Dappled Air

I came across this lovely link at Wide Eyed Wonderfuls with a lovely pattern for a Christmas tree done in paper embroidery. It is simple but the result is quite stunning. I followed the pattern and made a card and promptly sent it on to Switzerland before taking a picture, I guess I was in a hurry. Then I had the idea of working with the design in Photoshop and created a background for the card from that one tree, print it out and then embroider it. I went through a few version and still don't know which one I like best. First I left the tree to be embroidered unprinted, then I printed it like the rest of the background and finally I reduced the saturation. Then the embroidery part also went through a few version. First I had no sequins, so I used glass seed beads. Then once I got some sequins I had to give that a try.

Yesterday I came across a question on how to recycle business cards at about.com family crafts That reminded me that I had the same question a few years back and found a really useful way to recycle all those business cards by turning them into a small box that is 2.25 inches square. When you buy them commercially you end up often with way too many as the information on them seems to change just too fast and you have to get new ones. By making your own cards you can print only what you need and make the changes as they occur. I don't remember where I got the idea from, but I created a step by step tutorial on how to turn 19 business cards into a little box with a lid. The cool thing about it is that it does not use any glue or staples and there is no cutting involved. All you do is fold the cards and then slot them together. Without a lid the current business cards can also be store in the box. Multiple boxes can be connected together with other business cards. I have also made ...

Recently, I have come across matchbook albums a number of times. I took that to be an omen and set out to figure out how to create my own design. After a number of attempts I succeeded and made 3 different versions. One is advertisement for my creations, one is an album for the city where I live and one has my favorite quotes. I have put together a tutorial with my Photoshop template files and instructions so that you can also make your own matchbook albums.

I love to do bead embroidery and I love to work with paper. The problem with bead embroidery on paper are the holes. Pre-punching the holes leads to the problem that the holes don't match up with the beads. Then the other problem is how to get the design on the paper so that it won't show up on the paper. I found a way to do it by tracing the design on Glad Press'n Seal plastic wrap and then placing that on the paper. As it is low tack, it is easy to remove afterwards and does not leave any trace. If it get stuck between the beads, it can be cut and pulled out with tweezers. The little tree is the result of using plastic wrap. Check my other designs here .