Monogram Quilling Tutorial

I finished Sara's Quilled monogram (she was the winner of the giveaway) and I dropped it in the mail on Saturday so here's a preview for her and a tutorial for all of you.  I hope Sara loves it as much as I do.  I feel like this picture doesn't really do it justice, it looks so great in person.

Before we get started I have one small disclaimer... the paper I used as the backing for the letter was pretty light in colour and I do all my quilling in the evening after Catie goes to bed.  This means all my photos are taken at night so I  need a flash but the flash bounces off the paper so most of them look pretty terrible.  I did my best but some of them are really awful, I apologize.  I took more photos of the steps than these but some of them just aren't usable.

To start here is a photo of your needed supplies

1. You need a picture frame that is really deep, the letter is going to end up being at least a 1/4 of an inch tall so there needs to be room for that or you can leave the glass out.  I personally prefer the look of glass.  I found my frame at Winners for $7.99.  For my W I found this square frame at Liquidation World for $8.99.  You can get these deep frames at Michael's too but they're about $20 and that's after a 40% coupon.
2. I use Mod Podge as my glue. It dries clear and is really easy to work with.
3. You need some sort of paper cutter so you can cut your strips.  Apparently you can buy already cut paper specifically for Quilling but I'm not willing to pay for that.
4. You need some paper to work with.  The light colour on top will be the background for the L.  The brown will outline the letter, the green and the blues will make the coils to fill in the letter and the patterned piece on the bottom is for the matte.  After I started I decided I needed one lighter colour too so I added a light browny paper.
5. These are the tools I use, there is a needle (it's a big one), toothpicks, Q-tips and a chopstick.  You can also buy a quilling too, it's basically a needle with the top chopped off.
6. These are tools you'll use throught the process, a ruler, a paintbrush (mine is actually a makeup brush but it works), a pencil, and an exacto knife.
7. You'll use a glue runner at the end to assemble the matte.
8. I forgot to show in this picture some tweezers.  They are super helpful and I use them a lot.

To start you need to print off your letter so you have something to follow.  I use Microsoft Word, type my letter and then scroll though the fonts until I find one I like, although I've always ended up using Lucida Fax.  Make sure you change the style to outline.  Using my frame size I decide how big I want the letter and size it accordingly.  Then I change the colour to be really light grey so you can barely see it once it's printed out, you want it to almost disappear on the page.  This picture shows just how light it is, you can hardly see the L.

Next you're going to cut out your strips of paper.  Measure 1/4 inch strips and cut them, you want to be really precise here making sure they're all straight and exactly 1/4 inch.  I cut all my colours at once but I only cut this many before I was sick of measuring, I thought I would need way more but in the end I didn't need any extras, I did use all of these though.

To outline your letter take one brown strip lay it on top of your print out.  You're going to measure from one corner to another and make a pencil mark.   Using the pencil mark carefully bend your paper so you have a nice clean, straight bend (I bend the paper on my ruler).

Once you've made your first bend carry on measuring, marking and bending until you've used up an entire strip of paper.  One strip of paper obviously isn't going to go around the entire letter, where you're two strips of paper meet make sure it's at a corner, it's much easier to hide.
Here's my first strip bent but not glued down.

next you're going to put a blog of Mod Podge on some sort of surface (I used an empty cracker box but paper plates work well).  I dip a Q-tip in the glue and then pick up the strip of paper and apply the glue to the bottom edge.  Your strip is pretty long though and if you put glue on the entire edge it's difficult to get it all down before it dries so I work in small sections.  On this one I put glue on the top of the L but not extending down the length of it (I hope this is making some sort of sense).  Once it's glued you carefully line up your cut paper with your printed template, you want to be really precise here too.  Press the glue down and hold for a second, it doesn't take long to dry.  Once the first part is down I switch to a toothpick, dip in glue and carefully move your unglued paper out of the way.  Apply glue to the template down the line and then attach your paper.  Do this until you're strip is all glued down.

See the little dobs of glue?  Don't worry, they disappear when dry.

Then you can go ahead and measure, bend and glue your next piece until you've gone all the way around.  I needed two and a little bit.  Make sure to glue the edges where your two strips will meet so they are attached to each other.

Now it's time to fill in that letter.
I don't really plan ahead here.  I suppose you could sketch out what you wanted to do but I don't.  I did know before I started that I wanted some big curls coming off the top of the L and I wanted 3 curls coming down.  I also wanted one corner full of tiny curls.  I did those ones first and then filled in the rest as I liked.  I like lots of curls but not enough to be overwhelming.

Take a strip of paper in the colour of your choice (not brown though, we're done with that) and you're going to wind it around an item.  Here's where you need the toothpick, needle and pen.  I use the toothpick 90% of the time because it's easier but the needle gives a tighter curl in the centre so sometimes's it's useful, especially if you're working on a small curl.  I read once that you're suppose to slightly wet the end of your paper to help turn, I hope it doesn't gross you out to learn that I actually just use my tongue on the end a little.  Press the end around the toothpick to give it a little bend and then wind around a couple times.  The amount of times you wind depends on the size of the curl.  Once you take the toothpick out you have a curl that stops pretty suddenly, the tail that you didn't wind has no curl at all, like in the diagram below.

You want the tail to have more of an arc so I use the pencil here to help give it some shape, just slightly bend it around the pencil.  Before you cut your tails off hold your paper up to your letter to make sure it fits and then mark with your pencil and cut.  Glue like you did before and hold until it's dry (the tweezers really help you fit everything in).  If there is going to be a cluster of curls together I like to line them all up before I glue any of them.

Here's a couple of views of mine in progress.

And here's the finished L

Once you've glued all of your paper down take your paint brush and lightly brush glue over the entire letter to secure it.  You want to be careful here because if you get little blogs of glue you can see them a little at the end, they look extra shiny.  Try not to get blogs stuck in the corners.

Now it's time to frame.  I use the back of the frame as a template for my patterned paper and cut out a rectangle.  Then you need to cut out the centre.  To decide the size I roughly measure my letter (curls and all), this one was about 4"x6".  My Frame was 7"x9" so I decided I'd make a 1/2" patterned border with a 1/4" trim.  I measured down that amount on all sides of my rectangle and connected the lines to make a rectangle inside my original.  Then I use a straight edge and exaco knife to carefully cut out the centre rectangle.  You're left with this (minus the blue trim, sorry).

For the trim I cut out 4 strips 3/4" thick.  I cut them to length and then used a 45 degree ruler to give them that mitered look.  I only cut 1 end of each diagonally because the straight edge will tuck under.  I cut them 3/4" thick because I can then line them up with the edge of the frame to make sure they're straight.  The paper left sticking out is 1/4" like I wanted.  Here are two of my pieces cut, and two of them glued already.  This is where you use your glue runner.

I like to cut my letter to size last and I just eyball it.  I place it underneath my frame, line it up and then cut it to size.  Glue it to the frame, re-assemble and it's finished.

I keep wanting to declare this one as my favorite yet but they're all so pretty that I'm not sure there can be a favourite.

You should all check out this link, it's where I saw the original idea.  She also gives a tutorial and her H is beautiful.


Yay, I've been featured!

Button Ruffle Scarf

I saw this button ruffle scarf and thought it was awesome so I made one for Catie, here's how it went.

I started with this scrap of knit fabric that I had left over from some pajama pants I made for myself.

I cut out two pieces this shape.  I actually used different measurements, I made them smaller thinking that the scarf was made to fit a bigger girl.  In the end I don't remember what measurements I used but I wish I hadn't made it smaller, I like the look of the longer one.

I then cut a 3'' strip of fabric from what I had left from my ironing board cover.  I cut down then length and it was pretty long so I figured it would be plenty long.

I took my long strip and pressed it in half, then I sewed a large basting stitch making sure not to backstitch and I pulled the ends until I had a long ruffle.

Then I went to pin it to my fabric and realized it wasn't long enough.  So I cut another strip, pressed it in half, sewed it to my first ruffle and then sewed again.  I broke my thread  and ran out of bobbin thread but eventually got the strip to ruffle.  Then I carefully pinned all around one of my brown pieces, raw edges together.  For the ends of the ruffle I just gradually ran them off the fabric and cut them once it was sewn.

Once it was all pinned I sewed the ruffle on making sure to sew just a little further than my ruffle seam so it would show when I was done.  The corners are a pain to do and I ended up having to unpick a couple folds that got caught.

One side note, I love the way ruffles look but apparently I hate working with them.  This is where I quit taking photos because I was annoyed the project was taking so long.

Once my ruffle was sewn I layed my second piece of fabric down and sewed it on top making sure to leave a couple inches open so I could turn it inside out.  I turned it and topstitched all around, really close to the edge and pressed it all flat.

Then I made two button holes.  On the square side of the scarf I measured up 1.5" from the bottom and side and marked with a pin.  I did the same on the other side and had two pins, these are the bottom of the buttons.  At this point I stopped and waited until morning when Catie was awake, I tried the scarf on her and marked where my buttons should be, I hand sewed them on and called it done (the buttons aren't actually sewn on in this photo).

Here's how it wraps up

And another picture of Catie modelling

You should definitely check out Living with Punks, her photos are great, her daughter is adorable and her tutorial is much more detailed.

Glitter Toenails

Well it seems this is the new in thing for toenails, pretty sparkles to dress up your toes.  I hadn't heard anything about it but luckily I have a Mom who is up to date on these things.  She came over and gave my toes this lovely treatment and we took photos along the way so you can do yours too.

This is your end result, pretty hey?

Here are your supplies. 
You're going to need some toenail polish in a colour of your choice, some clear topcoat and some Martha Stewart glitter that co-ordinates with the polish.  I used Orange Sorbet over a yellow polish and I love the results.

There are tons of glitter options though, all of these came in one pack

First you start with nice clean, bare toes.  You can see my skin is still just a little red from where I removed my old polish, no big deal, it'll wear off.

Apply a base coat with your polish and let dry.  I don't actually like the yellow on it's own but the glitter makes it perfect.

Once dry apply a second coat to your big toe only, immediately sprinkling some glitter over the toe.  Make sure you work over some sort of surface like a piece of paper so you can re-use the run off.  Once the big toe is done continue with the other toes doing no more than two at once.

Let your toes dry and then apply a top coat of clear polish to finish up.

There are so many colour options, Mom chose a purple polish with Sugar Plum glitter and Catie used Bubble Gum pink (ever try to take a picture of an almost one year old's toes?  Not easy!)

Now go dress up your toes!

One note, Mom said that the glitter gets a little dull after a while but you just layer on another clear coat and it's beautiful again.

Continuous Bias Tape

This is a project that made me very nervous.  I'm about to re-cover a car seat and I thought it would look so cute with a patterned bias tape but that required me to make my own.

I've used bias tape on a bunch of projects and I really love the look and how easy it makes finishing your edges, it was finally time to make my own.  In the past projects generally require a second go, at least certain parts but I only had one chance to make this work.  I followed careful directions that I'm about to give you.  There are tons of tutorials out there that you could follow but it's my blog so I'm giving you my own.

I started with half a meter of fabric layed out on my counter. 

 Take one corner and fold it down, like so

Then I carefully pressed the fold so when I unfolded it I had an easy line to follow.  I then cut along the pressed fold line.  Taking my triangle I moved it to the end of my fabric making a parallelogram.  Putting right sides together I pinned and sewed down my new line and pressed my seam open so it looked like this.  Make sense?  You can barely see my seam on the left hand side.

I then flipped my fabric over so the right side was facing down.  On my two straight edges (not the angled ones) I drew a line with pencil 1/4 of an inch from the edge.  Don't skip this, it's important.

This next part is where I got a little creative.  Let's talk a bit about supplies.  Most people I've seen do this tutorial have one of those handy self healing green mats, a rotary cutter and a nice long, clear ruler.  I have none of those things.   I was now going to have to measure lines all across my fabric making them equal width and it was going to require me to do a ton of measuring and then drawing straight lines, no good when what I used for the above step was a picture frame as my straight edge.

I did a little thinking and came up with this...

This is cardboard, cut the the width I wanted my finished bias tape and taped together to make a nice long, straight line.  It worked perfectly!  I lined my cardboard up with the edge of my angled fabric and drew a line in pencil all the way down. 

Then I moved the cardboard over using my pencil mark as my new straight edge and drew a new line.  I did that all the way across my fabric so I had a bunch of diagonal pencil marks.  The last row probably won't be wide enough so just cut off that extra.

Okay, that was the easy part, here's where things start to get tricky.

You now have the two straight edges where you drew your 1/4 inch mark and a bunch of diagonal lines that cross the first line, right?  On one of those lines, doesn't matter which, start with the first diagonal line in your seam allowance write a number 0.  Then on the next line a number 1 and then a 2 and so on until all the lines are numbered.  On the second straight edge that you haven't numbered yet start with a 1 and then a 2 and so forth.  I drew a handy little picture for you to look at.

Your numbers would be in the seam allowance or if you're better than me you may not even need to write them.  Now take your fabric and you're going to put right sides together lining your 1, up with your 1.  Ignore the 0!  Super important!  Then line your 2 up with your 2.  You want to make sure once you sew on your seam allowance line that your diagonal lines all match up.  It was here that I discovered that I had tended to stretch my fabric a bit while drawing my lines so one side was wider than 2 inches.  once pinned together my lines weren't matching up well at all so I had to go back and re-draw some of my lines, definitely worth the effort. 
This step makes for a crazy tube of fabric but just go with it.

Once you're all pinned go ahead and sew on that first seam allowance line you drew.  Here's what you end up with.  See the little point sticking out on it's own?  That's because of the 0 you skipped.  This is where you start cutting.

Now I got to the scary cutting part where there was no going back.  I trusted I'd done it right and started cutting on my pencil line following it all the way around.

I had been mildly concerned that I wouldn't have enough bias tape, I needed about 4 meters... this little pile of bias tape that came from 1/2 meter of fabric (oh yeah, minus 5 1/2 inches that I cut off for something else) made 11 meters of bias tape.  That's right, 11 meters.

Here's where I made a very sad discovery.  I had made my tape 2 inches wide thinking it would be nice and wide and look nice but it was now that I discovered that 2 inches is much too wide to use my bias tape maker.  It does all the folding for you so you only have to press once.  Instead I had to stand and fold 11 meteres of fabric, pressing 4 different times.  So sad but it worked.  So there's my biggest tip, make sure your tape isn't too fat to fit through your bias tape maker.

Here's my finished roll of tape, waiting for the rest of the carseat project to move forward.

Good luck with your bias tape project, I hope your as successful as I was.

Tall Chairs

The gift has been given so I can now show you all the chairs I re-finished.  I'm so excited about how they turned out!

I went to Value Village for a cheap sheet I could use as a painting drop cloth, that was it.  I wandered over to the furniture (of course) and came upon two tall bar chairs.  They were $10 each and in great shape, I happened to have a sister-in-law with a new house, a bar in the kitchen and a birthday coming up.  It was too perfect so I grabbed them both and barely squeezed them into my car.

So pretty hey?

Now for the details.
They started out like this, they look fine as is but nothing special.

And then I got to work sanding.  I can freely admit that I got a little carried away and they didn't need to be sanded quite this well.  Isn't that a lovely sheet they're sitting on?  That's the item I went to pick up in the first place.

Once sanded I wiped them down really well with first a dry cloth and then a damp one.  I then primed them with a paint brush and primed again.  Many times I wished I was using a spray primer but they're just too expensive.  Sadly, these days I have far more time than money.

I sanded with really fine sand paper here to get rid of any imperfections and then I spray painted them a matte black.  I used 3 cans of spray paint, it always seems to take more than you expect.

Classy hey?  I could have put on a clear coat and called them finished but I had stencil plans.

I found a picture I liked online and used PowerPoint to stretch it to the size I wanted.  Then I printed it off.  You can see the picture is all pixelized because I blew it up much bigger than the original.  I knew the pixels wouldn't matter though.

I picked up a really cheap folder at the Dollar Store making sure it was see through.  I taped my design to the underside of the folder

And then using an exacto knife I carefully cut out all the black parts (except the one circle, I didn't want it).  I lengthened the stem just a bit as well.

I then used spray adhesive, following the directions for a temporary bond.  I stuck my stencil to the chair (not quite fast enough as you'll see later down).  The green painters tape is protecting the side of the chair so I didn't get paint on it.

You can see my stencil supplies here

Cheap Dollar Store white acrylic paint, a plastic "bowl" (it's really part of a plastic package that one of Catie's toys came in), newspaper to blot excess paint and a make up sponge.  I made a special trip to two different stores looking for a real stencil brush but then realized spending $10 was ridiculous when I have a ton of make-up sponges hanging around.  It worked like a charm.

If you've never stenciled before here's my real quick guide... pour some paint in your container and dip your sponge in gently so you just cover the entire surface.  Then take your sponge and blot off just about all of your paint, too much causes seepage under your stencil.  Then using gentle up and down movements press your paint onto the stencil.  I did two coats and then took off the stencil when the paint was still wet.  Because of the width of my stencil and the flimsyness of it this was absolutely a two person job.  My husband was awesome at helping me put on and take off the stenil, I would have had a really hard time doing it on my own.

I actually had quite a bit of paint seep underneath the stencil, I suspect my plastic folder wasn't super effective, either that or I used too much paint.  Rather than sand off the design, repainting it black and starting again I used Q-tips to carefully go around the entire stencil cleaning up my mess.  If you look real close you can tell my lines aren't very crisp but otherwise it just looks amazing.  I also found that my stencil pulled off my black paint in a few very small places.  I had painted them earlier that morning so I'm sure they hadn't had time to properly harden.  I grabbed a plastic, disposable cup and my spray paint can and went out side where I sprayed just enough paint into my cup to make a little puddle.  Then I quickly came back inside, dipped a Q-tip in the puddle and covered up the exposed primer where the black had pulled off.  Once it dried you couldn't even see where the spots where.

So then I washed the stencil (3 Times!  That adhesive is strong), flipped it over and did the other chair the same way (my second chair seeped even worse).  Having a second stencil would have helped because the little parts really didn't stick great the second time but that would have meant I had to cut out another one.  I'm wondering if a thinner, less stiff plastic would have helped too.

To finish them up I took both chairs outside and covered them in two coats of spray Varathane, 3 in the really heavyily used areas.

I'm so pleased with the look and Renee loved them!

Thanks so much for featuring my chairs!