kidspot.com I’ve been meaning to get into scrapbooking for years. I’ve long admired the lovely pages of memories that friends and bloggers carefully create. Beautiful, artistic, meticulously-crafted books that record a life. It’s the ‘beautiful, artistic, meticulously-crafted’ bit that I’ve never been able to get my head around. I’m just not like that. What’s a smash book? A smash book is pretty much anything you want it to be. You put in a business card of someone you think might help you change your career; add a magazine cut-out of something that really riles you; stick in a picture of something at inspires you. The possibilities are endless but there are a couple of important things to remember about a smash book: it’s not formalit’s not structuredit’s not neatit might not even be prettyit’s probably an ongoing snapshot of the inside of your mindit’s all about you, however you come. You add things as you find them. How to make a smash book Getting started
A Beautiful Mess: SCRAPBOOK I always stumble upon beautiful handkerchiefs at antique malls, but with no practical use for them I usually pass them by. But today I will be sharing how to turn those pretty hankies into a photo-a-day journal. This is a great project to commemorate the last of your summer days! You could an instant camera or print off Instagram photos! You'll Need: Vintage handkerchief, sewing machine, book pages or other paper, embroidery thread, letter stickers, Instant photos or other printed photographs. 1. Now fill up your pages with a photo-a-day project. I decided to keep my book simple and date each photo with a White Dymo pen underneath each photo. Chain or Coptic Stitch Bookbinding Tutorial Here’s another method of binding your book with an open spine…a chain stitch or also called coptic stitch binding. This is a great method for when you have book covers that are individual boards instead of completely wrapped around the entire journal. You are basically binding all the signatures and covers together with a connected stitch that holds everything together tightly, but with super flexibility. The pages will open up completely flat and that’s a big reason why this method is so popular. From a materials standpoint, you’ll need your cover boards and paper signatures to go inside. The first thing I do is to cover my cover boards with the decorative paper. Then I stuck them on the boards, cutting the corners at a diagonal so that it’ll fold over nicely without too much bulk on the corners. You just smooth down one corner and make sure everything is flat without bubbles and continuing securing the other sides. Then I use the cover as my guide to punch holes in all my signatures.
Homemade Body Butter Recipe with coconut oil and cocoa butter You know how sometimes you see a recipe and think… oh yeah, that sounds nice… but then never actually make it. Please don’t do that with this one. This homemade body butter is pure gold – and honestly – I think you’re going to love what it does for your skin! Don’t worry, Singapore – I’ll tell you where to find all the ingredients you’ll need to make it! A body butter is made by combining oils (liquid) with butters (solid). oils (liquid): coconut oil, almond oil, safflower oil, avocado oil ( read my top 6 favorite oils)butters (solid) : shea butter, mango butter, cocoa butter From what I’ve read, basically you can make your body butter with any combination, as long as the proportions are 75% solid, 25% liquid. I chose to work with cocoa butter and coconut oil (which hardens easily) as my solid, and sweet almond oil as my liquid. Coconut Oil is a top favorite of mine. Sweet Almond Oil is an emollient – in that it smooths and softens skin more than hydrates it. Homemade Body Butter Recipe
Binder Clips into Office Weapons Wow, if you thought working at your white-collared job, sitting in your well equipped air-conditioned office, thinking that this is probably one of the safest place to be… you may just want to think twice about that. The office is a jungle. Beside having to watch your back against office colleagues who may be wolf in sheep’s clothes, you may just have to watch out for those seemingly utilitarian office supplies, because in conjuncture with other seemingly innocent office supplies, they may just result to be one of the deadliest office weapon yet. Take a few binder clips of varying sizes, turn them upside down, and clip the smaller binder clips inside the larger clips. It should look like this when the larger binder clips have clipped the smaller ones. Remove all the binder clip handles. Add another 2 larger binder clips on top of the smaller edge with a rubber band in between. Take out the binder clips handle again. Reverse wrap the larger rubber band. stumbleupon
53 Ideas for DIY Journals, Diaries, Smash Books and All the Extras ... I'm lazy and I buy mine off the shelf but if you are inspired by crafting as well as journaling, there are plenty of ideas for DIY journals. Big or small, DIY journals are perfect for you or for gifts. If you're into smash books (a recent trend I hadn't heard of) or planners, the ideas for DIY journals are transferable to those too. Make a journal or smash book you'll treasure for many years. Photo Credit Via diy: Daily Calendar Journal There's no reason why DIY journals have to be in book format.
journals | curiously crafty. welcome to the wonderful world of journalling! i promise, if i can make one then you can too. the following instructions will make a journal that is 5 3/4″ x 4 1/2″. (view more journals here) Materials: 60 – 70lb. paper (i use 20 sheets per journal) one sheet of white paper for the cover guide, cut to 5 3/4″ x 9 1/2″ decorative paper for end papers (I used scrapbook paper: you will need 2 papers that measure 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ each)cardboard covers are 5 3/4″ x 4 1/4″ eachspine is 5 3/4″ x (width of pages; to be discussed later)fabric (1/2″ wider than cover guide on all edges)pencilscissorsgluewax paperclothespins/paperclipsrulersewing needlestrong thread (you can buy bookmaking thread, or just use hand-quilting thread)bone folder (*optional)awl (*optional) Part 1: Sewing the pages Cut pages in half, leaving you with 40 – 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ papers. 2. Each group becomes a signature. 3. You can now cut the spine cover at this width. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Allow this to dry for at least 1/2 hour. 7. tada!
10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics Advertisement Who can resist a colourful, thoughtful venn diagram anyway? In terms of blogging success, infographics are far more likely to be shared than your average blog post. This means more eyeballs on your important information, more people rallying for your cause, more backlinks and more visits to your blog. In short, a quality infographic done well could be what your blog needs right now. Designing An Infographic Some great tips for designing infographics: Keep it simple! Ideas for infographic formats include: Timelines;Flow charts;Annotated maps;Graphs;Venn diagrams;Size comparisons;Showing familiar objects or similar size or value. Here are some great tutorials on infographic creation: Creating Your Infographic Plan and research.If required, use free software to create simple graphs and visualisations of data.Use vector graphic software to bring these visualisations into the one graphic. Free Online Tools For Creating Infographics Stat Planet Hohli Creately New York Times Many Eyes Wordle
DIY Vick's VapoRub I don't know why I was so surprised when I found out that you can make your own Vick's VapoRub. I was even more excited when I realized that I already had all the ingredients I needed to make it. I have never stopped to look at the ingredients on Vick's VapoRub before. If you look at the list of ingredients, you will see that it has turpentine oil in it! For some reason that doesn't seem like something I want to be rubbing into my children's skin. It turns out that you can make your own VapoRub by using coconut oil and eucalyptus or peppermint oil. I put about 1/2 c. coconut oil and 10 drops or so of eucalyptus oil in a half pint sized canning jar and mixed them together. Use just as you would Vick's VapoRub. Copyright 2013, Creative Homemaking, LLC. Follow my home remedies board on Pinterest.
Drink Can Tinwork Tinwork Embossed tinwork is sometimes used to decorate rustic style photo or mirror frames, or just to make decorative items such as Christmas tree decorations. The metal used is usually thicker (tinplate) and is normally worked with hammered tools - I wanted to try to get a similar effect, but with a bit less effort. The Most Popular ArticleOn Atomic Shrimp No, really! More Metalwork If this project interested you, you might also like Lost Wax Casting Safety This project makes use of very thin sheet metal that is likely to have sharp, jagged edges and is prone to springing back. Great care should be taken to avoid injury. This project probably isn't suitable for children - and certainly not without supervision. Updated Autumn 2010 - now with Video Goodness! Please note: Before, during or after the video, the player may display advertisements or links to additional videos - these are not affiliated to Atomic Shrimp and the selection is something over which I have no control. Materials Finished
How to bind your own Hardback Book : Glue the binding onto the folios You are now going to make the heart of the book. You have made at least four of the eight sheet / 32 page folios and they need to be stuck together. Firstly , cut a piece of thin fabric to the same length as the page height and about five times the thickness of all the folios held together. Hold the folios tightly together and all lined up. When they are all nicely aligned apply glue to just the spines of the folios. Before it has a chance to set, quickly turn over the wad of folios and glue them to the piece of fabric so that some fabric sticks out each side (i.e. so that not all of the fabric is glued to the pages) Tacket binding - CaiLun.info - Artist Books Paper & Bookbinding Blog - Cai Lun - Dennis Yuen I have always loved tacket binding, because its sasuage-like packing on the spine is so cute. I have just finished one for my co-worker's boyfriend, Todd, and I think I might have perfected my tacket binding skill so it's about time to share it as much as possible. I have been devising my own tacket binding method, as I haven't actually seen one physically to deconstruct and examine its construction. Pierce 4 holes for every single tacket pattern. Each section is stitched individually with 1 single thread. Pull the thread out from A2 to the outside and you're ready to create the tacket pattern on the top "backbone". Pull the thread out from B2 to the outside to beging packing the lower pattern. A few tips on wrapping: At the end I attached a bright red ribbon to finish the book, however, it didn't work for me so I decided against it and switched to another one, which I will post next.