Earth Day Junk Journal Challenge

April I was party of a Earth Day Junk Journal Challenge. Mimi Dibble one of the Admins on Scrappy Divas set up this challenge.

I am bummed I forgot to do a short video on it. So I will blog about it instead. Plus its been a while sense I have blogged on my Crafty page.

So the idea is to use junk items that you would have tosses, you have found, given to you, etc. No items from your stock could be used. No commercial paper craft items, etc

So my front cover here. Front is material from a dress that would have other wise been tossed. Some scrap plastic tassel on the front. Spine is canvas from a ruined painting that I saved. And the flower is made of tore jeans. Tie is made of Kitchen twine. I really love how the cover came out.

The inside pages like this one. I used old buttons and made flowers out of scrap material. The pocket is made out material as well. The pages are from ads you get in the mail. I sewed them together to make a book. And then covered them in this case with news paper. So many fun ideas you can do and make with recycled material.s This happens to be one of my favorite pages.

This page was fun to make. I made it like a flip pages it opens up to three different areas so that you can put pictures, etc in.

I used bubble wrap and paint to add texture to the ads. Used my butterfly punch to punch out from the ads in the paper. Tissue paper from packing material. All kinds of ideas to make a junk journal from.

This was a fun page to make. I loved using the bubble wrap to give the paper texture.

This was one of my favorite pages. I painted the ads black to cover them up. And then took old music sheet paper tore it all up and glued them down. The flower is made from scrap lace as well. See such simple recycling makes such a cool page.







Well there was many many more pages. But these are a few of my favorites. I hope my partner enjoys the book, as much as I do. I really had a lot of fun making it. Till next time. Scrap on!!!!

A very special Paper Bag Album

So I made this very special "Paper Bag Album", Well I would like to think its super special. Why is that? well. Recently I decided to contact a cousin who I have not seen in years. To be specific I have not heard from her seen from her in almost 10 years. Now in the past I have tried contacting her. Maybe I should have tried harder. But I thought to my self here I am going to be 35 soon and we are a month a part, we grew up together, played together. Granted we had our ups and downs. But isn't Blood suppose to be thicker then water right? So I am going to try again. Hey that is all I can do right? So I wrote her a letter. Granted I have not heard back from her yet. I sent it via Email. I am not sure if she will send one back Email or in a letter in snail mail. I would like to hope I do hear from her. In the mean time I do have her mailing address. So I made this Album for her and might send her a few other goodies. So this is my attempt at restarting a relationship. I love this album personally. And I did put a lot of love into it as well.

Here is the youtube video showing the details. I hope you enjoy looking at it. I know I enjoyed making it.

Altered Starbucks Jar into a Vase Tutorial

Altered Starbucks Coffee Jar

So I have seen many tutorials on how to alter these Starbucks jars, into many different things. I took a little bit of each and did what worked best for me.

Here is a list of things you will need
Starbucks Coffee jar, Cutting board,
Acrylic paint (any color you want)
Designer paper to match your paint
Mod Podge, Hot Glue Gun, Paint Brush
Flowers, ribbons, accessories to coordinate with your paper and paint.

Empty Starbucks Coffee Jar

First you want to get your self an empty, of course starbucks coffee Frap jar. Clean it out. Take off the top rapper. You can leave the rest on as it will be covered. Or you can use Goo Gone to clean of the sticky mess after you rip off the label. For me this was a waste of time and just a long extra step to take. So I left them on as you will not see the label what so ever after you are done.

Painting the jar

Next take your acrylic paint and paint the top portion of the jar. be careful let the first coat dry, and then apply the next coat. But don't go over one area to many times as the first coat will start to come up and bubble. I paint more then half way down the jar onto the label just to make sure I have the expiration date covered, also this reassures that there will be no none painted spots showing above  my paper line at the top.





You can leave it without paint, but your expiration date will show, there is product called "Stays on all purpose cleaner" that will take the ink off. But I like how it looks painted, plus I did not have that product on hand.

cutting the paper

Next you want to make your cuts to your designer paper that you have chosen to use for this project. Here are your dimensions for your cuts. Cut your paper 8 3/4 inches long and then by 2 3/4 inches wide. So you will need your cutting board for this part of course.

Mod podge your paper

Now after you make your cuts. As an alterantive You can use double sided tape. I did not like how my ATG Gun worked on the jar. I tried Mod Podge and it was wonderful.

Flip over your paper and take what ever you use to spread your mod podge and give it a good layer on the back of the paper. Don't be afraid give it a good coat. You want it to stick to your jar.

Line up your paper on jar

Next lay your jar down flat. Front of the label if you have left it on, should be facing to the front and then line up your paper to the bottom of the label. Make sure its centered because you want the rest of the paper to wrap nice and neat around to the back of the jar and have a nice even seam.Sometimes it will be a little uneven if you did not make your cuts strait. However, no worries most of the time your embellishments, ribbons, etc will cover your mistakes. You can always cover these little errors up. No one will be the wiser.

Lining up seem

At this point you should be to the back of your jar making sure your seam is nice and even. Make sure to smooth the paper down going around all sides. You want to make sure you have no bubbles from the mod podge. You want to make sure everything is going to stick and not come up. And if you used a good coat of Mod Podge you should not have this issue.

Adding embellishments

Now you can start taking what ever embellishments and accessories you have chosen to adorn your jar with and start using your hot glue gun on them. Placing them on your jar  to your style and taste. 

Adding Mod Podge to paint

This is a very important step, you don't want to forget this step at all. You can do this either before or after your embellishments. I try to do this before. If you miss the step before embellishing like I did in this case, no worries you can work around your embellishments.But you need to coat your paint with mod podge. This seals it and keeps it from scratching and piling off. Just like your paint dont stroke over one area for to long or your paint will get to wet and start bubbling and piling up.

Let it dry

Last but Not least. Let your jar sit and dry. It will not take to long depending how hot or cold your work area is. But if your working under a nice lamp they tend to dry very quickly I have found in my case.

Finished jars

Once they are dry you now have a beautiful altered Starbucks Coffee Jar turned into a Vase. Have fun with them. Try different embellishments and styles of papers. I am doing these for a School fundraiser for my kids private school. And plan on making some for my shop to sale.

Have fun creating, Altering, and Scrapping ladies. Till next time. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.