Day 5: Craft Yourself a Better View
Looking outside this time of year can be dismal. If there's no fresh snow sparkling, you see a lot of brown. And gray. And dead. It would be ideal to schedule vacations to a beachy warm place for January and February, but when that's not an option, here's what you do. If you happened to eliminate a book when we were minimizing last month, you can use its' pages to make something lovely to hang in a window. I found this on a blog, but it included sewing. My sewing machine is currently out of service, so I came up with a no-sew version. Here's what you need: 1-Scissors 2-Tape 3-Embroidery thread or yarn 4-Book pages 5-Scrap(s) of pretty paper
Begin by cutting hearts out of the book pages in three different sizes (small, medium, large) and keep them in stacks. This is free-hand heart cutting...not even folding in half to get the two sides identical, which also made it intimidating. I want you to see what I did. I cut an awful heart and then I trimmed it down to an okay heart.
When they're all hung together, they don't have to be perfect at all, so breathe. Also, once you have one trimmed down, you can hold it to your other book pages and cut around it. I ripped out three pages at a time to cut simultaneously. This sped things up.
1 - Here are your book-page hearts, so now cut at least one of each size of the pretty paper.
2 - Tape your thread or yarn to the table and give yourself more to hang from than I did there. It wasn't enough. :) Tape your thread to the heart at the top and again at the bottom end of the heart. Keep your thread straight but don't stretch it tight. Leave a little gap of thread before taping on the next heart.
3 - Whenever you feel like it, add in your colorful heart.
4 - If your thread runs out early, but you have another piece, you can tape the ends together. On your last heart, don't tape at the bottom. Just cut your thread where it comes out of your first piece of tape.
I thought the little poem was funny, but I'd paid no attention to what was in this book until I started cutting. I'd bought it for $2 at Goodwill before Christmas because I wanted to make ornaments, but our little tree filled up too fast. Anyway, this benign looking book had so many swear words. If my children were really reading, I'd be concerned, but I just kept cutting...and raising my eyebrows...and cutting. So, maybe do pay a little attention to content. Just in case. All this works during our No Spend month because I had the items around. What could be more fun that a free craft that up-cycles and gives you something cheery to look at. And by all means, during the project, play some up-beat love songs for an added mood boost.
Total spent: 0
Fun money: 3.68
Begin by cutting hearts out of the book pages in three different sizes (small, medium, large) and keep them in stacks. This is free-hand heart cutting...not even folding in half to get the two sides identical, which also made it intimidating. I want you to see what I did. I cut an awful heart and then I trimmed it down to an okay heart.
When they're all hung together, they don't have to be perfect at all, so breathe. Also, once you have one trimmed down, you can hold it to your other book pages and cut around it. I ripped out three pages at a time to cut simultaneously. This sped things up.
1 - Here are your book-page hearts, so now cut at least one of each size of the pretty paper.
2 - Tape your thread or yarn to the table and give yourself more to hang from than I did there. It wasn't enough. :) Tape your thread to the heart at the top and again at the bottom end of the heart. Keep your thread straight but don't stretch it tight. Leave a little gap of thread before taping on the next heart.
3 - Whenever you feel like it, add in your colorful heart.
4 - If your thread runs out early, but you have another piece, you can tape the ends together. On your last heart, don't tape at the bottom. Just cut your thread where it comes out of your first piece of tape.
I thought the little poem was funny, but I'd paid no attention to what was in this book until I started cutting. I'd bought it for $2 at Goodwill before Christmas because I wanted to make ornaments, but our little tree filled up too fast. Anyway, this benign looking book had so many swear words. If my children were really reading, I'd be concerned, but I just kept cutting...and raising my eyebrows...and cutting. So, maybe do pay a little attention to content. Just in case. All this works during our No Spend month because I had the items around. What could be more fun that a free craft that up-cycles and gives you something cheery to look at. And by all means, during the project, play some up-beat love songs for an added mood boost.
Total spent: 0
Fun money: 3.68
Very fun craft! And too funny about the eyebrow-raising words. Oops :)
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