Monday, August 1, 2011

I'm Baaaack......




































I apologize for being gone so long. The whole computer update thing has taken longer than anticipated. My wonderful son is my resident geek. He built my new computer from scratch with a new motherboard and processor and I also got a new keyboard and mouse. Typing is so quiet and things are much faster. As I said in the last post, I wanted to share a few things with you. The first is this: The punch you see is a new EK Success punch purchased at JoAnn's. Looks like a normal border punch but what it makes are these beautiful flowers. You simply cut two 12" pieces, glue them together, off setting one strip slightly from the other and then roll around a pencil or quilling tool or whatever and glue the end. Add a little gem or center ornament and you're done. The punch is one of several EK Success has come out with and JA's has them. What fun! (NOTE: Unfortunately I can never get Blogger to place my pictures where I want them in the text. GRRRHHH!)






The next thing I wanted to share with you is the current craze for Kanzashi. What you ask?!?!




Kanzashi are Japanese flowers made from fabric. They're so fast and easy, bet you can't make just one! I'm just showing a few styles. There are several and endless variations. Clover has some templates out for making them without doing the traditional folding but I haven't tried those yet and there is a book available from your local library called Kanzashi in Bloom. Joggles.com has all the supplies, books, templates etc as well as videos on the how tos of making them. It's simple folding and you really don't even need an iron, unless you want to use one. They're great for scrapbook pages, altered projects, clothing, on tote bags, hair barrettes, jewelry, etc. Endless possibilities. Also if you google Kanzashi you'll see lots of info and examples. Great summer fun and girls of a certain age really love them for hair accessories! Give it a try.










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