A Practical Scrappers Frugal Finds Feature- Using Toothpicks

Today over at Practical Scrappers we are sharing ideas on how to use toothpicks on your projects. Please pop over there and check out all the other great ideas as we have a truly talented line up of designers and their ideas may surprise you.

This is what I came up with.

I am again using some really old photos but as I was searching for inspiration I realized I could use toothpicks to make my kite. I also used toothpicks to paint my "clouds" - a two-fer!

Here's a look at my process.

I started by laying out my main pieces - my paper and photos - and then roughly built a kite shape to see if it would work with the rest and to see where I wanted to apply my paint. 

This is my "paint brush". I grabbed a handful of toothpicks and then taped them together with a bit of washi tape - I can not believe how many uses that stuff has!!

I squirted out some white acrylic paint and got busy. It was a bit tricky figuring out the best way to apply it with the toothpicks. I wanted the texture of the toothpicks to come through but I also wanted enough coverage to get a sort of realistic cloud image. The added swirls were just for whimsy!

Here's a closer look at the swirly effect the toothpicks gave me.

While the paint was drying I got to work on figuring out how to make my kite. I started by gluing the toothpicks onto a piece of patterned paper in a kite shape. I didn't take pictures of the next steps but essentially I cut it out, used it as a template to cut out kite shapes from other patterns and then pieced those patterns onto the front of my kite. Once the glue was dry, I added bakers twine - both as a cute embellishment and also to hide the imperfections in my paper piecing!

This is my finished kite. It was more finicky than I first thought it would be (things seem simpler in my head, do you find that?) but I am really pleased with the final result!

I added a tail of more bakers twine and some washi tape flags.

 

Here's a closer look at the entire kite. To adhere it to the page I used two layers of pop dots (one wasn't enough to clear the toothpicks!)

Thanks for stopping by today. If you get inspired by my layout or any of the other projects you see on the Practical Scrappers site, be sure to leave a link in the comments either here or on the Frugal Finds post at Practical Scrappers so we can check it out.

Have a great Wednesday everyone!