Hello, world-outside-my-front-door.
I’ve rather missed you.
In the spirit of getting straight
back to business, I’m going to keep the blethering to a minimum, and share a
little burst of visual inspiration instead.
Tiny wooden picture frames? Oh,
yes. They’re part of the newest Kitschy Digitals kit, Woodgrain Frames, although making them on
such a small scale is far from obligatory. Mine were printed onto shrink
plastic and then, um, shrunk to make this super-speedy new-home card.
While we’re on the subject (Kitschy
kits or wooden things – take your pick), there are also these fun wearables.
I found the wooden bracelets in Sainsbury’s a few months ago – not somewhere I generally shop for jewellery, but they were next to the magazines and I am nothing if not easily distracted. The blank wooden squares were begging to be fancified, so fancify them I did. I started out with some store-bought rub-ons (those below are from the nature-themed Love, Elsie ‘Forrest’ line).
And then, because the idea both
worked and looked suitably fetching, I decided to have a shot at making my own
rub-ons. Remember when I tried temporary tattoos? (If you don’t, it’s much less
alarming than it sounds.) The process is much the same. You print out your
image onto one part of the design sheet, add the second, sticky sheet over the
top, and around half an hour later, ta-da! – homemade rub-ons, ready to use.
For the Kitschy bracelet at the top, I used a variety of images from the cute
girl themed kits, and then, for the version below, the thrift store frames. They’re
obviously quite tiny, but I love how they look running over the edges of each
wooden square. By combining them with another store-bought set (Cosmo Cricket
alphabets), it creates a different sort of look again.
In case you want to have a shot at something similar, and aren’t lucky enough to have plain, wooden jewellery pieces available alongside the veggie aisle in your local supermarket, I’ve tracked down a couple of alternative options for you.
:: Flat wooden beads here.
:: A great selection at this site.
:: Or go with a pre-strung necklace or bracelet.
Whether you try the simpler,
ready-made option, or want to experiment with turning your favourite digital
images and kits into rub-ons is up to you. Either way, it’s a quick and fairly
straightforward project. Make sure your bead is clean and dry before you start,
work on a flat surface, apply the rub-ons firmly and carefully with a
lolly-stick or something similar, then add a quick coat of varnish to seal and
protect. As soon as it’s dry, you’re finished and the bracelet is ready to
wear, or give away. You don’t need to stick with jewellery pieces either. I
used a couple of flat oval-shaped beads in this project a little while ago (still very
much a work in progress).
If you do go down the DIY
rub-on route, you can obviously use them on all sorts of alternative projects,
from card-making and scrapbooking to fabric-based projects like this amazing
Hambly cushion.
So, back up there at the top where
I mentioned keeping the words to a minimum? Evidently, I’m not great at that. I
like to think they’ve been quite useful words, though, and that you might be
feeling a tiny bit more inspired than when we started. With any luck, I'll be back to try the brevity again very soon.
x
