3D Paper Star

Christmas is just a few days away! I'm sure so many of you have put up your decors at home and you can no longer deny the scent of the holidays in the air with friends sending you treats, moms baking goodies, etc. etc. Tons of people are doing their Christmas shopping, heavy traffic is everywhere. Ironically though the longest holiday of the year is also the busiest time of the year.

Enjoy a little break from all the holiday madness and ask your friends or family to make your very own stars for Christmas! You can hang them on a tree, write wishes on the strips of paper, or put them up like a garland. 

Before I go into full tutorial of how to make this 3D paper star, I'd like to make special mention to my guests during the Crafty Party! Look inside your craft bags and you should be able to find strips of paper tied with a string, scissors, and double adhesive tape. 

Craft bags for the Crafty Party

Freebies in the Craft Bag

You'll need 12 strips of paper, double adhesive tape, and a pair of scissors

Take all of your 12 strips together and fold it in half to make a crease. Then take 2 strips, put adhesive in the middle and make a cross, putting one strip on top of the other.

The horizontal strip should be on top of the vertical one. Take two more adhesive tapes and stick it on either side of the horizontal strip. Make sure that you leave just a tiny gap between the tape and the vertical strip. 

Now flip the whole thing over. The horizontal strip should now be vertical. Stick two more adhesive tapes on either side of the middle horizontal strip, and again mind the gap!

Now bring the other two horizontal strips on top of your newly placed vertical strips to make it look like a pie!

Once you've done that, stick on four more adhesive tapes on the right most strips. Twist the two outermost strips to meet each other at the end and stick them together. Or just do it like the image above and do it on all four sides. 

You'll need to repeat this process twice to come up with the two halves of the 3D Paper Star. Once you do, simply stick the two together with more adhesive tape. One should be in the shape of X the other like a cross. So when you put one on top of the other, the loose strip will match the twisted ones as you can see below.

You can leave it as it is or cut away the extras. Tie it around with string and hang it up on your tree!

Here's a video I found online of the full tutorial :) Have a bright and shiny holidays! 

Crafty Party!

It's been a while. Much as I want to not have too many days between posts, sometimes life just gets in the way. The past month in particular got me all busy with planning my very own crafty party! It was a very quick decision between celebrating the last year of my 20s or the first of my 30s. Well, my invite explains it all. 

Mom made my yummy yema cake! You can order from her :)

It was quite rainy that day. Traffic was extremely unforgiving and there could have been thousands of reasons for me to not enjoy the day. But, crafts save everything. There were a handful of guests who were able to make it to the venue and it was obviously the best number to hold a crafty afternoon. 

Happy after crafting. Eats cake. 

14 Four Café

I couldn't have picked a more perfect venue. If I were a café/resto this probably what I would look like. The food was great, I loved the mango vinaigrette in particular, my mom's dessert was just amazing!

Better than ice cream, ice cream cupcakes!

And all of my guests were very game to do all of the crafts I had prepared for the day (yes even the boyfriends and husbands!). The room was filled with laughter and surprisingly competition between couples on who can make the better origami envelope or washified Christmas card or washitype! I can't describe enough how funny these guys were. It was just like teaching preschool all over again but with adults!

Girls were dead serious with those washi tapes

And so were the boys :p

They all had something they made that they can truly be proud of. What's even cooler is that they can share what they learned to their kids, friends, parents, or just about whoever they want!

Boyfriend in full support!

From Origami Envelopes to Washified Christmas Cards and Washitype Monograms

I realize that day that if crafting is something that even men who claim to not have a strand of creativity can do, then anybody can do it! It's all just a matter of letting the craft bug take over.

What a way to celebrate my birthday. There really is no better party than a Crafty Party!

So craft on dear friends! And hopefully I will be able to infect more people in the next year with more of my crafts :) As a friend said "crafting is so therapeutic and really a lot of fun!" I couldn't agree more. 

♥♥♥

Paper Loving

I had a different plan this week for the blog. However, time did not permit to complete the projects scheduled for the week, yes I schedule crafting! Some of you can probably relate to waking up early in the morning to carve a stamp or practice calligraphy or whatever you feel like doing. 

Christmas is so near and I was hoping to have had more posts for Christmas ideas. Ah but you do with what you have and what you can. Anyway, while I was mulling over how I can make better use of my time and follow my schedule strictly; mom brought me to a neighboring exhibit. I was in it for the food and delicacies. But it was such a nice surprise to discover a fellow paper-lover from the same neighborhood (well, close). The Yellow Violet House.

Just look at the details of this invite!

Of course, I spent a good hour just looking at the little trinkets they had. And most of it was made of paper! I died XD I inquired further and found out that they have an actual store, not too far from where I live and they sell scrapbooking stuff! The lady encouraged me to visit their actual store to see all the goodies they had. 

A box made of paper with paper inside! Amazeballs!

Lots and lots of boxes!

I'm not really into scrapbooking... yet. But I never rule that out of my crafty list. The things you can get from a scrapbook supplier are endless and there are so many ways to use them in whatever craft you're into. Just look at those laser cut butterflies and flowers! Imagine creating a garland or a mobile or buntings with them!

I wasn't planning on buying (haha right!) but how could I not when the details are so intricate, the paper quality was also commendable. No matter how thin those cuts are it didn't feel like it was going to get ripped off easily. 

I shall make something out of these bicycles soon!

You can expect follow up posts--one for when I visit the store and another for a craft project using these paper cuts. Speaking of updating the blog. I might be expecting too much out of the amount of work I can do within 24 hours. I should really just enjoy sharing crafts without the deadline, in that way I won't have the added pressure and have more fun creating and sharing. 

Create, no pressure! 

Make your own Xmas Tags

Gift tags are commonly looked over or not put much effort on when wrapping gifts. I'm sure we're all guilty of buying tags in bulk especially for Christmas. Whatever happened to putting in a nice little note for the one you're giving your gift to? Not enough time, too much to do, there could be many reasons.

But maybe we can bring back nice little details on every gift? I've posted about making your own wrappers, but if that's too much for you then maybe gift tags will be easier. Well, it really depends on how much effort you want to put into it :)

Let's do this three ways, all of it involves some effort, and that makes it extra special!

Happy Holidays Buntings

Making these buntings are easy. Trust me! All you need to do is cut card stock or you can even use your scrap gift wrappers. Cut them into little rectangles, punch a hole on one end, and cut a triangle on the other. Thread a string or yarn or rope through the buntings and tie it around your gift and done! Easy peasy :) You can either write on your buntings or stick cute letters on to it. Just like I did. 

My card stock from Gourdo's, stickers from Greenhills, and white rope!

Tie it around your gift!

The next gift tag, I've posted one before to match my stamped out gift wrapper, makes use of a stamp. You can either make the stamp yourself or ask your rubber-cutting friend to carve one for you because I don't think you can buy this locally. 

Write your own personal message on these tags :)

I like using kraft paper or any brown paper. This particular one is just a cartolina I got from NBS, calligraphy pen also from the same store, and my own stamp with Versacraft inkpad. Making the stamp itself is really not hard at all, you can actually use an X-acto knife to cut away the parts you don't need and even carve the punch hole. 

The last one, sources are easy, you can get the materials from any bookstore. But it does require a level of effort and maybe patience. You'll need glue, a cute puncher in any shape you like (mine is autumn leaves), and any type of paper. 

Punch out a couple from your chosen paper then stick 'em on to the border of your gift tag. It can be round, square, rectangle, triangle, it's really up to you! I stamped my message but you can just write it out :) 

Happy gift crafting!

Decoupage Candles

Decoupage in its true form is a craft where paper cut outs are glued and/or varnished onto another type of material like wood or glass. But, for this project we shall be doing a little trick.

I've been doing this for some time now and it really is just an amazing way of prettifying things, from old cardboard boxes to recycled bottles, even furniture. Plus it's so easy to do!  If you're wondering, I use Mod Podge or Martha Stewart decoupage glue, which you can locally find from Deovir. (I'll have a different post on that later on)

However, we'll have no need for glue in this really simple decoupage candle project because the candle wax will serve as the glue. Do forgive me for using tea candles, the house has an abundance of this. But please make use of any other white or colored candle of any size and shape you like. 

Turn ordinary candles into something worth giving!

You're only going to need a couple of things 1) your candle, 2) tissue with design, 3) a pair of scissors, and 4) an old metal spoon that you can dispose off. Actually, you will also need a blowdry or another candle for lighting. I'll explain why. 

Your first step is to choose a pattern or design for your candle. Peel off the excess sheets of tissue from your napkin, if it's not 1-ply tissue, then cut the design. I've chosen the little star and ornament for my candles. 

To make this tissue design stick on to the candle, we will need to melt the wax where we place the tissue. So place it on top of the candle and hold it well. Take your spoon and either heat the back of it with a hair dryer or with a lighted candle. 

Be very gentle in rubbing the spoon against the candle

Do keep in mind that wax melts quite fast so there is no need to press hard on the design. Instead rub the back of the heated spoon against it gently in a circular motion. Oh! And keep your hand away from the spoon, it can get very hot. 

From ordinary candle

to Christmas-worthy candle!

Ta-da! Isn't that simple? Now, you might be wondering where to get these pretty paper napkins? You can always go to the home section of any mall. I trust Landmark to have a couple that you can choose from. Or make it yourself! Like I did so here.

Happy Crafting!

From old gift bags to Christmas gift bags

It feels a whole lot like Christmas and I'm super hyped to start giving and receiving things! I remember my first ever try at gift wrapping and I was only less than five years old. I'd always get envious of people wrapping things so I tried it myself when no one was watching, then got rushed to the hospital from a blade cut! I got a few stitches, but that wasn't the end of my gift wrapping experiments. Good job little me! 

Eventually, I got the hang of wrapping and unwrapping. I even have a method of peeling off the wrappers without ruining it, just because those paper wrappers are pretty. To make a gift extra special though, putting your own stamp to it (literally!) is always a good idea. Hence, this recycling/upcycling gift wrappers post. 

I'm so attracted to brown paper kraft bags. Now more and more malls and stores give it away for purchases instead of plastic. Hooray! So here's what you can do with it.

Take out an old paper bag and some stamps!

I cut this out from an old, crumpy, larger paper bag then made a couple of leafy stamps to make a wreath. You can also purchase these stamps from Gourdo's. Using my Versacraft Pine and Spring Green ink pads gives the leaves a bit more life. 

Start out with the bigger leaf and find the center of your paper bag and mark it. From your mark, go up about half an inch and start stamping. The trick here is to stamp out the first four leaves as if you were creating 12, 3, 6, and 9 of a clock. Keep in mind to stamp always at half an inch from center. Once that's done, you can start stamping in between the leaves as many times as you'd like.  

Now stamp over it with your little leaf stamp in another hue. Make sure you cover the spaces between the bigger leaves. The intent is to overlap it to make it look more wreath-like. Does that make sense? 

Leaving enough space on big leaves for smaller leaves.

Thread a ribbon through the punches, add a gift tag, and you're all set to give these away for Christmas!

Don't let those old paper bags go to waste. Use them this Christmas and get crafty! If you've got your own ideas on upcycling old materials for something new, share them with me! Happy Christmas Crafts!