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!

Practical Scrappers Frugal Finds

For this month's Frugal Finds feature at Practical Scrappers we are showing you ways to use paper plates in your projects. Paper plates, you say? What can you do with a paper plate besides hold a load of yummy buffet food? Well, I made this ...

Both my jobs are putting out their Christmas decorations (actually, Pier1's have been out since mid-October!) so I'm in that mindset and decided to run with it! 

I made this out of 4 desert sized paper plates which I first sprayed with mists. But the coverage wasn't  as opaque as I was hoping so I tried to cover up as much of the plates as I could with paper. Keeping with the "frugal" theme, I raided my scrap drawer first for all red and green papers. I punched out 2-1/2" circles and then glued them onto the plates with Modge Podge. It was looking a bit too much like a flower so I used my circle punches to turn some of the 2-1/2" circles into holly leaves and tucked them in behind. 

Here is a close up of one of the plates. On top of all the circles I glued down some tree shapes. On top of all that I put a very light misting of black and then used a stencil to add some star shapes with a fake snow product someone gave me (it was in a giant box of random craft supplies - most of which went to and were quickly destroyed used by my daughters). The letters were printed off on my printer and then I cut them out by hand (REALLY want a Silhouette!!) I glittered them with some old Martha Stewart glitter and popped them up with pop-dots.

Here is a close up of the texture.

And just in case you didn't believe me about the paper plates thing ... there it is! Hot glued to some Stampin' Up! ribbon from last year!!

Thanks for coming by to see my project. Please be sure to check out the Practical Scrappers blog today to see what some of the others on our Design Team came up with. Have a great Sunday!!