Upcycled Design Lab Blog

2013 Smash Book Day Planner Calendar

 

 

Happy Happy New Year!! 

 

I do hope your year is off to a lovely start. 

 

My new year always starts, in part, with the excitement of finding a new empty day planner / journal.  This is no trifling matter as we have to spend an entire year together. 

 

Now, I would like to tell you that I use my day planner in the ordinary way, to note the meetings, social engagements, and other things that I don't want to forget.  But I have a much closer attachment than that. 

 

I am one of those people who has to write down everything.  Well not everything but most things.  It is possible, after all, that 6 years from now I may really want to know that I was typing this blog post at 2:00 in the afternoon on January 5th 2013.  Right it could happen?  I know you are probably wondering what kind of nut job needs to write down that they did the dishes at 7:00 pm or took a cat nap at 3:00 and all I can say is, I have been behaving this way for years and so far have been passing for a normal member of society.  Of course most of society doesn't know about this obsessive behavior or the fact that I keep empty toilet paper rolls in my night stand.  So it could be that I have just been lucky.

Strangely enough there are actually a few days when I don't write down my every activity.

 

But I never feel quite right about it.  

Oh but enough about me and my strange OCD symptoms.  The only point here is that I would never think of venturing unarmed into a new year without my dear day planner. 

 

So according to my custom, sometime in November or December, I began my search for the perfect new Day Planner.  This years search yielded an uninspiring selection of options and so I decided to make my own. 

 

I have been wanting to try this whole smash book thing anyway.  So this was the perfect opportunity.  I have only just started to put it together but here is what I have so far.

 

 

 

I made these month stamps from my empty ink cartridges and empty Styrofoam containers.  The tutorial is here.

 

 

The page with all the empty boxes is for my 5 Big goals for 2013 and the tasks associated with them.

 

 

These are the pages for next week.  I am too embarrassed to show you what this week looks like.  Rest assured there is a little bit of writing on them.   :-)

 

 

 Happy Upcycling,

 

 

 

Upcycled Emergency Travel Kit

Oh Ho Ho!!!  The holidays are fast approaching and as usual I am feeling more than a bit unprepared.  I had planned to make a lot of my gifts this year but as I have not started a single one I may need to come up with plan B.  I fear I may end up being the gift card giver this year which is a fine gift to receive but not very creative or fun to give. 

 

On to this weeks project.  You may remember the Abstract Snowflakes from last week which left me with some empty CD sleeves.

 

 

I don't know where the idea sprang from but it occurred to me that I could make a travel kit with them.  I was wishing for some inspiration on a Christmas gift but this is what the universe sent me.  So I went with it.

 

I didn't get very good pictures of this step but the gist of it is that the top of a zip lock (preferable a used one) is cut off and glued into the top of the CD sleeve to prevent all your stuff from spilling out.

 

 

I decided to use some old cardboard boxes for the cover and some extra contact paper that I had.  It occurs to me now that covering it with an old map would have been a better idea but I never seem to finish a project without wanting to improve on it.

 

 

I used the bottom hem piece from one of my 20 T-shirt to hold my travel kit together.  So I am actually considering this as one of my T-shirt projects.  This might be a bit of a stretch but since I am trying to use up all of the material from all 20 t-shirts I am having to be a little creative :-)

 

 

 

I filled the first pouch with first aid items.

 

 

And the second with sewing items.

 

 

Note:  the safty pin and needle holder is a label from one of my 20 t-shirts. :-)

 

The third pouch I decided to fill with emergency activities for when the battery is dead on your i-pad or smart phone.  In true upcycling form I cut out the Suduko and Crossword puzzles from the paper.

 

 

And made my own set of Dominoes from more of my card board boxes and contact paper.

 

 

It all fits into this small booklet.

 

 

 

Happy Upcycling,

 

 

Upcycling - Unreleased Projects From The Archives

 

 

Good Morning Everyone. 

Do you feel fall creeping in?  The crisper morning air?  The suns reluctance to make its way over the horizon?  The leaves falling to the ground?  Well I certainly do and with this weather I always feel a little reminiscent.  I have a project in the works that hopefully will be ready to share in next weeks post but this morning I am looking back at some past projects that never made it into a blog post.

 

 Project 1 - Painted Shoes

 

Before

 

 

After

 

 

Project 2 - Magazine Scraps and Bottle Caps Card - I don't remember what this picture was advertising (cookies maybe) but I just loved the look on this little girls face and the vintage feel of the photo.

 

 

 

Projects 3 and 4 - Upcycled Newspaper Gift Bags and TP Roll / Magazine Page Holiday Gift Party Favors.  My sister and I made these for a Christmas Craft Show a few years back.  To make the bags we glued layers of newspaper together to achieve a nice heavy weight paper and then painted them with some leftover house paint before adding the design.

 

 

 

Project 5 - Handmade journals with fused plastic covers.

 

Project 6 - Sweater Makeover - This sweater had a stain on the sleeve.  So........

 

 

I did this with it.

 

 

Well that's it for now.  I hope everyone has a great week.  And as always.

 

Happy Upcycling.

 

Something Old (Nothing New)

My crafting efforts this week have been very unfocused.  I have dabbled with a few t-shirt projects and contemplated some upcycling ideas for the the garden but in the end nothing has really come together for this weeks post.  And so with some disappointment I bring you a project that I made a couple of years ago. 

I am keeping this post quite brief in the hope of moving on into my day and feeling some sense of accomplishment at the end of it.

 

 

Multi Media Collage Made from cardboard cereal box, magazine pages, old belt and other found objects.

 

Happy Crafting,

 

DIY - Upcycled Milk Jug Mask Tutorial

I actually made these masks a couple of years ago but thought I would share the info again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I might have gotten a little carried away.

 

:-)

 

Happy Crafting

 

Upcycled Artist Trading Cards

Well my accomplishments from yesterday are not all that impressive but I did in fact create which I haven't done for several days.  So in that sense my efforts were rewarded.

 

 I did set up a couple of rules for myself.

 

 1)  I pulled out a couple of drawers of my craft supplies from a little corner storage cabinet.

 

 2)  I already had some pre-cut blank trading cards cut from a cereal box (2 1/2" x 3 1/2")

 

 3)  I gave myself an hour

 

 4)  I had to use just what was out on the table

 

 Here is the outcome:

 

 

 

 Spectacular?

 

 No.

 

 

 

 Progress?

 

 Yes.

  

 

 

 I don't think that I am completely out of my slump but it felt good to cut and glue and not worry about making some note worthy piece of art that would make me a million dollars and win several awards. 

  

Of course none of my stuff actually does that but I do take my projects too seriously sometimes and that seems to be when they are the least willing to cooperate.

 

 I guess I had better be off.  Mondays are busy days for me and never allow much time for crafting.  But maybe tomorrow I will steal more play time.

  

Toodles  :-)

  

P.S.

  

It's snowing here today. 

  

It's like winter just dropped back in for a unexpected visit. 

  

But I know she can't stay for long so I will appreciate this frosty morning and the pretty white blanket that has covered up my little world.

 

 

 * * *

 

What do you do with your old Christmas Cards?

When exactly are you supposed to take your Christmas decoration down?  I don't even have that much in the way of decorations but I do have the collection of Christmas cards on my mantel.  I was pondering taking them down and putting them away (where I already have too much stuff), throwing them away (that doesn't seem right.)  So....What to do???

There are a lot of ideas out in the blogoshpere.  Here are two that I thought were cool.

Christmas Garland and Christmas Star.  The problem is I don't really need either one of those things.  I saw another idea I don't remember where now to use the pretty side of the card as the back of your favorite christmas recipe to give as a gift.  I like this idea also but I don't cook much and I share my recipes (read: what recipes?) even less.

I finally pulled the cards off the mantel today and just started cutting and gluing.  I turned these:

 
Into this:

 
 
This is no great piece of artwork to be sure but I thought it might be a fun annual project in the years to come. 

If you have ideas for what to do with old Christmas cards or other greeting cards I would love here about them.  I do love to see all the creations of my fellow crafters.

 

Crazy Crafts from Christmas 2010

Ask; and if it can be made out of glue and papermache' it will be done.  That is my Crazy Aunt Cindy Manifesto.  This Christmas I didn't go nearly as wild as I have in years past.  But I did make these for my nephew as per his special request.

 
What are they you might be wondering.  Well they are the Jackie Chan Talismans of course!

Here are a few in process photos from the lab.

I made some templates for the shapes from a plastic milk jug and cut the actual shapes out of old corrugated cardboard boxes.  I wanted the talismans to be heavier than just plain cardboard so I cut solid shapes for the top and bottom and hollow shapes for the middle pieces.  I filled them with a mixture of glue and sand, covered them with papermache' and paint.  Each one was topped with a printed copy of one of the chinese zodiac animals and experiment concluded.  And to my delight they were received with great enthusiasm on Christmas Day.

I also turned this                                                                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Into this for my niece

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you read what it says?  This wasn't my most sucessful experiment.