Got a dollar and an hour?

Our most recent customer, Julie H., made all of these projects within an hour, and just after she left our store. Plus, as our title suggests, she spent less than a dollar for everything. Julie, thanks for shopping with us and then getting these pix our way, complete with descriptions:

I took a bunch of architectural samples [25¢/inch*] and instead of using the colored side, I used the really cool brown colored side to make some fun wall art. The samples were hot-glue-gunned to a box top that I also got at the scrap store, to make it look like it was done on canvas :)

I made a fun little mobile out of sheer fabric samples; it looks really great in front of the window with all of the sunlight shining in!

These buttons [5@25¢] were so cool! Such a great color to make some fun button earrings.

There were so many fun fabric samples [this size = 10¢] to choose from. Here I used a green fabric to re-cover a magnetic knife rack that was made out of old magnets and cardboard.

Amazing, Julie! Now, our "Iron Chef"-style event coming up 3/29 with Knowledge Commons DC isn't a timed competition (in fact, it's only a competition if you want it to be), but if someone wants to attempt more projects for even less money, we'll blog about that, too!

* What is meant by 1" of architectural samples? That's when you gather a bunch of samples together in a stack -- so imagine the above all chained together through the holes provided, like when you shop for countertops or paint colors and can flip through the "pages." When that stack is 1" tall, you've got a single unit assembled. And we'll charge you a total of ONE QUARTER for the whole thing. Come clear us out so we can make room for more.

A Papermaking Adventure

The finished product! Now the question is, what special project will I use this for?

The water is all pressed out. I added dried lavender to this one.

Gruel or paper pulp?

The beginning phase


As Karen and Heather know, I've had my share of car troubles this month. One weekend while stuck at home without a car and frustrated with just about every piece of technology around me, I decided to make paper, something I hadn't done since grade school.

Sifting through the internet, I found a lot of instructions and settled on this video that gave simple steps:


I followed the directions and my paper turned out well, although the texture and weight is very cardboard-y. Expect to use a lot of dishtowels, the pulp will hold a lot of water. It was also a bit tricky to lift the screen without another set of hands, but it's doable.

Get creative and add dried flowers or herbs, confetti, essential oils, glitter, or paper scraps!

Super Easy Lace Earrings

A few weeks ago Heather's friend Emily came into Scrap looking for some lace to make earrings. Using only glue(!) she made some fabulous jewelry, so easy I had to try it out.

All you need is lace trim or fabric and a mixture of equal parts Elmer's glue and water. Cut out the shapes you want for your earrings and paint on the glue mix. Squeeze out the excess liquid and let dry. Attach earring hooks, and that's it!

I wove some embroidery floss through my earrings when they dried to add a bit of color. You could also use the lace pieces in a necklace, bracelet, or anything else your crafty imagination can think of.

Examining "Google-y-ness"

This post was inspired by my niece Janey, turning 9 today! She recently deemed one of her creative projects to have eyes that weren't googley enough, and that got me to thinking: how do you make eyes more and less googley?

I began by revisiting techniques shown in this recent post. SCRAP-DC sells plastic bottle caps (25¢ a handful??) and sequins (10¢ a scoop??) -- ooh, even star-shaped sequins! I still have loads of the clear plastic I used previously, and I supplemented with brads, beads, and eyelets that are in my personal stash of craft supplies.

Then you might say I went a little overboard with this experiment! But what do you think of the results?

As before, the trick to getting the plastic circles to fit well into the caps is to cut imperfect circles, then rotate them for best coverage, maybe even switch which caps you put them in. Even with glue, some seemed more likely to remain intact than others, and those pink-starry ones BOTH lost their plastic covers... somewhere. It should be an easy enough fix, each and every time :^). My research continues, but this pair looked great glued to Janey's present:

Back to the original question: what makes these eyes googley, and what would make them MORE googley?? All thoughts welcome in the comments, and Happy 9th Birthday, Janey! I love you and hope it's a most fun (if not googley) day!!

This post written by AUNT Karen