Winter Butterflies

I made this card for the Israeli “Card and album making forum” manager, Yael (better known as Alma7).

The pop up is basically an automatic sliding tab mechanism (just like the Deep Purple card I made not long ago), you might be happy to know a tutorial is coming up soon!

This card was sent to Yael with warm wishes for the birth of her little baby boy. It’s gray-ish, and yet I find it soft and sweet. It might sound weird, but remember that most colors can be fairly “warm” or “cold”. There are shades of gray that can come across as warm, and yellow shades that can be harsh and cold. There are, of course, general “warm” and “cold” colors, but eventually, it’s the full scheme of colors you use that gives your creation it’s final “feel”.

Have a nice, warm week!

ShirA

Baby Quilt

This is my first quilt ever! I made it for a friend’s little baby boy. I love it, I found it hard giving it away!
In my opinion you can make the nicest baby’s textile products from some “grown up” fabrics and non typical colors. A friend saw the fabrics I bought and gave me a funny look, saying: “these are not the right colors for babies! Where are all the teddy bears and flowers?!”. Well, I think it’s stylish, cool and very baby-ish!

I have very little experience in sewing, so I had to watch a few Youtube videos to get the grip of it, and off I went! It was fun to make, satisfying to accomplish, and made me want to make a large one for us to snuggle in!

Have a great weekend!

ShirA

Be Mine

The Scrap.co.il site has published it’s second scrapping challenge, and it’s all about love! For Valentine’s day, the challenge was to create a paper craft project, relating to the subject of “love”. There were three rules, as it was a 1-2-3 challenge: 1 ribbon, 2 hearts, 3 blings / pearls.

I wanted to create a card that tells a story, something that is a little bit touching. I came up with the idea of a little girl holding tight to a heart shaped balloon, fighting against the wind in front of a cold, urban background. I thought my first trial was nice but there was something melancholic about it. Not really suitable for this challenge. Sooo… I swapped the gray papers for chocolate brown and craft, and the gloomy patterned paper for these fun Echo-Park “Summertime collection” papers.

I made the outside of the card quite clean, using the “required” pearls and a thin blue ribbon. I made one heart out of craft and placed it on the craft background, to get a tone-on-tone effect (I really wanted it to be soft and delicate). The second heart is a part of the inner pop up. The little girl was the tricky part- I drew her silhouette on white card stock and gently cut her out with a sharp craft knife.

I love how it came out, I think it tells a little something about me.

Happy Valentine’s day everybody!

ShirA

PS – Ari, would you be my Valentine? 😉

A Popping Heart Tutorial

This is a cute Valentine’s day card I made for the new Israeli Scrap site. It’s an awesome site which provides a fresh and inspiring stage for Israeli scrappers to shine on. Scrap.co.il was created and is being run by the lovely Michal Shoval It is constantly being updated with articles, links and tutorials. Make sure to check it out!

As for this card, it’s a cross pop up mechanism, very simple and fun. You can change the heart shape into any other symmetric shape. I decided to make this card quite wide in order to allow for a large heart shape. If you follow the simple principles described below, you can make a card of any size and shape. Good luck!

1. Cut the base of your card from card stock or heavy weight paper. I’ve made mine a 28X10 cm, to create a long 14X10 cm card when closed. Score a center fold.

2. Use a scrap of paper to create the template for your center shape. Fold the paper in half and draw half of the shape. Cut it and open up the fold to receive a symmetric heart (or any other shape, for that matter). Important – when still folded, the heart’s widest point shouldn’t be wider than a third of the card’s side. To better understand this, have a look at the photo in step 3.

3. Place the heart shape on the card’s side and make sure it’s not wider than 2/3 of it. If the card’s side measures 14 cm (“3X”), then the heart’s width should be 2/3 of that – 9.333 cm (“2X”) or less. If it’s any bigger, it’ll peek out when the card is closed, and ruin the surprise!

4. Use the template to create 2 identical hearts from card stock. Do not fold these in the middle.

5. Make a narrow slit along the center of the heart shapes: one should run from the top of the heart to the middle of it, and the other from the bottom to the middle. Please note I’ve made my slits pretty wide for demonstration purposes, try to make them more slender (but make sure to take a bit of paper off, a cut-through won’t be enough).

6. Take another piece of card stock, preferably the same kind as the base of the card. Cut a long strip and score folds in it as shown (“X” being half of the heart on it’s widest point). Don’t forget to leave a small gluing tab.

7. Fold the scored lines and add glue to the gluing tab. Glue the stripe into a closed loop.

8. Slide the two hearts into one another.

9. You’ll receive a double layered heart with a “hinge” in the middle.

10. Flatten the stripe and apply glue to one of the stripes’ faces.

11. Glue the stripe to the heart, as close to the middle “hinge” as possible.

12. Add glue to the opposite face of the stripe.

13. Close the heart on top of the strip and press firmly. Let the glue set.

14. Apply glue to the two faces of the stripe that pop out of the heart, and glue it to the base of the card, as close to the center fold as you can. Close the card firmly and let the glue dry.

15. That’s it! You’re done!

Hope you liked it! 🙂

ShirA

A Serious Dilemma

“Purim”, my favorite holiday in the world, is coming up soon. For those of you who don’t know, “Purim” is the Jewish holiday that’s probably the closest to Halloween. On Purim’s week I try to go to as many costume parties as I can, always making sure to have a super cool, crafty, original outfit! I’m not sure if it’s the dressing-up, the DIY or the “feel free to carry enormous fake weapons” that makes this holiday my favorite. I guess it’s simply the joyful atmosphere, having grown up people fooling around in the streets, letting their imagination go wild.

Now, I usually have an idea for a costume at least 6 months in advance, so I can work on it as long as I need… The tradition for the past ten years includes my sister and I spending days at my parents’ house, turning the basement into a Purim sweatshop (and my mom into a living sewing-machine…). The result – a costume that is completely hand made, unique and awesome!

Here are some examples of our costumes from the past few years:

In 2007 Ari and I were Kong-Fu fighters! I drew dragons on our clothes and added lots of black and red accessories.

2008 was the year of the Vikings (I LOVED this costume!). I dyed some fabrics, sew all our clothes, used hot-glue gun on everything and- voila! The most vicious warriors of the western world! Some of the “metal” pieces are made of Fimo, colored in gold.

In 2009 we were space invaders. It was really cool! Our suits were black and silver, we had space weapons (very useful against the human race) and acid green accents all over. I made a cute little space-pet as a hairpiece.

2010 was the era of the Aztecs. I made our outfits from dyed fabric and fake suede, the head pieces from leather leftovers and the jewelery from Fimo (drawn on with acrylic paint, to imitate the vanes of the turquoise stone…). The fake tattoos I drew on our arms lasted for a week and looked real good!

Now- the big dilemma – what shall I do this year?!?! I’ve been asking myself this question since October… HELP! If you have any brilliant ideas, please feel free to comment 🙂

ShirA