plugging in your glue gun. This project is a very quick one, and by the time you get to gluing, the gun should be warmed up.

Trace out your template onto the fabric. You can maximize your  use of fabric if the finished traced template triangle alternate pointing up and then pointing down.

Cut the the traced templates out of the fabric.  You can reduce the amount of cutting if you trace your templates right next to each other, so that you can cut 2 edges with one snip.

Next, I lightly score the edge of the fabric with my fingernail so that the fabric folds over easy. Bend where the corners have been nipped off. You use that line to decide where to fold the fabric, plus now the folded over edge can’t be seen from the front.

Using the glue gun, draw a thin line across the folded edge. The next few steps need to be done rapidly while the glue remains hot.

Leaving about 6-12 inches of string empty on the end, place the string right on the glue.

Fold over the fabric and crease the edge, glue and string together.

Alternating fabric and leaving as much string as you want between each flag. You may want to put the flags immediately touching each other or keep an inch of fabric between, as I have done. Glue the rest of the flags onto the string. Make sure that you keep the back and fronts of the fabric consistent so that once the garland is complete you don’t have some fabics showing the front while others show the back with the crease.

Keep alternating until desired length. Leave a bit of extra empty string on each end to use later for hanging. The edges of the fabric are left entirely raw and with my experience this is never a problem because it is used just for decoration so there is no reason the edges should fray or fraying will be minimal. You might elect to iron out any wrinkles in the fabric, but just make sure to keep iron away from the glued edge of each flag because you don’t want to melt the glue onto your iron.

Voila!  An adorable bunting for you to hang just about anywhere.

And just for fun, I’ve added this particular garland, which is 6.5 feet of mini flags, to my Etsy shop, if you’d be interested in purchasing it.

matchbook tutorial

Published
by
robayre
on November 13, 2009
in Artomat, General Update and Projects
. 2 Comments

Today I assembled these little matchbook styled scrap-pads to add to my purchase packs that go out with every order. I used to have these quarter sized recycled scratch pads, but when I ran out I got the idea to revamp the plan and make matchbook styled scrap pads. And you know me, whenever there is an option, always go miniature!

While I was making them I thought it would be pretty easy to take a few snapshots and put together a little tutorial on making these easy-peasy pads. They are still made from recycled, hence the “scrap-pads”.

The materials are basic things everyone has in their home. Scrap paper, scissors or paper cutter, and stapler. If you’re feeling like getting tricked out, grab a ruler, glue stick and bone folder.

The paper size is 1/16th of an 8.5×11, meaning I halved, halved, halved and halved again, if you can keep that straight. Otherwise it’s 1.0625″ x 1.375″. That’s not based on real matchbooks, but just in the ease in halving over and over again. For the cover I just grabbed some 12×12 scrapbook paper, but you could also use any pretty paper you have lying around. I think I’ll use paper from old books for my next batch, then they will be truly recycled (aside from the new staple). I cut the scrapaper down to strips roughly the same width as the halved paper (1.0625″).

1. I used the halved paper in stacks of 10 since that seemed to be how much my stapler could handle. Placed my stack of paper face up with the decorative paper face down and stapled them together like shown in picture 1.

2. Slightly above the staple, I fold the paper back down. You should be able to see the decorative side of the paper now, like in picture 2. This way you can hide the staple.

3. Continue wrapping the paper around the back, creasing the folds, like in picture 3.

4. Now fold over the top, from behind to front, like in picture 4.

5. Carefully trim the decorative paper so that once trimmed the edge fits under the flap from the bottom as seen in picture 5.

6. Voila! You have a handy-dandy snazzy easy-peasy pretty scrap pad.

Use the bone folder to crease and fold and the glue stick to glue the back page to the back cover, if you like.

Throw a couple in your purse so that when your frantically riffling through your purse looking for a piece of paper to write down a phone number on, or to throw away the gum you’ve been chewing on for eternity, you are golden. I took mine a tiny step further and put my personal stamp on the inside cover, as seen in the first image. You could go to whatever lengths you want to gussy them up. They are fun to make, quick, cute AND functional.

Making these I was reminded that the Artomat machine at KCH has a “matchbook” slot, where a book would have dropped with every pack of cigarettes. I wonder if books like these would work in that machine. It would be a cool project for the students there to make their own “art matchbooks” that would drop with each Artomat sale.