"Ceramic" Paper Roses

If you missed my guest post during Flower Week at Singing Three Little Birds, here's the lowdown!

These rolled roses originally started out as plain red cardstock. Now they have an almost ceramic look to them. Let me show you how I made them!
 

 1. Start with a couple of pieces of cardstock (I only ended up needing one for all of these flowers, but I grabbed a 2nd piece just to be sure).
 2. Soak the cardstock, one sheet at a time, under running water. Be sure and wet both sides of the cardstock. 3. Wad each piece of cardstock up into a ball. You're going to want it very rumpled so you will need to wad it up, open it, and wad it up again several times. Just be careful that you don't rip the paper. 4. Lay the cardstock out flat and allow it to dry. I soaked mine before going to bed and let it dry on the kitchen counter overnight. If you're slightly more impatient you can take a hairdryer to it. From here I tried two different techniques to get the "ceramic" look for the roses. Here is the technique for the single rose. 

5. From a roughly 5"x5" square of the dried cardstock, cut out a circle. From the circle cut out a spiral. I like to cut my spirals in a wavy fashion to give the final rose a more realistic look.

6. Start with the outermost part of the spiral and start rolling it between your fingers. Contine you to roll until you get to the center of the spiral.

7. Take the center of the spiral and use some adhesive to glue the base to the rest of the rose so it acts as the base of your flower.

8. A pretty little rose!

9. Ink the edges of the rose with a contrasting color. This just makes the rose more realistic so its not uniform in color. You can skip this step if you would rather.

10. Apply a somewhat thick coat of Mod Podge to the rose with a sponge brush. Not too thick though! If its too thick the glue with dry white instead of clear (especially between the petals).

11. Turn the rose over after the front dries and appy more Mod Podge to the back of the rose.

12. Apply a pin, bobby pin, clip, or whatever you like to the back of the rose.

Note: This starts the 2nd "ceramic" technique. (I think I actually like this one better.)

13. Cut three different size squares from the wrinkled cardstock. Apply Mod Podge to each square. Once the front dries, flip it over and apply again to the back.

14. Cut out spirals as before.

15. Once again, start with the outside of the spiral and start rolling the rose.

16. The roses for this set of 3 flowers are more tightly rolled so they can be placed snugly next to one another.

17. Glue the back of the roses as before.

18. Ink the roses at this step if you are so inclined.

19. Apply another coat of Mod Podge just to get the flowers nice and shiny!

20. Line the 3 flowers up in a row and adhere a strip of the red cardstock to the back of the flowers. Apply a small amount of adhesive between each flower to glue them to each other also just to be sure there is no flopping around. Add a pin, bobby pin, or whatever suits your fancy.

The final single rose. I glued some large silver beads to the center.

The final set of 3 roses. I didn't add anything to the center of them since they are wrapped so tightly. And I think they look just as good without the extra embellishment.

Its may be difficult to tell from the photos, but these roses have a great shine to them. And the Mod Podge also makes them very stiff so they also almost feel like they could be ceramic. The wrinkled paper and the waviness of the spiral really give them a realistic look!

So, what to do with these fun new flowers?

Well, since they are pinbacks I can add them to any outfit as a brooch, put them on a belt, add them to a headband...

Or thread them through the chain of my DIY go-to necklace! I'm loving this look!

Other than the time it took the cardstock and Mod Podge to dry (which was really only a few minutes), this was a pretty quick project.

10 Father's Day Cards & a **FREEBIE**

Make Father's Day even more personal this year with a handmade card by you! I've gathered some cute cards that you can make at home. Don't think you can? Don't worry, they ALL come with tutorials!

And if you make it to the bottom of this post you'll find a fun FREEBIE for Father's Day!

1. Stitched card - Making Greeting Cards

2. Golf card - No Biggie

3. Cool Guy card - HGTV

4. Shirt pocket card for gift cards - Holiday Crafts & Creations

5. Pop art card - Kojo Designs

6. Pop up card - Extreme Cards

7. Foam train card with .pdf template - Creative Steps

8. Shirt card - BoBunny

9. Heart-shaped card - Thrifty Fun

10. Free printable card with coupons - Living Locurto

Ready for a **FREEBIE**?

How about some fun Father's Day cupcake toppers?

Of course you can use them for other things, too. You can find more ideas of how to use them here.

I'm loving the banners and pennants. This set is in a fun orange, white, and two shades of turquoise.

You can click on the image below to download the .pdf.

So there you go! 10 great Father's Day card tutorials and some free cupcake toppers. What else does Dad need? Well, besides some new tools or something... :)

Guest Posting at Singing Three Little Birds

Come visit me at



today and help celebrate Flower Week!

T-Shirt Tuesday - Custom T-Shirt Designs

Did you know that I offer *FREE* design customization over at my t-shirt shoppe?

Whether you want to alter an already made design (i.e. change the colors or personalize) or want me to make one from scratch, its all FREE!

Why? Because I love making graphic designs!

Here are a few I've made in the past:

This was a pre-existing designs I already had in the shoppe (you can find it here), but I was contacted by 3 sisters who wanted to personalize it for themselves. Each "chick" was assigned to each sister! How fun!

A woman who's husband is a doctor had thought up this fun scrapbook phrase. She was quite proud of herself and thought her husband would really get a kick out of it!

The Paper Ho's are a group of girlfriends who are absolutely addicted to scrapbook paper. Thus they've dubbed themselves The Paper Ho's! They had the wording and a bright color scheme in mind. Later they came back needing HoLicuous tshirts. I can only imagine what its like to hang out with these ladies!

I got to know one of the ladies at My 2 Scrappy Chicks via Twitter. They make premade scrapbook layouts for those of you who really want to scrapbook your pictures, but just don't really have the time to make the pages. I was able to recreate their logo and a fun theme for t-shirts and buttons. How cute is that bird?

I even customized this design for myself. ;) Its available uncustomized, but you know by now that I'll personalize it for free! I love wearing this one to scrapbook conventions.

Not into scrapbooking?

I have second store called MM Custom Creations where I handle anything and everything nonscrapbooking related.

Here a few examples not involving scrapbooking!

Custom Halloween maternity shirt. It actually sells really well since I custom made it for someone a couple fo years ago! A pregnant belly does make a good jack-o-lantern.

Burgess Family Reunion. The Burgess family is scattered around the United States and some are even overseas. But every few years they have a big family reunion right here in Tennessee. Why? Because there is a small state park complete with waterfalls named after their family!

Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. Last year I was lucky enough to put together the design for a local Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. It was a great event (I also participated) and raised a lot of money for a great cause!

Run like a girl. A friend of mine rain her first mini-marathon and the honor her achievement she wanted a fun design that could show off her new skills.

You can see all of my custom designs at MM Custom Creations here.

I would love the opportunity to create something for you!

Versatile Blogger Award

I've been lax on posting this. Blame it on the warm weather. Blame it on my time mismanagement skills.

But I did want to post that Vanessa from The Sew*er, The Caker, The Copycat Maker was sweet enough to give me the Versatile Blogger Award!

There are rules that go with this award, and being that I like to bend the rules (*insert eyebrow wiggling*), I'm not going to follow them all!

But I will tell you 7 quick things about myself that rules state I am suppose to share.

Let's begin!

1. I'm a science geek. I have a Master's degree in Chemistry.

2. I'm not a big dessert eater, but I'm lucky enough to know that when the mood strikes me my wonderful husband will whip up just about anything my taste buds are craving. Case in point: Last Thursday night = chocolate chip cookies.

3. I'm pretty sure my kid is a genius. Just sayin'. (Um, yeah, he's almost 21 months old!)

4. My favorite color is purple, but I thought it would make my blog look weird so my second favorite color won the battle of blog background. (turquoise)

5. I didn't like pizza until I was about 8, then I loved it, now I could live without it.

6. I enjoy cooking and have thought about sharing my favorite recipes here but thought it might be venturing too far from where I saw this blog going. Still need to think about that one.

7. I was totally freaked out at the thought of becoming a mom, but now I can't see myself not being one.

I'm also suppose to share 15 other blogs to receive this award (yes, you read that right, 15!!!), but I'm not sure I can handle that. So instead I'm going to insist that you go visit Vanessa at her incredibly cute and crafty blog and leave her some love! Thanks again, Vanessa, for the award! I'm truly humbled.

DIY Go To Chain Necklace

I've been slightly obsessed with these layered chain necklaces. There are so many varieties, they go with everything, and its easy to change the look of them with a few accessories.

Here are a few I've been eyeballing.

Fun, huh?

I've shopped around haven't found just the *right* one for me. So what's a crafty girl to do?

Make my own!

 I'm lovin' it! I used various silver beads (I'm a silver over gold kind of girl) and two different sizes of silver chain to make the necklace. Here are some closeups.

You can find a great tutorial how to prep beads to make a necklace at Sew Sweet Stitches.

I used jump rings to unite the two layers into one.

An extra embellishment just for something a little dangly.

Next weekend I'll show you a fun way to add an extra embellishment to dress this layered chain necklace even more!

Let's Talk - Blog Tags!

Blog tags (okay, Blogger calls them labels) are those little keywords you plug into the bottom of your blog post so that you and other people can use them to either 1) quickly search your blog for a certain post, or 2) people using Google can find your blog searching with specific keywords.

What?? You didn't know that people could find your blog using certain keywords in Google??

Oh yes they can!

I can't tell you how many blogs I've visited that only use one or two tags for a blog post. And very generic ones at that! For example, if you do a blog post about a special technique for fabric flowers, be as specific as possible in your labelling. Otherwise you're just another "fabric flower" in a sea of tutorials!

Things you could include in your "fabric flower" blog post (I'm liking this topic so I'm going with it!):
Is it a tutorial? Say so!
Be specific! Colors, fabric type, embellishments...
Is it a necklace? A bracelet? A brooch? Other possible uses?
Be descriptive!
Keep it relevant!
Don't be afraid to include product names and people's names!

Think to yourself "How would I search for this blog post in Google?"

You have to remember that when you add labels to your blog posts you are literally telling the world how to find your blog.

Sure, you can add tags that have a certain meaning to you. I have my own secret (okay, not so secret since they obviously show up on the blog post) tags that I add that I use for searching my own blog. There is nothing wrong with that! But try not to use more than one of those because, really, you can find your blog a lot faster than everyone else on the planet. ;)


Let's take a look at one of my older posts, the homemade bride's survival kit. Here are the tags for that post:

Not many tags there, but they are fairly pertinent. I get a lot of hits on this blog post from Google even though it was written 10 months ago!

Hmmmmm... but looking at it I'm thinking of even more keywords for this particular blog post. And the good thing about Blogger? (And Wordpress, too, I would assume.) You can always go back and edit! So here is what the tags look like now:

Better! And if I think of more tags I can always go back and edit again.

Here is another list of tags from a more recent project, my monogram embroidery hoop wall art:

You can see that I included not only what the project was, but many of the items involved in putting the project together.

Blogger gives you only so many characters you can use when labeling your blog; use as many of the characters as possible!

I've found that my blog posts tend to show up in Google within hours of my publishing them. A lot of that has to do with my tagging!

A personal experience with good tagging:

Not to toot my own horn (okay, there may be a fair amount of tooting going on here!), but I included a tag once of a person's name/blog - that is a great crafting resource! - that I had used in a compilation list of examples of a certain topic. Many months later that person "Googled" themselves and found my blog through my keyword, commented, and left a link to my blog on hers.

You never know who will be looking at your blog!

So what are you waiting for? Take a little bit of time and edit those tags with better keywords and get even more people to visit your blog!

  

T-Shirt Tuesday - Mad Scrapper

Have you gone scrappin' mad?

Mad enough to be called a Mad Scrapper??

Don't be shy, covet all those scrapbook embellishments for yourself!

Mad Scrapper Apparel

"Mad Scrapper:

The embellishments are mine! All mine!

mwahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Vintage Bicycle Makeover

A few years ago my husband bought us matching 15-speed bicycles. It was my first time using a multi-speed bike and, let me tell you, it was not an easy learn! I don't think I ever really got the hang of it. That whole "trying to teach an old dog new tricks" thing and all. In the end I just gave it up because I didn't enjoy it.

Enter my mom's old bicycle.

Ah! An old fashioned 1-speed! Breaks on the pedals. Nothing on the handlebars. I like!

This gem is a 1978 (still has the original manufacturers sticker on it!) Western Flyer Galaxy Flyer bicycle is not just made in the U.S.A., but in Tennessee! It was originally my Nana's, but she passed it on to my mother, who passed it on to me!

But it could use some touching up, yes?

A couple of weeks ago my husband gave the bike a HUGE makeover. I chose the paint color, seat, and handlebars, but he did all the work!

He took the bike apart and painted everything that was once green to Harbor Blue. He removed all of the rust and repainted everything that was once silver to Textured Metallic.

We found the brown leather seat and matching handlebars at Walmart as well as the new white wall tires.

Love it!! Love the vintage feel of it. Love the color. Love, love, love!!

Now I just need a basket to go on the front. :)

Thanks, hubs!!