geaugaroots

May 16

Happy Mother’s Day to all those beautiful moms out there! My mom got this pretty little present on Sunday morning. I was so excited to give it to her, I couldn’t stand it. I don’t know if I was more excited to give it to her because of the present, or the wrapping!

My friends and family will tell you that I have a serious home-made wrapping paper addiction. For Christmas, I carved a Christmas tree stamp to make off white trees on kraft paper. I love making stamps, and one of the easiest and quickest ways to do that is using a wine cork! You can carve all sorts of little shapes (hearts, stars, snowflakes) really quickly with an exacto knife. If you’re in a hurry or not too handy with a knife, just take the cork and dip in some paint like I did for my mom!

I stamped light pink acrylic paint on a little piece of kraft paper, tied it up with a double layer of thin twine, slipped in a piece of wheat (or some weed found in my back yard), and tied on a little tag with pink and gold glitter stripes. Piece of cake!

It’s just a little extra touch to give a gift some love and make the recipient feel that much more special!

More photos on my Flickr.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

Jan 11

Pretty Packages

I gave some of my 2012 Desktop Calendars to my friends for New Years, and I wanted to come up with a cute, fun way to package them. I have a bunch of fabric scraps left over from my jewelry holders, and thought that would be a good way to re-use!

Materials:

Calendar, or something fun to wrap!

Twine

Fabric scraps

Old buttons

Acorn tops

Needle & Thread

Cut a square of fabric, just larger than your item when placed perpendicular to it. Fold the corners in, and staple or sew the first two opposite corners together tightly. Then fold the remaining opposite corners, one on top of the other. Mine overlapped like an envelope, but yours could meet more in the middle if you prefer (just cut the fabric a little smaller). Staple or sew the top corner down to the piece of fabric underneath.

If you are going to use an acorn top, drill two small holes through it, similar to button holes. Make your stack of buttons. Attach the buttons and acorn tops to each other with the needle and thread, tying on the bottom of the button. I think wood glue would work to attach everything, too.

After your button stack is all together, use the needle and thread again to sew it on to the point of the fabric flap. I went back and forth a few times before tying on the back of the flap, for a little more stability. Then take some twine, string, or ribbon and wrap it twice around the entire package, tying on the back.

Slip a little note in the back, and you’re done! So pretty :)

Here are a few pics of some other ones I sent out…

Dec 27

I recently worked on a custom coat rack project. My client really liked my cork board with knobs, but didn’t necessarily know if she had space/need for the cork part. Together, we came up with the solution seen above. I think it turned out beautiful, and she loved it, too!

I salvaged the wood from the local sawmill here in town, trimmed it down, sanded the back, and attached the knobs and hooks to create a beautiful and functional piece.