Cool Estate Sale Find

I found this old tool caddy at an estate sale about 7 years ago.  It came full of nuts and bolts and lots of dirt and this really cool turquoise color.  It sat in a shed all these years because I just couldn't figure out what to do with it.  It has separate compartments that I thought would be perfect to hold mason jars but it's just a bit large for the kitchen table.  

I was trying to find some way to keep pencils, markers, etc., organized but close at hand in my craft room and finally found the perfect use for it!. I can keep it on my work table to keep everything at my fingertips but easily move it under the table if I need to cut out fabric.

Shaker Gift Card

My First Shaker Card!

I've always had an interest in doing more paper crafts, but just didn't have the room to spread out.  I even bought a Cricut and accessories a few years ago, but never had the room to keep it out and accessible, and therefore I didn't get much use out of it so I finally sold it.

Now that I have moved all my sewing and crafts out to the "Little House", I have room to spread out, which means that I can now work on paper crafting.  

I've been watching some YouTube videos on card making and stumbled upon NurseTara04's videos.  She has a lot of really good tutorials on papercrafting.  I loved the idea of a "shaker card" - where you have sequins, glitter, or other small free-floating items encased behind acetate or other clear medium.

NurseTara04 took this a step further with Shaker Swag Bags.  I used her tutorial to create some gift card holders for Christmas.  I started with a small kraft paper bag and folded and embellished it.  The bag opening is the place where you can add a gift card or other small "swag" items.  

I added sequins, silver disks, pearls and seed beads to the shaker window then embellished the front with silver glitter washi tape and snowflakes. I made an insert to hold cash for this card out of cardstock, washi tape and a large snowflake.  Everything but the paper and acetate came from Dollar Tree.

Hand Made Journals

Having a laminator and a binding machine at my disposal has opened up a world of possibilities for paper crafting.  I am making booklets for everything I can think of.

So I thought everyone needed a journal at Christmas.  I started by finding paper for the covers that I thought the recipient would like and laminated them.  I then typed up some bible verses that I like in different fonts and printed them out on 8.5 by 5.5 size paper.  My first thought was that I would use those verses on dividers for sections in the journal.  Maybe 12 sections, one for each month.  I ended up making a couple of journals with 12 tabbed dividers then made others without.  

I'm not much on journal writing myself, so I didn't know how the recipient might use them.  I thought they would perfect for daily journaling, but also thought they would work well for a prayer journal, or jotting down notes when researching bible topics.

I made a bookmark to match each journal and wanted a tassel on each one.  I had to watch YouTube videos to learn how to make tassels..... I bought embroidery floss in colors to coordinate with each journal and made a tassel for each.  Turns out, tassel making is very easy. I took these pics before making the tassels. 

Hard to see in this pic, but I used a stamp and a VersaMark stamp pad for the square embellishments on the cover and bookmark.  This stamp pad creates a translucent watermark or tone-on-tone image instead of color.  

I found the washi tape used in this journal at Target, in the "Dollar Spot".  I wish I had gotten more of it!

I used washi tape to adhere the bible verses on these dividers and tabs before laminating. 

This cover and bookmark are embellished with another Target dollar spot washi tape.