Home Decoration Make and Craft Swap

It's time to write about my second craft swap, the goods have been delivered so I can now reveal all.

The theme was Home Decorations and I was paired up with George who has a lovely blog which you can get to from HERE.  I carefully read the e-mail and looked through the blog to pull out inspiration because it is a hard theme when you do not know what sort of house the items are going to.  George loves books and hates waste so I decided that I would try to make everything using one book that would otherwise be destined for the bin.

The first stop was my local Oxfam Book Shop to see if they had any hardback books ready for the bin.  I was taken to the sorting room and showed a massive pile of boxes full of books.  Lots of them had absolutely nothing wrong with them and I was very tempted to take a lot out to bring home but that was not why I was there.  There was a collection of Charles Dickens hardbacks that had seen better days and I was offered them for 25p each.  I took 3 and donated £2.

The first thing I wanted to do was make the book cover into a storage pot, a practical item that could hold pens or more decorative items such as dried flowers.  The first step was to remove the pages at the front and back by the edge of the binding.  I then had to measure the height, width and length of the pages so that I could cut a piece of balsa wood the right size to fit.  Once this was done I had to glue it all in place so it looked just like a real book.  I was really pleased with the end result.

 

I then thought I would make some paper flowers to put in the pot to make it look more decorative for the purpose of the swap but if George wishes to use for something more practical then that was my initial intention.  I had no idea how to make paper flowers so I used the POM POM technique and stuck it onto a wooden kebab skewer.  The first attempt looked quite good for an experiment so I made two more.

 

After making this I decided to try something else I had seen on TV and in a book and make a paper bird.  I again had no clue if it was going to work and the whole thing was a try it and see experiment that worked surprisingly well.  I started by screwing up a lot of the pages from the book and making them into a general bird shape.  I then covered it in sellotape to hold the shape...a dispenser would have been helpful at this point.  Once this was done I had to figure out how to make the legs.  Here I saw the skewers on the table and some off cuts of balsa wood.  With a lot of glue and patience the birdie had legs and he stood up!  Then it was time for the messy bit, I had to cover the whole thing in small pieces of book page and PVA.  I was covered, my phone was covered and it was all over the cutting mat.  I am surprised that Tom and the Cats were not stuck to the walls and ceiling.  Here is the final result.

 Next I decided to make some hanging decorations for Christmas using the technique I was taught at SPEED CRAFT by PHIONA RICHARDS.  I made two and included pictorial instructions and supplies so George could make a third.  I think they look lovely and they are also made from book pages and an old Costa Coffee bag.  It's all about recycling and don't they look pretty.

I then packaged them all up together with the purchased gift which I saw online and just had to buy.  George makes amazing CAKES and I saw a mixer painted on a recipe book page, I thought it was quite appropriate despite the amount of pink.  I also stitched a little card because I always like to give a home made card.

I hope George enjoys the gifts as much as I enjoyed making them.