Tutorial #3: Halloween Accordion Books

We've been having fun making some accordion books for Halloween photos.  I've made a few for swaps & friends and I might even list some on Etsy later.  These are really easy to make and can be decorated for any holiday or event.

All you need is 2 sheets of 2-sided scrapbook paper, glue stick, and whatever you want to use to decorate your book with.  

Cut your paper into 4" wide strips.  You can make a complete book out of just one sheet of paper but I like the variety when you use 2 different designs.
You'll have 3 pieces - 4" x 12".  Fold them in half.  The finished book will be 4" x 6".
Arrange the papers so that the middle paper overlaps half of the 2 outside papers.  Use your glue stick to stick the two pages together but (VERY IMPORTANT!) only glue the bottom and side edges.  This will leave a pocket for you to add more photos, tags, or journalling.  
Cut a notch out of the top of the pocket with a round punch.
Now for the fun part -- decorate!  There are no rules to this part of the tutorial.  Do whatever you want.  I usually would have inked the edges a lot more but I made this one for someone who doesn't like that "dirty" look.


I used lots of my bat punches, scalloped circles, and Halloween tickets.

Here are a couple more unfinished covers.  I thought I'd taken more photos of my other completed books.  I'll post more when I find them or take more photos.

Here's our mess:

Tutorial #2: Fall Paper Flower Bouquet

Jordi got in the mood to make our paper flowers again a few days ago so we made ourselves a bouquet and put a kit in our Etsy store, too.  These are really easy & quick to make.  And you can make them in whatever colors you want.  I always like to include some of my old paper in them and ink the edges but you wouldn't have to do that.   
Here's how to do it:

Punch several circles for each flower.  I used 5 different punches ranging from 3" to 1".  Some scalloped, some not.  If you don't have punches you can cut them out, or even tear them.  It just takes longer.

Wad up the papers.  This is the fun part!  Make them as wrinkled as you want -- or don't even wad them if you want a cleaner look.
Ink the edges and some of the folds.  I've also used glimmer mist on some and wadded them up while they were still wet.  That works good, too.  Color Box chalk ink in chestnut roan is my favorite right now for this.
Here's the stack of circles ready to assemble.  You can glue them together and then glue a button on top or use a brad.
Today I decided to use up some of the brads in my desk.
I inked my craft stick (Jo just bought ANOTHER box of 1000 so we have to make LOTS of these now!!!) and glued some leaf punches on, too.  Although when you put them in a display like I show above you can't really see the leaves.
For the bouquet in the first photo I stuck an old piece of styrofoam in a clean veggie can, stuck my flowers in, and covered the styrofoam with shredded papers.  Then I took 2 strips of coordinating papers and taped them on and tied a piece of jute around the whole thing.  It probably took me 20 minutes to do the whole bouquet.  You've probably seen these on my blog before.  We've made bouquets for Valentine's Day, July 4th, and Christmas.

I think I'm going to make some flowers and glue magnets on the back for my fridge.  I need new magnets.  :-)

Our First Tutorial - Halloween Spiders

Last Saturday we went to the Illuminations store in our local mall.  They had out all their fall & Halloween decorations.  One of the things they had was a bag of spiders!  Jordi looked at them and decided to make some for herself.  She was working on them when we Skyped Kim Tuesday.  Kim said her dd would love to make them but she couldn't ever think of fun stuff like that to make.  So we decided to make a tutorial for her -- and anyone else that would like to use it.

Here's what you need to start:  

pipe cleaner/chenille stem, 1" pom pom, 2 googly eyes, old scissors, and a glue gun.

Fold the pipe cleaner in half, then half again, and then half again.

Until it looks like this:

Gently pull apart and cut at the bends.

You should have 8 little "legs" now:

Grab each end of one leg.  Move one hand up and one hand down to make the bent parts of the leg.

They should look like this:

Put a small line of hot glue on one side of the pom pom.  She tried gluing each individually at first but this method was easier.

Then glue on the eyes and you have a cute little spider!

Jordi hung a few on our scary black light fixture to show you how to use them.  Angie said she was going to try to tie a black thread on it to hang hers.  That should be cute.  

Hope they don't attract any of the real thing!!!

Hope you enjoyed our first tutorial.  If you make them add a photo to your blog and send us the link.  And let us know if you'd like to see more.  I may take pictures at our craft day and give you a step by step for some of the little books we've been making.