Patterns

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Pretty ribbon frames

I'm addicted to a blog called dollar store crafts. I love it because everything is around my price point and amazing things are made cheap. One woman made a mirror for under $20 based on an inspiration mirror sold at Anthropologie (not sure if I've got the name right) for over $100. Many ideas involve taking apart stuff to make something new. Ever since I've visited this blog I've looked at the dollar store differently and that's the inspiration for the rest of this post.

A couple weekends ago I made a Valentine's wreath based loosely on instructions I found on the Valentine's linky party. Not bad for a cloths hanger, ribbon and glue eh? This put me in the mode of using up ribbon I have at home. The next part is a little back story but keep in mind that I've been visiting the dollar store craft blog a lot. The Dollarama (Canadian dollar store) sells a framed tile that looks just like the hand painted tiles that you can buy at gift shops. The frame is crappy looking but the tiles are great. I bought a few to hang in my front porch last year. At Christmas the Dollarama gets in a crap load of decorations and for the last 5 years they've had pretty much the same stuff. This year they had new stuff and it rocked! Despite my resistance and weekly viewings of Hoarders (inspires me not to buy junk), Dollarama managed to get a lot of my money this Christmas $1 and $2 at a time . One of the great things they had were holiday versions of the tiles. Once again the frame were blah but the tiles rocked. I had nowhere to hang these tiles but I bought some anyways (partly because I hadn't seen them at any other Dollarama). Once I got home I realised I could remove the frame, stick some felt pads on the bottom and have a lovely Christmas trivet. Everyone in my family got a Christmas trivet and I ended up with a bunch of square frames which I kept (despite watching hoarders) thinking I could use them for something else. The other thing I kept was last year's Calendar featuring paintings of birds. That's the end of the back story.

So the ribbon heart wreath turns out rocking, looks great on my front door and I'm in a ribbon mood. The glue gun is out and hot so I start fiddling with pink ribbon and getting the usual glue gun burns. Using one of the previously mentioned frames I fold the ribbon loosely then glue it to the frame. I fluff the ribbon to take out any creases. After gluing and fluffing for 10 minutes I end up with a pretty frame that I need to fill. This is where last year's bird calendar comes in handy. I pick a picture that coordinated and trace around my tile/trivet (mentioned earlier) to get the right size for the frame, cut out the picture and stuck it in the frame. That day I made three of these ribbon frames with birdie pictures. As many of you know when you make something it can be either a hit or a miss but I am definitely happy with my frames. They look great in my kitchen!


Right now you may be wondering what's the point of the story? None really, I just wanted to post something and these were the pictures I had. Plus I'm feeling pretty smart about my crafting skills.

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