Bits and Bobs

I have been doing some de-cluttering and tidying up around the house recently.  You know the type I mean, properly going through boxes and all the bits and bobs that I keep hold of because I'm a hoarder. Whilst doing this I found one of the little monster packages I talked about here.  It had been hanging around for a while and the playdough was no longer usable, but you can see the little kits we created and all the bits and bobs that were inside it.

I also found some things that the kids and I had used the marbling technique I talked about here and here.  I love that they didn't always marble their items, sometimes they just created the colours on the top of the water and dipped their item in.  It gives a totally different design.  

We plan to make some necklaces out of the washers.  I do think that this would make an awesome craft for a party, I'll just have to see if I can fit it into the party idea we come up with this year.

The pegs were going to be Christmas presents (may still use this idea at some point) with magnets on the back so they could be attached to fridges to hold lists/letter/important info.

We also moved a whole load of CDs which were on display into boxes and put something much prettier on display instead.  This wasn't even my idea, but my Husband's.  I love it, the kids call it the "wall of wool" which makes it sound so much more impressive.  Isn't it pretty?!

And yes, in case you're wondering I did keep all the above bits and bobs, though the crafty bits were returned to the crafty drawers we have, the marbled items are still awaiting somewhere to live.  Sigh.  Never mind if I'm depressed about my lack of de-cluttering skills I can always look at my wall of wool...

Marbling on Paper

So, I explained how much fun I was having with the marbling technique on the glass gems on the last post here.  It occurred to me, that as people use this method to do their nails and it had worked on the glass, that it might work on paper.  And it does:

I had lots of fun playing with nail varnish and water.  I found that you can create a couple of different styles, very little polish will create a much lighter marbling effect that is easier to handle.

Obviously you can't wrap up paper in sticky tape - as per the tutorial for marbling on glass beads.  So I just dropped it on the section I wanted to use and then carefully picked it up again. I had already used my paper punch to create the heart shaped pieces of paper, but I'm sure you could marble first and then cut the paper to the shape you wished, well once it had dried anyway.

It is tricky not to get it messy with the polish around the outside, so I would recommend moving that out of the way to the side of the cup while you take out the paper.  I also think a pair of tweezers would allow you to be more accurate, but I was too lazy to go find mine at the time.

The kids had a go too and they had a lot of fun.  We did discover that certain kinds of polish will eat through the plastic cups if left long enough.  This only really happened when the amount of polish dropped into the water was so big it didn't stay on the surface, but dropped to the bottom.  We ended up with water everywhere!  I was pleased it was only water and by that stage I'd put newspaper under the plastic cups so that any polish spillage was caught on that.

I think I'll be using this technique for all sorts - cards and jewellery making, I think it would be great for scrap booking too.  I wonder if you could do a whole sheet if you had a bigger tub to do it in, or whether it would dry too quick.  That might be an experiment for another day!