Hello Friends – It’s Suzanne, Rebecca’s mama, happy to be back with you on the PPP to share three quick and easy paper crafts that will be perfect to either decorate your Easter table or send to school for a classroom treat.

First is a cute little basket.  For this basket, you’ll need a square piece of paper that is sized to be divisible by three – 3 X 3, 4.5 X 4.5 or 6  X 6 inches is a perfect size for a mini basket or 9 X 9 or 12 x 12 inches would give you plenty of room for larger treats.  The basket I am making in these photos starts with a 6 X 6 inch piece of paper.
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To begin, either fold or score in both directions to create 9 equally sized squares.  Then, cut up on the score lines on each side of the paper, up to the opposite score line.  Your paper should remain in one piece, with four cuts all lined up in the same direction.

​Refold all your score lines and use your fingernail or a bone folder to make sure the folds are sharp.  Be sure that the pattern is to the outside of the folds.

​Bring the two side pieces up behind the center flat , overlapping the points as high as you wish, but not completely vertical.  Tuck a thin strip of paper in between and staple the side in place. Repeat on the other side.

​With that, your basket is done.  You can decorate it as simply or as much as you wish.  For this one, I punched out a few daisy shapes, layered them onto each other and used a glue dot to hold them in place, covering the staple.  For the back of the basket, I punched a simple circle to hide the staple.

​To finish, I stamped a small Easter sentiment and tied that on with a piece of cotton thread.  You can see that basket can hold a fair amount.   I made another with a 3 X 3 inch piece of paper and ended up with a teeny tiny basket that would be large enough for a few chocolate eggs or jelly beans.  For this one, I just punched a couple of small circles to cover the staples.  These will be the perfect size to use as place cards for Easter dinner.

​Next up is a quick and easy lollipop cover.  You will want to start with a piece of paper this is roughly three times as wide as your lollipop and about twice the length of the overall lollipop (including the stick).  For these Dum-Dums, I started with a piece of paper 4 inches wide and 8 inches long.  Fold the paper into fourths and draw one ear and one half a face against the folds of your paper. I made myself a small template, which would be helpful to keep your pop covers the same size, if you were making a number of these. Your  lollipop should be able to fit comfortably in the head of your bunny. 

​Cut the shape out and clip a tiny corner off the point (to make a hole for the stick of your lollipop.

​Pop the stick through the hole and use a tiny bit of adhesive to hold the ears together.  You can decorate these as elaborately as you wish as well.  I decided to just add some eyelashes and a small bow, but you could add a nose, whiskers, flowers, etc.  This would be great as a quick and easy classroom treat and since most kids will simply tear the covering off to get to the candy, I would chose to go simple with the decorations.

​The last item is a small three dimensional box just large enough to hold a Ferrero Roche or a Lindt ball.  For this one, start with an 8 X 8 inch piece of paper, folded corner to corner in both directions.

​The shape for this one will be one ear, half a face and a longish body with a little slit in the end of the body.  This should be drawn with the corner of the shape in the folded corner of the paper.

​Fold up each side of the resulting shape to create a flat bottom to your candy holder.

​Bring the four bunny ears together and push them through one of the slits at the end of the body portion.  

​Pop your candy into the body and then push the other slit over the ears, closing the box.  You can use a pencil or your bone folder to push the sides of the box out to ensure the shape is rounded.  Here again you can chose to decorate as much or as little as you wish.  I like the simple bow on these boxes.

​I wish you all a happy Spring and a happy Easter.  And, of course, happy Crafting!

Thanks to my mother for a fun and springy blog! - Rebecca

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user George Dolgikh:
www.pexels.com/search/easter/​

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope you are all doing well. Today I wanted to share my initial experiences trying amigurumi, which is a Japanese style of crocheting small stuffed animals or creatures.

I have been getting pretty comfortable crocheting flat pieces and have been wanting to try my hand at some more complicated patterns. My best friend got me a Harry Potter crochet kit and book for Christmas that I was very excited to dive into, but found that it was a bit too advanced for my skill level at the time. Recently, my husband bought me a Woobles beginner crochet kit, also of Harry Potter, and I feel like that kit really helped the pieces fit together for me in terms of crocheting in the round and crocheting 3D pieces. Here is my little Harry Potter I made with that kit!

I feel like when I go back to the Harry Potter book my best friend gave me, I will now be much better equipped to take it on! After completing the Harry Potter Woobles kit, the next project I embarked on was some small animals. I have a friend who is pregnant and she mentioned that their nursery theme would likely be animal/jungle-ish so I wanted to try crocheting some cute little things for them. (I won't share pictures of those here, just in case she happens to read this!) Some of the animals I have tried out so far have been penguins, elephants and whales. Here is an elephant that I crocheted for my mother:

This is the pattern I used for the elephant for anyone who might be interested, although I did change it slightly: www.mariskavos.nl/free-elephant-crochet-pattern/

The elephant was probably the most complicated of the ones I have tried, but I have found penguins to be the easiest as they are basically a big oval with some additional pieces added on! I wanted to try my hand at altering the penguin crochet pattern I had been using thusfar to make a slightly chunkier and rounder penguin. I also wanted to try following this pattern using different weights of yarn to show you all how much of an impact your yarn makes in terms of the size of your final project. 

The pattern that I have made a few times and decided to alter slightly can be found here:
 www.roseandlilyamigurumi.com/2021/10/crochet-chubby-penguin-free-crochet.html?m=1

For any who might be interested in trying out my altered pattern, I will share that below! I wanted to try and make it fairly simple and only use basic stitches. I also wanted it not to include changing yarn while crocheting, so any different colored pieces are crocheted separately and sewed on. I want to say here that I don't believe I am good enough yet to give a tutorial on how to do different crochet stitches; what I will do is give a quick glossary of any abbreviations I use so that you can find a tutorial that works for you and helps you learn the necessary stitches!

SC - Single Crochet
MR - Magic Ring
INC - Increase
DEC - Decrease
You will also need to know slip stitch.
​You will also need to know a chain stitch if not using a MR. 

Body
R1 - 6 SC in a MR (or chain 2 and do 6 SC into the first chain if you struggle with a MR) (6)
R2 - INC x 6 (12)
R3 - (SC, INC) x6 (18)
R4 - (2 SC, INC) x 6 (24)
R5 - (3 SC, INC) x 6 (30)
R6 - (4 SC, INC) x 6 (36)
R7 - (5 SC, INC) x 6 (42)
R8-16 - 42 SC
If using safety eyes, attach between rows 10 and 11, 7 stitches apart. If using black yarn to sew eyes, sew over the 10th row of stitches, 7 stitches apart. Sew nose 1 or 2 rows below eyes, in between eyes and over 2 rows of stitches, in a triangular pattern. 
R17 - (5 SC, DEC) x 6 (36)
R18 - (4 SC, DEC) x 6 (30)
R19 - (3 SC, DEC) x 6 (24)
Partly stuff.
R20 - (2 SC, DEC) x 6 (18)
R21 - (1 SC, DEC) x 6 (12)
Finish stuffing.
R22 - (6 DEC) x 6 (6)
Fasten off with a slip stitch and use the tail to sew the hole closed.

Wings x 2
R1 - 4 SC in a MR (or chain 2 and do 4 SC into the first chain if you struggle with a MR) (4)
R2 - 4 INC (8)
R3-R6 - 8 SC (8)
Finish off with a slip stitch, flatten and sew open end together.

Feet x 2
R1 - 4 SC in a MR (or chain 2 and do 4 SC into the first chain if you struggle with a MR) (4)
R2 - 4 INC (8)
R3 - (1SC, 1 INC) x4 (12)
R4-R6 (12 SC) (12)
Finish off with a slip stitch, flatten and sew open end together.

Stomach
R1 - 6 SC in a MR (or chain 2 and do 6 SC into the first chain if you struggle with a MR) (6)
R2 - INC x 6 (12)
R3 - (SC, INC) x6 (18)
R4 - (2 SC, INC) x 6 (24)
R5 - (3 SC, INC) x 6 (30)
R6 - (4 SC, INC) x 6 (36)
​Finish off with a slip stitch, gently pull the piece into an oval shape without overstretching.

Sew the stomach onto the piece, right under the nose. Sew the feet and arms onto the piece, making sure to place the wings low enough that they do indeed look like wings and not ears!

​Here are all the supplies/yarn I used for this project:

Here are some photos of various stages of crocheting this penguin!

And here it is all completed!

I love him! I then wanted to try the same pattern using a different weight of yarn to show you how much of a difference the size of your yarn plays in the final size of your piece. For this attempt, I used the smaller purple yarn I showed in the original picture of all the yarns above. This was a tweed yarn and I ended up figuring out that I would not recommend this type of yarn for amigurumi! It has a very thin and gauzy texture and I felt like it did not hold its shape well, meaning that my final piece was kind of lumpy and bumpy no matter how much I stuffed it.

Once I realized that, I will admit I somewhat gave up on making this little guy look good and just completed it to prove my point about size differences based on yarn. I also used some safety eyes on this one to show you the difference that those can make. I like the look of the safety eyes, but if you are making something that might be near an infant/toddler or a pet, it's safest to simply sew on the eyes with yarn. If you are interested in safety eyes, you can buy a package of many sizes on Amazon for a good price. Safety eyes are essentially a little plastic screw that you push through the front of your piece, with another plastic piece you place on the back that locks everything into place. As I mentioned, I wasn't all the interested in this second penguin looking good (I kind of think he ended up looking like a puppy as I didn't listen to my own advice and made the wings look like ears) so ignore his general silliness and just focus on how much smaller he is than my first one!

I hope that was somewhat helpful to show how the same pattern can yield wildly different results based on the size of your yarn and hook!

I know this wasn't a perfect tutorial or introduction to amigurumi, but I hope it gave you all somewhat of an idea how it works and the kind of results you can expect to see when trying it out. I have been having so much fun expanding my crocheting knowledge and have been reminding myself that it doesn't need to be perfect every step of the way. I have been working on some other crocheted pieces and am hoping to have some things to add to the shop soon. 

If anyone happens to try this pattern and has any feedback about ways that I could make it better or clearer, feel free to drop those in the comments below. Talk to you all soon!

​ - Rebecca

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user Anete Lusina:
www.pexels.com/photo/crochet-needles-and-threads-on-windowsill-4792084/​

Hi everyone! I don't have any big projects to show you at the moment so I thought it would be fun to do a chit-chatty blog today that was more geared towards someone who is just starting their crafting journey. I have been crafting for quite some time so have accumulated a good amount of tools and supplies, but many of my preferred crafts can be easily started on a very small budget. So in this blog I will be touching on some of the crafts that I love to do and the very basic things you would need to get started with each! This will not really be a tutorial on each craft, but a basic guideline of what you will need in front of you before you begin.

Crocheting
The one I am going to start with is actually the most recent crafty skill I have picked up: crocheting. Just to get the basics out of the way, knitting is when you use 2 needles and crocheting is when you use 1 hook. Anything I say here will be referring to crocheting as I do not know how to knit! I have heard many people say that crocheting is usually considered the easier of the two and is a better option for someone who wants to get started. 

I do think its important to point out that crocheting does put a decent amount of strain on your fingers and wrists. Your fingers will be gripping both the yarn and the piece you are working on and one of your hands will constantly have to be adjusting the tension of your yarn. If you struggle with pain or numbness in your fingers it may be the case that crocheting is not a great fit for you or it may help keep your fingers moving to combat that pain; that is up to you to choose!

At its most basic level you really do only need 2 things to start crocheting, yarn and a crochet hook. You could probably walk out of a craft store with a few balls of yarn and a variety pack of crochet hook sizes for less than $20. Every ball of yarn I have seen has information on the packaging to help you know the size of crochet hook you will need to work with it; essentially the thicker or chunkier the yarn, the bigger the hook you need. If you would like to invest in a few more things, I would recommend some stitch markers and a plastic yarn needle. It honestly took me until about 6 months into my crocheting journey to understand how helpful stitch markers can be so if a pattern calls for using them, I would listen!

Once you have your yarn and hook (and stitch markers and needle if you have grabbed those) you really just need some time and a YouTube video to get started. There are countless free tutorials on Youtube that can get you started and help you learn different stitches. I would recommend starting with some videos before you try your hand at a written crochet pattern as it really helped me to be able to see someone's hands making the movements that I needed to repeat.

Beading
Another crafty skill that I find I use in a lot of different craft projects is beading. If you are interested in giving this a try, I would recommend starting with the classic stretchy bracelet. That may seem boring but the great thing about beading is that there are endless types of beads out there so you can really make any style of bracelet that you'd like.

To get going on your stretchy bracelets you really only need 3 things: beads, some type of jewelry cord and a strong adhesive like SuperGlue. SuperGlue is technically not necessary, but I have found it invaluable for ensuring that my knots are extremely secure and my bracelet does not come undone. I am a big fan of tiny glass beads and letter beads and the style of bracelets I like to make is a cutesy friendship bracelet style. If you are looking for a different style of bracelet, just pick beads that match what you are going for!

When talking jewelry cord, I would always personally recommend an elastic plastic or rubber cord. Any kind of fabric cord may get ruined if the bracelet gets wet at all, but a plastic/rubber cord will be fine even when wet. I also feel like plastic cord keeps its stretch longer. Also just make sure that the thickness of cord you buy will fit into the hole in your beads! As I said, SuperGlue is not needed, but I always do a tiny dot of a strong-hold, fast-dry glue after I have knotted the cord to finish the bracelet.

Acrylic Pour Painting
Finally, let's talk about acyclic pour painting. Anyone who has been following the blog for a little while knows that I am a big fan of pour painting and have tried many different applications of it. I saved this one for last as it likely will need the most supplies and time and will have the greatest cost of any craft on this list. However, I do think that people might assume that pour painting is much harder than it actually ends up being. At the most basic level, you really only need a canvas and some pour paint. For someone just starting out, I would recommend getting a pack of smaller canvases like 4 by 4 or 6 by 6 inches. I would also recommend buying a set of premixed pour paints. You have the option of buying regular acrylic paint and then buying an additional pouring medium that you have to mix into the paint to make it thinner and easier to pour, but you can also buy paint that is already mixed and will be the texture you need straight out of the bottle.

If you feel like investing a little more, I would recommend some gesso (which will also require a paintbrush to paint onto the canvas), disposable gloves, plastic or paper cups, thin wooden dowels or shims that you can lay your canvas on, some sealer and a drop cloth if you don't have something like newspaper or cardboard you can lay down on your surface. Gesso is not required at all, but think of it like priming a wall before you paint. It helps to seal your canvas before applying the paint and generally creates a more even texture for your paint to stick to. Gloves and a drop cloth will simply help ensure you and your surfaces stay protected as pour painting can be quite messy and acrylic paint can be nearly impossible to remove from porous materials once it has dried. The cups will allow you to create more interesting paintings as you can layer different colors together before pouring them on the canvas. The wooden dowels or shims are helpful when you set your pieces down to dry; it will create a little space between your canvas and the surface they are drying on and allow any excess paint to drip off the sides. Finally, sealer will just protect your piece once its dry!

The great thing about pour painting is that it's meant to be abstract so don't worry about perfection. Find a YouTube tutorial that interests you and see what you can make!

Obviously these are not the only crafts out there, but these are 3 that I love and feel that I know enough about to give a little advice on. If you are interested in starting a craft and learning a new skill, always remember that everyone had to learn. Don't compare yourself to someone who has been doing something for 20 years if you have been doing it 20 minutes. Just enjoy yourself and give something a try to make sure you like it before investing in additional supplies for it. Happy crafting!

 - Rebecca 

Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well this Sunday. Today I have a fun project to share that is a bit different for me, some earrings! I have had some dangly earring bases for a while that my mother had given me and I figured it was time to put them to good use. I thought it would be fun to combine this idea with something else I don't use too often, polymer clay.

​Below are the main supplies I used for this project: a variety pack of polymer clay, some clay cutters, head pins which are used for beading, the earring bases, clay tools and some tiny little beads. Not pictured but also very important are a variety of jump rings!

I decided that I wanted to go for a marbled effect with different clay colors so I started by cutting up a few clay colors into little pieces. I then rolled and squished the clay together until I had the effect I wanted, making sure not to overwork it so that the colors would just bleed together. 

I went for 3 general designs with this batch: stars, suns/moons and some pairs with the phrase "hi there" on them. The stars were cut out of the red/yellow/orange/white clay I showed above. For all the pairs, I used a pointy tool to poke a hole through the top.

For the suns and moons I made the suns out of some yellow/orange/white clay and the moons from some gray/white/black/blue clay. I also added some texture to these with some of the clay tools I had. I also ended up adding some orange paint to the little ridges on the side of the suns and some white paint to the valleys on the moons.

For the final pairs, I used purple/green/blue clay and also used some tiny little letter stamps to make impressions in the clay. The stamps I used are actually meant for banging letters into metal, but they worked here. You could also get the same effect by pressing rubber stamps into the clay. Once these had been cooked and cooled, I added some white paint into the indents to make them stand out more. I did this by brushing a thick layer of white acrylic paint over the indents and then quickly wiping away the excess with a wet paper towel.

I cooked the clay according to the package directions and let them cool fully. I then went over all of the clay pieces with a thick coat of the varnish I always use, DuraClear. I used a high gloss version for this project. 

In terms of the hardware pieces needed for each pair, I ended up using 2 earring bases, 2 head pins, 2 smaller jump rings and 2 larger ones, as well as 10 small beads. I came to the conclusion that a little detail of 5 beads was the perfect amount for each earring. In case you are not aware of what a head pin is, it is a piece of wire with a flat end that stops the beads from coming off. The little beaded detail on the right is 5 beads that were slid onto the head pin with the non flat end bended over to create a loop. I then used some wire cutters to get rid of the excess wire on the head pin.

Then it was just assembling the earrings using the jump rings and some pliers! My mother also had the smart idea to put them on these cute little tags that we punched holes into. She was also nice enough to cut some toppers that I could put on top of the little bags I planned on putting each set it. Here is an example of what a fully packaged set looks like:

Here's a close up of each type of set I made so you can see the details!

These are now up on the Etsy shop if you are interested! I had a lot of fun making these and trying something a little different for me. Let me know what you guys think in the comments below!

​ - Rebecca 

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user Antoni Shkraba:
www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-kneading-a-clay-dough-6694683/​

Happy 2024 everyone! I hope that you had a wonderful holiday season and a great start to the New Year. Today we have a cute little card project I worked on recently. It all started when I saw these adorable puffy stickers in the crafty aisle at Target:

I thought these would look really cute on some cards but, for those of you who don't know, I really don't enjoy making cards so I decided on making smaller, lunchbox cards to make the project a little less overwhelming. I used a variety of colored cardstock and cut out some 3 1/2 by 3 1/2 inch square cards.

I then used my Cricut to cut out some scalloped rectangles from white paper to put inside each card. I thought that this would not only ensure that these cards were easy to write in no matter the color of the card itself, but would also be a fun detail.

I also used the Cricut to write and cut out some sentiments for the front of the cards. I finally figured out how to do this properly so that in one pass through the Cricut, it first wrote out the sentiment and then cut it out correctly.

I added some washi tape to the inside of each card and then stuck down the white scalloped rectangles. Washi tape is not super adhesive so I did end up using a line of another type of adhesive first to ensure that the washi tape stuck well. I then brought the tape over the edges onto the back of the card and used a small Handmade with Love sticker to cover up the place where the tape met. Finally, I added a small puffy sticker that matched whatever was on the front of the card to finish off the inside.

For the fronts of the cards, I popped up the circle sentiment with some dimensionals and then added 3 or more stickers that I liked from the puffy sticker pack. I also used some liquid glue in addition to the adhesive on the stickers themselves to ensure they were stuck very well.

Here is what the fronts of all 5 sets I made look like!

I thought it would be fun to make some custom envelopes to go along with these cards and my mother has this handy envelope maker I was able to use.

The way this envelope maker works is first you cut out the appropriate sized square of paper, then you use the punching and scoring feature to make notches and score lines that will allow you to fold up the paper into an envelope shape. I used patterned paper that had one fun side and one blank white side to make the envelopes. 

I had so much fun making these envelopes! I used a fabulous glue that I got for Christmas to adhere all the flaps of the envelopes down. It is called "Art Glitter - Designer Dries Clear Adhesive" if anyone is interested!

This project was a nice way for me to use some fun stickers and make cards on a smaller scale. I have the 5 sets of 6 cards I showed above on the Etsy shop. Each set comes with 6 cards, 6 patterned envelopes and 6 clear stickers to close the envelope flaps. Go take a look if you are interested! I also added a bunch of new things to the shop in addition to the cards so if the cards don't speak to you, something else might. Here is the link to my shop if you need it: www.etsy.com/shop/patternedpaperplate

Have a great day everyone!

 - Rebecca

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user Antoni Shkraba:
www.pexels.com/photo/healthy-lunchbox-with-fruits-and-vege-5852329/​

Hello everyone! This weekend I have a very fun craft to show you all. I have recently been obsessed with the idea of tiny little embroidery hoops and wanted to make a craft using them. My mother had some scrap pieces of canvas that she gave me from a project she had done previously and I thought I could put the 2 together into something fun. I ordered a pack of 10 2.5 inch embroidery hoops from Amazon.

I started off by taking the canvas pieces and using a cup to draw some circles that were slightly larger than the inner hoop of the embroidery hoop. These ended up being about a quarter to a third of an inch larger than the inner hoop and I did have a bit of a hard time working with them when it was time to put everything together so I would recommend going even larger if you try something like this.

I decided to make 5 of the ornaments a purple cloudy sky design and the other half a Christmas-y design. I painted 5 of the circles I had traced out with a pretty purple color and then went in with a small sponge brush to add some additional pastel colors. I also added some paint splatters of the same color and then went in to add some white clouds once the base was dry.

For the holiday ones, I painted them a navy blue and added some white splatters to look like snow or stars. I added some trees to 3 of the 5 and did a little red truck hauling a Christmas tree for the other 2. That was an idea from my husband and I think those came out pretty cute!

While the canvases were drying, I painted the embroidery hoops. I left a few the natural wood color, but then painted the others to match the look of the painting going inside. Once the canvases were dry, I cut each circle out and started getting them inside each hoop. As I mentioned, the circles were a bit small and hard to work with so I ended up using some glue to stick the edges of the canvas circles onto the outer edges of the inner hoop. I know that's a little hard to follow, so I hope the picture below helps!

I then cut a small cardboard circle from an empty Cheezit box and glued it to the back of the canvas to give it a little more stability. 

I then glued a backing to each ornament to cover up the back of the canvas and the cardboard circle. For the purple sky ones, I cut out a circle of a pink shiny cardboard and for the Christmas ones I used some tan colored cork or thick cardstock. 

I had a vision of velvet ribbon looking good with these so I bought some red and pink velvet ribbon. This ribbon only had one "good" side so I watched a tutorial on how to make a bow where only the good side of the ribbon was showing. I did red ribbons on top of all of the Christmas ones and pink on the sky ones. These bows were also helpful as they covered up any small imperfections at the top of the ornaments near the hardware where you tighten the hoop. Since canvas is thicker than the kind of fabric you might normally put in a hoop, it did buckle slightly at the top of the hoop.

I then used a piece of the same ribbon as a hanger for the ornament by putting it through the tightening piece at the top and just making a knot. 

And here they are all done!

I am so happy with how these came out and I really think I executed the vision I had in my head pretty well! These, as well as some other new things I've been working on, will be on the Etsy shop in the new year. I'll be sure to let you all know when that happens! This may be my last blog of 2023 as well; I'm still debating if I'll post one more this year. I'll let you all know, but if I don't, happy holidays and have a great new year!

 - Rebecca

​P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user cottonbro studio:
www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-a-person-doing-embroidery-work-on-black-fabric-3838686/​

iHello everyone! As we reach the end of 2023, I wanted to share a simple little calendar project I am working on. This year, my husband and I found that it works really well for us to have a written calendar that we use to plan things out for the whole year and then to keep track of the current month on a larger whiteboard near our door. However, we did discover that having a traditional planner that also has space to plan each week is a bit of a waste for us as we only ended up using the larger month view.

I absolutely love the idea of a bullet journal and think its so fun to watch people spend so much time on them, but I simply don't have the patience for that myself. I wanted to try to make a pretty monthly calendar system for next year that dipped a toe into the world of bullet-journaling but wasn't quite so intense.

To start off, I found a downloadable calendar template from Etsy. You could also find free images online that you could print, but I liked the style of these calendars and how they were perfectly scaled to fit on an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper. Here is an example of what one month looks like!

I wanted to spice up the top of each page a little so I used an embossing label maker to make labels for the days of the week.

I then thought it would be fun to make a rainbow throughout the year so I picked 12 colors of 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock.

I trimmed the edges of each calendar page and then stuck them down to the cardstock.

I then used some stickers from a book I have shown a few times on the blog to add some style to the pages. Here is an example of the style of stickers I used.

I haven't made it all the way through the year yet, but here are what the first 4 months of the year look like!

I know this was a simple blog but I hope it helps you all see how easy it is to make yourself some pretty calendars. If you are like me and like the idea of bullet-journaling, but know that its a bit much for you, I feel like this is a nice little project that allows some customization while also not being so unstructured as bullet-journaling. To store this, I will be sliding the sheets into page protectors. I went for that as opposed to trying to bind them together into a book as I liked being able to see a bunch of them at once for planning purposes.

Let me know if you have ever tried something like this in the comments below!

 - Rebecca

​P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user Anete Lusina:
www.pexels.com/photo/crop-woman-writing-in-calendar-5239916/​

Hello friends! It is Suzanne,  Rebecca’s Mama, happy to be back with you on the Patterned Paper Plate to  share another cute upcycle project.
​
My brother recently texted me and asked if I was interested in some wooden slats from the mini blinds he and my sister-in-law were switching out in their home. Since I am never one to say no to a potential craft supply, I of course went right over to pick them up and started thinking  about what I could make.

​Since I was preparing for several craft fairs, I decided that Santas and snowmen were the thing to make. I started by cutting down the slats to twelve inches long. For the snowmen,  I trimmed just above the hole (where the string to raise and lower the blind would be) because I knew it would be a perfect place to run a hanger through. For the Santas, in addition to cutting the length, I also cut the top into a point to mimic the top of Santa's hat. I also left the hole in these because I knew I could cover it with the fur on Santa’s hat. All these cuts were super easy to do using a miter box and saw because the blind slats are quite thin.

​Once everything was cut down, I gave the pieces a quick sanding and got to painting.
First, for the snowmen, I used white paint over the entire piece,  except for the very top, which I knew would be covered by a hat.

​Using a fleece scarf, I had picked up at the Dollar Store, I cut log a long, thin piece to function as a hanger, another long but wider piece to be a scarf and a rectangle and smaller strip to make the hat.

​I pulled the long thin strip to make it curl over onto itself and then ran it through the hole in the piece and tied it off.  I also used my favorite antiquing wax to “grubby-up” the white.

​Next, it was time to hot glue the rectangle to the top of the piece, with the hanger coming out of the top. I cut into the top of the “hat” to make a pompom and tied the smallest piece of fleece around the fringe and the hanger to close it up.

 With a little orange paint onto a toothpick shaped piece of wood, I had a carrot nose. Two tiny black dots (with an even tinier white dot for a pupil) for eyes – for some reason, I just love the look of a big, long nose, some tiny eyes, and no mouth on my snowmen – and his face was done. I tied the longest strip around the “neck” of my little guy, added three few buttons down his front and put some glitter glue in the buttons for a bit of sparkle.

Santa is just as easy. To start, I used a strong punch (something called a “crop-a-dile,” though a small drill would work as well) to put a hole in the point of his hat. The entire piece was painted in red, except for an approximately 1.5-inch swath just under the hole in the piece, where the face will be. ​

​Santa also got a coat of antiquing wax before adding his decorations. For the fur on his hat and his beard, I cut pieces of batting (like you would use in quilting). The fur on the hat is just a long thin strip that got wrapped around several times. The beard is a long thin triangle that was glued to the base of the face and wrapped to the back of the piece. 

​Santa also needed a moustache, so I wrapped cream colored twine around my hand about twenty times, tied it off in the middle and cut the loops apart. The moustache was glued right above the beard. Santa also got some tiny black dot eyes, with the even more tiny white pupil. To hang him, I passed a length of rusty wire in through the back of the hole in the peak of his hat and curled the ends on the front. 

​And with that, you have two adorable decorations. They could go on the Christmas tree, if you like big ornaments, but at a foot tall, they are perfect for adding a touch of holiday spirit to any small spot in your home.

If you want to recreate these pieces (but do not have an amazing brother who saves things for you), you could use a paint stir stick, a ruler or even a piece of foam core board cut to size. Any scrap of brightly colored fabric could be used to make the snowman’s clothing. Cotton, gauze or even an old face cloth could be cut for Santa’s beard and hat fur. No paint? A marker would get the job done for the face features. Use your imagination and personalize your decorations any way you wish.
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Happy Holiday Season!

Thanks to my mother for this fun holiday craft! As we head into the holiday season, it's probably more likely that blogs will be off schedule for a while, but I'll always keep you all updated! - Rebecca

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user Bryan Geraldo:
www.pexels.com/photo/low-light-photography-of-brown-window-blinds-586414/​

Hello everyone! Today we have the first part of a random little project I started not long ago. I have been very interested in the idea of abstract textured paintings lately and wanted to try my hand at it. In case you don't know what I am talking about, here are a few examples I found on Etsy to give you an idea. Just FYI, I don't know these people, I just liked their art as an example of what I am talking about!

www.etsy.com/listing/52607940/blue-white-water-flowers-original

www.etsy.com/listing/1022859063/small-texture-paintings-variety-wall-art

To start off, I took a few canvases and gave them a coat of white gesso. This just helps to seal the canvases and give a nice base for paint to stick onto. 

My first attempt was with some oil paint. I had a small set of oil paints I had left over from an at home date my husband and I had done a few years ago. I tried pushing out little dollops of oil paint and then spreading them out slightly using the back of a plastic spoon. After covering about half of the canvas, I started having a hard time doing anything without messing up the paint already on the canvas so I decided to wait and let what I had already done dry.

It was at this point that I started to consciously remember that oil paint takes a VERY long time to dry and that these extremely large globs of oil paint were likely to take weeks, even months to fully dry. Here is a picture of this canvas I took just today after it had been sitting over a week. That little smudge you can see on the bottom is from me touching some of the paint to see that it had not really dried at all yet ....

So although I am excited to keep working on this and see how it turns out, I feel like it's not a very sustainable approach for me if I decide to keep doing art like this in the future. I don't have a lot of spaces where I can leave canvases like this for months at a time without them being disturbed.

I then decided to try the age-old baking soda in acrylic paint technique . I am sure I have talked about this before on the blog, but in case you are not aware, if you add some baking soda to acrylic paint it gives it a thicker and grittier texture that is similar to chalk paint. The great thing about acrylic paint is that it dries much faster than oil paint and is generally a bit easier to work with.

Here is an example of some acrylic paint straight out of the bottle versus some mixed with baking soda:

I decided that for these DIY chalk paint attempts I was going to do a gradient effect as opposed to the random splashes of color all over. For one canvas I went for a light yellow to turquoise gradient. I used a paper plate to keep mixing different colors and adding baking soda as needed.

I used a palette knife to mix the paints and to apply them to the canvas and this is how the first attempt ended up. I like the overall effect of this a lot but think I need to be better at creating a softer gradient. I think at times I jumped from one color to another that was not close enough so it's not a smooth transition. 

This painting was dry enough to the touch to handle in a few hours and fully dry after a few days. I also tried another attempt where I stuck within one color family and did larger splotches of each color. Again, I think I need to work on my transitions from one color to the next so it's smoother.

I think the next step is going to be trying to use some sealer on these canvases to see how it reacts with the chalk paint. I also think they would benefit from some wooden frames added to the canvases so I may give that a try as well. I am not quite sure where this little project is going but I wanted to do some different and take you all along for the ride!

Let me know if you have ever tried any unique painting styles in the comments below!

​ - Rebecca 

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage is from Pexels user Ulrich Scharwächter:
www.pexels.com/photo/assorted-color-artist-color-soft-tubes-1327716/

​Hello Friends!  It’s Suzanne, Rebecca’s mama, happy to be back with you on the Patterned Paper Plate.  I’m returning to my roots for this week’s card making idea.  I periodically use pretty paper napkins in place of decorative paper for card making and got to wondering if tissue paper could be used in the same way.  When I saw this super cute tissue rainbow paper, I decided to give it a try.

​Step 1:  Cut a strip of the tissue paper and gather four 4 X 6 inch index cards.

​Step 2:  Use a large glue stick to completely cover the index card and glue it to the back of the tissue paper.

​Step 3:  Use a brayer, rolling pin or expired gift card to ensure that the index card is well adhered to the tissue paper.  Trim the tissue paper that extends beyond the edge of the index card.

​Step 4 is optional, but adds a nice touch.  Run the index card with the tissue paper adhered through an embossing machine to add texture. Once the index card is embossed, trim it down to 3.75 X 5 inches.

You now have great piececs to use as card fronts.  The tissue paper gives a soft, almost cloth-like feel when embossed.
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For the cards I made with these pieces,  I picked orange for the card bases and pink for the mat layer, to pick up on those colors in the paper.  I cut the orange sheets in half to 8.25 X 5.5 inches and folded the resulting pieces in half to make standard A-2 sized card bases (4.25 X 5.5 inches).  I then cut the pink sheet into four 4 X 5.25 inch pieces to layer the tissue paper fronts on.  I also cut a white sheet into four 4 X 5.25 inch pieces to layer inside the card.  I also gathered the strips left from trimming the tissue paper pieces and the mat layer to decorate the inside of the cards.

​Before beginning to adhere all the layers together, I punched out a shape from the pink mat layer to use with the sentiment piece.  This is a great paper-saving technique and ensures that all layers match.

​I adhered the tissue paper pieces to their pink mats and decorated the inside liner pieces with the leftover strips. 

​Next came the stamping – a sentiment for the front of the card, an inside sentiment and my “Made By” stamp on the back of the card.

​Since there were some small images in the stamped sentiments, I added a little color using markers.

​It was finally time to put everything together, including a little orange rick-rack ribbon to add some dimension.  I adhered the liner to the inside of the card, the layered card front on the outside and the outside sentiment to the layer piece I punched earlier.  I popped the sentiment up on some dimensional foam so it fit nicely over the top of the rick-rack.

​The result is a set of four thank you cards ready to go.

Thanks for coming along on this card making journey!  I hope it got your wheels turning! 

Note from Rebecca: Thank you to my mother for sharing her clever card idea!

P.S. Today's photo on the homepage os from Pexels user Anni Roenkae:
www.pexels.com/photo/multi-color-painting-2457278/