Something Blue Pouch
something blue
This little whimsical lace and blue-cream fabric pouch started out from some leftover fabric remnants. I’m always on the lookout for small projects that I can make from leftover remnants of fabrics that I’ve saved from my numerous craft projects. I’m a sucker when it comes to fabrics and could never pass up a beautiful piece of fabric I really like, no matter how small. The bad part is that I could never throw away small leftover pieces of fabric. A few years back, I painted a tree of life for my niece’s wedding and it got me thinking about giving her a small handmade token of some kind, since we don’t have any heirloom piece in our family.
One of the traditions that came to mind was “something borrowed, something blue”. This is a tradition that dates back to the Victorian era, and each word in the famous poem really has a warm and touching meaning. So I decided to make her something blue, and not the more traditional things like jewelry, a hanky or a piece of clothing. I decided to make her this small simple keepsake and a bit of an abstract pouch (pictured above) that could be used to insert the traditional silver sixpence coin or any small silver piece, her favorite fragrance flower pedals or even potpourri. The pretty blue and cream floral print fabric is from a vintage fabric I reclaimed from an old dress.
I loved the floral print of this blue and cream colored dress, and carefully cut the dress into 4″ x 4″ squares, being careful to cut around the flower clusters in the fabric’s pattern. I folded the square in half, sewed the edges together to form a small pouch, cut a blue heart shape from a reclaimed pair of blue jeans, another (slightly larger) heart shape from a cream colored textured cotton fabric, and cut a small white piece of lace on which to rest the blue denim heart. Once I sewed and tacked these pieces together, I took a small cream colored fresh water pearl (leftover from another craft project) and sewed it in the center of the denim heart, again sewing through all the fabric layers to keep everything together.
Although I used small beautiful remnant fabrics and the pearl for this project, a special and meaningful gift can be created from any kind fabrics or even reclaimed pieces of clothing you love.
Scrap Styrofoam Relic
This project started out with a large broken piece of insulation Styrofoam, some scrap wallpaper and a scoop of leftover dry wall compound that we wanted to recycle. We decided to try to make some kind of art from these leftover materials. The great part of this project was that the art piece would be very light and hang on any wall with just a small nail or piece of double-sided tape. I decided to try and make some kind of faux stone tablet relic.
I started out by breaking away pieces from the edges of the Styrofoam in an uneven pattern all the way around to give it a broken stone tablet look. I then added a coat of drywall compound across the whole front and sides of the Styrofoam piece, and then cut pieces of the scrap textured wallpaper about an inch shorter from the edges of the Styrofoam (loosely following the jagged shape of the Styrofoam) and pushed it right into the drywall compound. Using my hands, I smoothed some drywall compound over the wallpaper covering most of the wallpaper edges, but smoothing out the compound to reveal the main wallpaper details.
While the piece was still damp, I painted the whole thing with a taupe acrylic enamel paint. The reason for this was to get the deep taupe color into the drywall compound while drying and with a damp paper towel I gently removed some of the paint away from the details. I then let the piece dry for a few days and repainted the whole piece again, highlighting the raised points with a darker taupe to accent the piece. After everything was dry, I placed a very small nail into the wall and gently pushed the Styrofoam art piece into the small nail. Styrofoam is a very versatile and fun medium to work with because of its light and smooth surface — it lends itself to many craft projects.