Matchbook Art

Stained Glass with Alcohol Paint

Clean the glass first with rubbing alcohol. Add a drop or two of alcohol ink at a time and then shoot the paid with the canned air. 

Note: Read the alcohol ink labels, some warn about giving off toxic fumes when heated, so beware if you're using this craft near an open flame.

How to make your own Alcohol Paint:
Kool-aid
Rubbing alcohol
Spray bottle

They are easily and cheaply made with every day ingredients. Take an empty small spray bottle and the Kool Aid powder of your choice.  Place the Kool Aid in the bottle, fill it up almost to the top with rubbing alcohol. Shake to dissolve and that’s it! 

Add more or less powder, depending on how intense you want the color. 

Shaving Cream Easter Eggs

Method:
Get some cheap white shaving cream, and spread out on a cookie sheet.

Dribble food coloring across the surface. Neon food coloring makes cooler looking eggs.

Use toothpicks to swirl the colors around in the shaving cream.

Take your dried, and cooled hard  boiled egg, and roll it around in the cream. You can use sandwich baggies as gloves to help keep the coloring consistent, keep finger prints off, and keep from coloring “you”.

Sit colored eggs to the side on a paper plate and allow them to dry for five minutes.

After allowing the eggs to sit, wipe off shaving cream and rinse with water!

There you have it, a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to get some very cool looking eggs for Easter.

http://kygl.com/how-to-make-shaving-cream-easter-egg-dye/

Rolled Flowers

http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/rolledflowers/

Can I just tell you - I am OBSESSED with making these flowers! I have read many tutorials - like this one at SplitCoastStampers on how to make these out of paper. So the other day, I was flipping through my piles (many, many piles) of magazines and catalogs, and I had an idea! Why not recycle these catalog pages and turn them into cute paper flowers? No need to buy any fancy paper, these turn out just as cute or even cuter! For a tutorial on how to roll the paper, click HERE. She actually uses "glue spots", I just used regular Elmer's glue. It's super easy!




Cardstock or Patterned Paper
Scissors
Glue Dots
Pencil
Step-by-Step
Step 1
Round the corners of the cardstock with a pair of scissors.

Step 2
Using a pencil, draw a spiral, starting from the outside and working in to the center.

Step 3
Cut all the way along the spiral.

Step 4
Lightly crumple the paper, to loosen the fibers of the paper, which will make the next step easier.

Step 5
Begin on the outside of the spiral, and roll your flower up from the outside all the way back towards the center.

Tip:
Gently crumple the paper slightly as you are rolling it into the flower to make it more pliable.

Step 6
Continue rolling all the way till you’ve rolled up the entire length of the spiral. This will be uneven and messy looking, but just keep rolling.

Step 7
When you have the bloom fully rolled up to the center, bend back the outside edges to open up the bloom into a rosette. This shows off the pretty patterned paper you’ve selected.
Release the bloom and let it uncurl slightly to bloom.

Tip:
Once you have it in a shape that you like, flip it over and anchor it together with a glue dot.

Finished bloom – in both sizes

Tip:
Optionally, you can adorn your bloom with distress inks, glitter sprays or glitter. I chose to give mine a coating of Crystal Effects with a paintbrush, and then added some glitter.


Step 8
Sample created with big bloom.


Read more: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/resources/tutorials/rolledflowers/#ixzz2OWV5SfYV

Paper Dahlias

http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/226340/paper-dahlia?center=0&gallery=274777&slide=241880


You will need:

Dahlia bulbs, Swan Island Dahlias

Tissue paper (we used colored tissue paper in azalea (CT1AP), $11.95 for 480 sheets)

String or heavy thread

Ribbon

To wrap the bulb, stack two pieces of tissue paper and fold them in half side to side, then top to bottom.

Download the PDF of our dahlia template, and print onto standard printer paper. Cut out template; then lay on top of folded tissue paper, aligning straight edges of template with the two folded edges of the tissue paper. Trace lightly around the template, and then cut on the line to create a tissue-paper dahlia. Open tissue paper and rotate top sheet slightly so the petal tips are staggered.


Wrap the bulb in another layer of tissue paper, and place it in the center of the tissue-paper dahlia. Wrap the tissue-paper dahlia around the bulb, drawing the sides up and to the center; secure with string (leave ends long for now).

To make the tags, download the PDFs of both the initials tag and the planting-instructions tag.

For the initials tag, type in your first initials and wedding date. Print onto 8 1/2-by-11-inch card stock.


For the planting-instructions tag, print onto card stock.

Using a 1 1/2-inch circle craft punch, punch out each tag. (Turn the craft punch upside down, so you can see the positioning of the design in the hole of the punch.)

Place an initials tag on top of an instructions tag, and use a small hole punch to make a hole through the top center of both tags.

Thread string through the holes and tie; trim ends.

Wrap a pretty ribbon around to cover up the string, and tie.

Paper Mums

http://www.ellinee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/PlumPaperMum1.pdf

http://www.ellinee.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/OrangePaperMum.pdf

DIY Geometric Favor Boxes

Instructions:

link to template here

Print the template onto thin cardboard stock or thick paper in the colors of your choice. We chose a set of strong colors, but these would also look super-cute in pastels or in gold, silver and/or bronze.

Cut out along the straight lines, then fold along the dotted lines. Make sure you crease all folds into the same direction: over the dotted lines, so these will be inside the box.

Try to assemble the box without gluing it first, so you can see which sides go where. The important sides to mark are the lid and the fold-over side (this is the last side to glue). You could mark those parts with a pencil line or a little piece of masking tape that you can remove in the end.

Now you can start to assemble the boxes with paper glue. Fold the last assembly piece (the one before the lid piece) into the box and fix with glue.

Cut out small strips of paper and add texts. We hand-wrote ours, but of course you can also print out some in a font of your choice. 

Now your boxes are ready to be filled with goodies. If you use heavy or breakable favors, add some thin strips of tissue paper to pad the boxes.