A heart shaped shredded paper bowl...

Last night marked my first ever heart crafting disaster.  It all started at around 5pm, I had my project all planned out, it's actually one that I've been wanting to do for awhile, so I pulled out my book to get started.  There's the book, down there...

Supplies!

This is when I thought I was
actually going to make
two of these guys.
Ha!!!

The not wet enough paper strips

The project is actually those bowls on the cover. I wanted to make two heart shaped nesting bowls. I gathered my black card stock and cut it into strips using a paper cutter, PVA glue, Martha Stewart heart punches and heart shaped bowls. The directions said to cover the bowl in saran wrap.  Here is where I made my first mistake...I had some special kind of saran wrap that wasn't very saran wrappy...but I decided to go with it anyway. Then I took a PVA/water mixture and covered the bowls with it. The directions said the make the paper scraps damp, so I put them in a separate bowl and threw some water on them. In retrospect, I probably could have used a bit more water on them but for some reason I was being conservative yesterday. Weird. I know.

I then set to the task of covering the bowl with the glued up paper scraps.  First of all, this seemed to take a rather long time, then because the scraps weren't wet enough, it wasn't working out so well, they weren't pliable enough. Still, I motored on...

Here we are at the beginning... 

I kept adding more and more scraps, trying to cover most of the bowl.  I put the heart shaped cut outs on there as well to add some dimension.  Really by this point, I was over it, but I wanted to finish.

I have nothing witty to say about
this picture.

It was then that I read the end of the directions...it could take "days" to dry. DAYS????? I don't have days. I have to blog. Fine. So I put it in front of a fan and went to work.  When I returned at 2am, it was sort of dry, so I plied it off of the red bowl and went to bed, figuring that I would be able to remove the fake saran wrap in the morning. 

And this is how it shall stay.

I guess I could use it
as a wall hanging.

No sirree bob. That stuff is not budging.  So there you have it.  My very first heart shaped crafting disaster. 

playing with magazines

First of all I have to start out by saying just how excited I am to have six official blog followers!  I know that there are many others out there following along as well and I am so grateful and honored to have just a lil bit of your attention each day!

Part of the reason that I started this blog was to have an excuse to try out a bunch of crafting techniques that I've read about/heard about/spied on etc. one of such said techniques comes from the book "Playing With Books" by Jason Thompson.  This is a really fabulous libro and I've been chomping at the bit to try some of this stuff out...Anyway, instead of using books, I snatched up one of Oprah's Magazine from December and quickly ripped out some pages.

Thank you Oprah for your contribution to my blog. I put your magazine to fabulous re-use.

Sorry that I forgot to photograph this part, but after I was done ripping, I took a paint brush and rolled each page from corner to corner, securing it with my favorite PVA glue. PVA is actually poly-vinyl adhesive and it's fast drying, strong and bendable.

I think I rolled 30 pages and then I glued them together side to side and let them dry for about half an hour.

It kind of looks like a big placemat doesn't it?

After they were dry, I used a heart shaped template and a sharpie to sketch onto the paper roll placemat.

sorry, this picture stinks a little...

Once that task was happily accomplished, I quickly pulled out my exacto knife and a box cutter.  Then the real drama started. The stupid thing broke in half!

NO BUENO!

I decided to muscle through it with both knives and eventually ended up reaching for my scissors to finish the job. It ended up breaking in several pieces eventually, but I just whipped out some more PVA and fixed it. 

Mucho No Bueno. 

I stitched it back up and Voila!  I actually kind of love it!  This is one of those hearts that I have no idea what I'm going to do with, but oh well...It's still cool.

Ignore my carpet please...I got sick of photographing things on the craft desk...

I have big plans for the rest of the week, so stay tuned!!!