Dress It Up with Ribbon!

        When life throws you a busy ball, but you still want to be creative, look for a simple surface at your local Walmart, or Dollar Tree and dress it up with ribbon! There are so many styles of holiday ribbons to choose from, it will make all your holiday decorating quick'n EZ.....  

        I was really excited to receive samples of die cut ribbon from Gwen Studios. I love all the little  intricate shapes and they can be used on pretty much anything!  Here are just a couple of ideas:

        I had some inexpensive outdoor pillows that I picked up earlier from the outdoor garden center at Walmart.  All I needed now was a little fabric glue to give them some added sparkle.  What a difference it made!

I added small, green and red bows to the top of each ornament and a length of the red Holiday Lights die cut ribbon along the side of the truck. See how much more festive the pillows look now!

        I also love to shop at the Dollar Tree and had purchased a simple wood shape for my Harvest decorating.  The back was plain, so with a quick coat of white paint, embroidered letters, a simple embellishment, and the gold reindeer holiday die cut ribbon on top of the red ribbon, I had a simple holiday flip for Christmas in no time at all!  

 

        You can find more inspiration on the Designer Crafts Connection blog.  What will you make? The  possibilities are endless! 

Yours truly,

Julie 💝

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON CRAFTING!

Designer Crafts Connection - First Monday

Our theme for this month is Quick'n EZ jewelry, or a variation thereof.  We allow a lot of leeway for personal creativity and truth be told, having a monthly theme is only to provide a little structure to our First Monday posts.  

I'm not known as a jewelry designer, but I enjoy making jewelry pieces.  It's nice to do something different every once in a while and recently I even had a piece published in Bead Design Studio magazine.  My sister, on the other hand makes beautiful sea glass jewelry.   These are some of her designs:

I love the way she also includes small pieces of decorative pottery. 

Here's the necklace that was in the magazine with matching earrings.

Believe it or not the earrings really were Quick'n EZ to make.  It was just a matter of threading beads onto a head pin, making a simple loop at the top then adding earring wires.  Here are some step by steps I created for a Bead Landing booklet a couple of years ago which show you how:

1.  Thread beads onto the head pin then bend the end at a right angle.

 

2.  Use round nose needle nose pliers to curl the end into a loop.

 

  

Let's not forget jewelry for the little girls in our lives.  My granddaughter has been an avid fan of Disney Princesses, Tinkerbell and now "Hello Kitty" is all the rage.   I received some "Hello Kitty" and hot pink Duck tape a few months ago and thought it would be fun to re-cycle a soda can into a set of special bracelets for her.

Believe me, it doesn't get any easier than this.  I used scissors to cut the soda can into rings then covered them with duck tape.  Make sure to cover all the edges since the aluminum can be pretty sharp.  I used Velcro® for the closures.  All little (and big) girls love bling, so I added strips of Bella Bling Black Border lines adhesive jewels from Ruby Rock-It.  You can also cut rings from plastic drink bottles for the bracelets; be sure to look for the ones that don't have ridges. 

For more jewelry ideas be sure to hop forward through the Designer Crafts Connection webring wherever you see this logo in the sidebar.

 

Members of this group are designers in the Arts & Crafts and Gift industries.  We're not necessarily professional bloggers, we're professional designers, but enjoy sharing projects and techniques to promote crafts through our blogs.  Many of us are designer members of the Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) which is a trade association and we work with manufacturers to develop products and design projects that we hope will inspire you to craft.  Each one of us has our own style of crafting and we work in many different mediums, so be sure to hop around to see a wide variety of ideas sure to amaze and inspire!

Check back with us on May 12th when we will be featuring projects designed with products from Impress Arts!  Enjoy!  Y'all come back now............

Yours truly,
Julie :)