Craft Your Stash!

"If you're crafty and ya know it clap your hands............."

 Love this book!  What I love most about it, is that it reminds us what crafting is all about.  We are so used to walking into a craft store and being completely overwhelmed with so many products to spoonfeed our creativity, we've forgotten how to be creative with what we already have.  Toilet rolls for example!  There are so many things we can make with these small, cardboard rolls.  We always saved them to take to pre-school and Kindergarten teachers to use in their classrooms. Now we're encouraged to buy them in the craft store!!  Seriously.............

I was a child in the 50's and loved to make things!  There weren't any craft stores back then, so it was all about using our imagination and things we had on hand that could be re-cycled.  (We didn't have a television either, so crafting was all part of making our own fun.)   Seems like children back then were inherently creative - and crafty, in all definitions of the word...  and we definitely didn't have books like this to help us along.

Lisa's book is filled with ideas to be crafty, using "supplies" you already have around the house.  You may not even recognize some of them as being "craft supplies", so I challenge you to put your imagination to work and create something without going to the store!  Craft your stash! This is what I did.....

The holiday season is a great time to put our creative caps on.  I make something new for Christmas every year.  For this project I started with a box of old, wooden spools (found in my mother-in-law's attic), some vintage silver tinsel, alphabet letter stickers and bamboo skewers.

   

 

A wooden spool is the perfect base for a tree, so I decided to cut triangles (4" x 4") from silver/gold glitter card stock, cover the edges with the tinsel and make some trees.  The letters could spell out a word - the shorter the better, so I decided on J O Y.  I liked the silver letters but didn't have a "J", so used the red acrylic letters and substituted the snowflake for the "O".  I really like the way the red acrylic lets the glitter on the card stock show thru.  I love it when a plan comes together, even if it's way off my original idea.  Instead of gluing the tinsel to the edge of the card stock, I used silver mini brads to anchor it at each corner.  The spools are wrapped with some leftover burlap trim, secured with a glue gun.  I pushed two,  5" skewers, side by side into the hole in the spool.  They fit perfectly and having 2 skewers makes a nice flat surface to glue the triangle to.  Didn't take long to make these at all - EZPZ, just like I like it....

You can purchase a copy of Lisa's book from Amazon, your local bookstore,  or order a signed copy at http://craftyourstash.com    You might even want to get 2.  This book would be a great holiday gift for a crafty, or even a non-crafty friend.

Check out more projects and reviews here as well as a list of participating designers: http://craftyourstash.blogspot.com/2014/09/craft-your-stash-book-tour-giveaway.html and you can also enter to win even more stash!

Here's one more quick idea for you for Halloween - découpaged votive candle holders.  I've posted these projects before, but that's the nice thing about Halloween and Christmas, some projects are timeless and it's okay to re-cycle.

You can find instructions and step by step photos here:  http://juliemcguffee.blogspot.com/2011/10/halloween-votives.html  Enjoy!  Y'all come back now...........

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Yours truly,
Julie

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON CRAFTING!
 

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