Celebrations: spring napkin rings

Spring flowers are popping up all over my house 

{unfortunately not in my garden yet}.

Last week I posted about this spring centerpiece that I made out of painted paper napkins. You can see the post here.



I had some leftover painted napkins and made a few more flowers that I used to create these napkin rings.



The rings are made out of floral wire and covered with a green paper napkin and Mod Podge. I used a hot glue gun to adhere the flowers to the wire and covered the flower base with more of the green napkin.



As I mentioned in my original centerpiece post, the napkins are super thin {cheap} which makes them all the more delicate and airy. Great for crafting but not very good for using with a meal.

A trial run place setting for Easter.

Happy Monday everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Thanks for visiting!

Carolyn

Inkling: watercolor valentine cards

I’ve been playing with my watercolors and painted some Valentine cards.

Not a single lesson – can you tell? {ha ha}

My original plan was just plain watercolor cards. I painted them and even took the pictures for this post. I know watercolor is supposed to look “misty” but my cards seemed a little too watered down and plain.

I cut the cards into smaller pieces and played around with different background papers to jazz up the cards a bit. I settled on one of my favorite go-to recycled supplies – security envelopes.

I’ve mentioned before how fascinated I am with the different security envelope patterns. I have quite the stash of these envelopes. I save them from the junk mail and bills and I even have my mom saving them for me. Needless to say, I have quite a few envelopes to choose from.

I love the pink tones of the watercolor against the stark grey and black security envelope paper. 

Even if you don’t paint, watercolor is fun and easy. You can water down the color or make them more vibrant by using less water. To make a free form watercolor like the first photo of this post, wet your paper first and them just dab the paint brush onto the paper. The watercolor bleeds onto the wet paper and makes beautiful designs. 

Thanks for visiting.

Carolyn
 

I happily link at the parties listed here and 

Little Craft: leaf imprints and water color

Leaf imprints are an age-old kid’s craft that never gets old. Here’s a twist on making leaf imprints that adds a different dimension to the craft – a water color finish.

Start by collecting leaves in various shapes and sizes. The more texture and veins the leaf has, the more interesting the finished piece will be.

Use a glue stick to secure your leaf to a piece of printer paper. The side facing up should be the more textured side. Place another sheet of paper on top of the leaf.

Optional: Use painter’s tape to secure the corners of the paper to your craft table so that the paper doesn’t move around. This makes it easier for kids to make the imprint.

Rub the side of a crayon over the leaf making an imprint. Once you have all your leaf imprints, cover the images with water color paint. Your results will vary depending on the color of crayon and color of paint.

Mount the masterpieces on colorful paper and hang to display.

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Inkling: mother’s day mini album

Here’s a last minute gift idea that you can quickly and easily create in time for Mother’s Day.

Swirl on water color paints onto water color paper. Let dry and trim the sheets to a desired size. My sheets are 3” x 4” - perfect for wallet size photos.

 

Punch holes and tie together with twine. Make sure to give the twine plenty of slack so you can open the album.

On each page, I handwrote – “date” and “age” so I could add a wallet size school photo and fill in the date and age. If you have an older child, it’s a nice timeline of photos from pre-school on up to high school. If you have a younger child, start with a few photos and send the new school picture each year.

This would make a nice gift for grandmothers, aunts or other relatives.

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Thank you for visiting. Please consider voting for me at

Babble's Top 50 Mom Craft Blogs.

……………………………………………………………………

This project is linked at the following:

     

And other link parties that I participate can be found here.