99 Spools of Ribbon on the Wall...

After a gracious gift of spools 'n spools of ribbon from my aunt, I needed a functional technique to store my cherished craft embellishment. Why not make it stylish storage as well?!?

With the clever help of my handy boyfriend, we designed this 2 foot x 3 foot freestanding storage rack for my collection of ribbon spools. Removable dowels hold the spools in place, allowing me to add more ribbon as I acquire it - much to my roommate's chagrin! My boyfriend lovingly constructed this piece for me on our apartment's tiny balcony. What a talented guy!

By using Minwax Water-Based Wood Stain in Island Water, the natural grain of the wood shines through, unhindered by the opaqueness of paint, and the dazzling blue hue makes it a welcome addition to any room in our home. Currently, it rests on a low bookshelf in our hallway, but we specifically designed it to be wall-mounted if space ever became a limited resource for us.

Crafty Quick Fix: Ribbon Calla Lilies

One of my aunt's was kind enough to donate to my card making and crafting efforts, a Hefty bag full of dozens of spools of ribbon in all sizes, colors, and types. My challenge now is to find new was to utilize and incorporate ribbon into more and more projects. Craftster.com is a great source to find new and unique uses for ribbon. I found a simple but charming tutorial for making Calla Lilies (my sister's favorite!) out of ribbon from Posh N Pretty.


Modifying the tutorial provided there, I created this picture frame. Instead of using hot glue to secure the folds of the ribbon, I used a needle and thread to hand sew them together. It prevented me from burning myself on a hot glue gun and it allowed a little more adaptability! Ribbon accents stripe the wooden frame in coordinating colors and bring a feminine touch to a natural frame.


In contrast to the elegant ribbon version of the Calla Lilly, I used the exact same tutorial to make origami lilies out of paper for a sympathy card. Green ribbon was still utilized to make stems for these lilies. The stark purity of the white flowers against this black background visually evokes the same sentiment of the cards written message.


By changing the color of the card's elements, you could easily create a cards to celebrate almost any occasion. Pastels to celebrate a baby shower. Metallics in silver or gold to commemorate a wedding anniversary. Deep jewel tones to recognize a friend's birthday.

If You're Going to San Francisco...

We spent the weekend celebrating the nuptials of some very dear friends of mine. The ceremony was touching, the bride was beautiful, and reception was impeccable. And we finally had gorgeous summer weather! Yay!

To mark this exciting occasion for Mr. and Mrs. Love, I did what I do. I thought outside the box and came up with a creative wedding gift no one else was sure to copy. I bought the newlyweds a giftcard for their favorite restaurant, Chipotle. And knowing their honeymoon destination (San Francisco and Napa) ahead of time, I got the addresses to all the Chipotles in the San Francisco metropolitan area. How clever! They can share a honeymoon burrito on us!

As detailed oriented as I am, I also designed a San Francisco themed card to enclose the giftcard. Using ribbon, I made a layered tri-fold card, featuring some of the most recognizable sights and landmarks of the San Fran area. Alcatraz, trolley cars, steep hills, and the Golden Gate bridge almost seem to come to life on this one of a kind card.

Free Recipe Cards!

This recent cooking frenzy got me in the mood to finally try to organize some of the amazing recipes I've come across over the years. I also have the challenge of incorporating two recipe collections into one, my boyfriend's and my own. This is an especially daunting task, considering how very different his palette and penchant for food is from mine. We've been able to muddle through so far, but we came across the problem of storing our recipes in a useful yet pleasing manner. I needed something simple and clean yet striking and adaptable in a small, sometimes very messy kitchen. I'm also pretty particular when it comes to the design aesthetic pretty much everything in our apartment - form and function rule this roost.

Solution: Design my own Recipe Cards and Recipe Book!

Using a 4x6 photo album, I've embellished and crafted my way to a chic yet convenient way to display and store all of our favorite recipes. The album itself used vintage travel labels and vintage postcards as decoration for the cover and blank pages. Keeping true to this vintage feel, I used distressed cardboard as the foundation for my bohemian inspired recipe cards you see picture above. Mixed media was scanned and photoshopped on the computer to give these cards a collage-like look that is most apparent in printed versions of the cards. Fabric, Scrabble tiles, metallic brads, and ribbon create this eclectic effect and are enhanced by layering and detailing done on the computer.

If you simply adore these cards like I do, you can download a pdf file of them for you to use in your fabulous kitchen at home. Look for more recipe card designs in the future!

Download Recipe Card Template Here!

Happy Mother's Day!

"No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones." - Harry S. Truman

I made sure to get started on my Mother's Day gift to my mom early. I even let her pick out the fabric for it, so I was sure it would appeal to her. I found a super simple yet super practical idea in Martha Stewart's Good Things for Organizing for making a fabric plastic bag organizer.

This unique design is a fashionable alternative to some of the other options on the market. Unlike it's counterparts available in stores and online, making your own allows you to customize the design to suit your kitchen's or bathroom's color scheme and decor. I embellished what Martha designed by using satin ribbon in a contrasting color at the top in addition to the bias tape. You have the option of using wider bias tape and wider ribbon too. Elastic gets threaded through a loop of fabric at the bottom so that the organizer acts as a bag dispenser only when you give a tug on the bottom bag. Ingenious.

Although everyone in my family is making an effort to utilize reusable fabric bags for our shopping needs, plastic bags still find a way to multiply like bunnies in the back of our closets and in the bottom of our kitchen drawers when we're not looking. Now we have an eye-catching way to save them up for recycling or for reuse. They can cleverly hang in the kitchen, hang in the bathroom, or hide away in a closet. What Mother wouldn't want something as clever as this?!?

Design Medley: Black, White, & Red All Over

An embarassed skunk.
A sunburned Penguin.
A Zebra with diaper rash.
A Nun rolling downhill.
A Newspaper.

Remember those silly jokes when we were kids? The ones we loved to tell but never got the punchline and delivery quite right? The ones grown-ups cringed during but laughed at anyway, causing us to aspire to be the next Bob Hope or Eddie Izzard?

Well, this Blog may not be about one of those jokes but it sure resembles them in a chromatic sense.

I've recently fallen in love with the color combination of red, white, and black. Its simplicity yet stark contrast lends itself well to a variety of mediums - home decor, scrapbooking, quilting, fashion, product packaging, etc. Here I've chosen to highlight some of the cards I've designed following this color palette.

My first two examples are made from embellished pre-fab cards. The same silver-striped notecard was used as the foundation for both. The first thank you card uses my ever favorite ribbon in red and a black & white printed paper in a large diamond motif. The fine lines of the striped card and diamond motif contrast well with the bold wideness of the red ribbon. The second thank you card was inspired by the card's sentiment "Thanks a Bunch" from a rub-on transfer I had. The large black & white floral print is positioned at an aschewed angle to make the striped card more pronounced. A red bejeweled floral charm was added to the flower bunch provided in the rub-on transfer. It adds a touch of elegance, inspires a three dimensional element, and ties in the large floral print a bit better.

Undertaking a mixed media approach, the third example I'm calling "Baroque Greeting" also takes advantage of the black, white, & red color combination. Although its difficult to distinguish in the image, the black and white background is actually achieved by weaving strips of paper together. I then layered on red accents made from paper, red jewel charms, and bead-strung wire. I used black ink to distress parts of the card. This was also my first attempt at hand-lettering on a card. I prefer stamps, rub-on tranfers, or computer generated text, but overall I am quite pleased with this card.

The final card in today's post is my favorite in this black, white, & red design medley series.

Look for future posts about my Design Medleys! Like Inspiration, I anticipate posting occasional montages that adhere to a design theme: color, pattern, shape, theme, etc. Sometimes I love a pattern or a fabric or a design element so much, I can't stop using it. It would be unprofessional to post the same thing over and over again... That's where Design Medley comes in!

Card Crazy II: Flower Power

With fickle Spring teasing us with its bright sunshine and warm weather, I was inspired to craft a few cards. These floral delights capture the bright essence of spring through a palette of fresh hues and mixed media. Once again I could not deny my affinity for ribbon, but I creatively used ribbon in different ways on each card: binding, dividing, and weaving. I love how inspiring nature can be!

Card Crazy

Here's a small collection of cards I've designed and made for family and friends. In some instances, various preprinted cards were embellished and adapted to suit my artistic needs, while others are embellished using ribbon, preprinted embellishments, wooden accessories, and hand-sewn elements. I especially like the bold simplicity of the card I made for the 15th birthday of my cousin. Keeping to a color scheme of blues and white, an almost nautical effect is brought to the card. By using stylized flower shapes, masculine pinstripes, and the soft touch of ribbon, a gender-neutral card is achieved. The large numerals can be changed to suit the birthday or omitted altogether to suit any occasion.

Ribbon is by far my favorite choice when it comes to embellishing and designing handmade cards. It provides a slight three dimensional effect and can add a variety of textures to a card. I especially like to use it as a divider or a seam cover when two different paper designs meet. It gives a cleaner look to the card. And I have fallen in love with a product that has made my love of ribbon all the easier! K and Company (one of my favorite sources for supplies!) has developed Wacky Tac Ribbon Adhesive, a mess-free way to adhere ribbon smoothly and cleanly to scrapbook pages, cards, and crafts.

Look for more card designs in the future... perhaps coming to a mailbox near you!