Brown Bags & Old Books & WOYWW

I don’t often do a WOYWW {what’s on your workdesk Wednesday} post, either my desk is tidy or I am too ashamed of he slovenly mess I have created 😀 to share. I decided to snap pick halfway through the project (you can see the pic at the end of this post) I am making with he kids at the library this month. The theme is valentines and old books…yeah baby, we are recycling!

 

I grabbed a .25 cent book from the library book sale table after making sure the librarian would not have a heart attack if I defaced the book in the name of crafting and she was cool with it (in fact she suggested a few other books she wouldn’t mind seeing altered 🙂  so yesterday I tore out a bunch of pages and painted them with watercolors and let them dry overnight. Then I die-cut a bunch of  hearts from the painted pages and set to work!

I love the fringed edges on the circles. I watched an episode of Heidi Swapp’s Create to Remember show on My Craft Channel (lots of great free shows-do not go there unless you have some time to kill LOL!) and she showed us how to make fun things with fringe scissors and I was so inspired I ran down to my craft room and played with my newly painted papers. I love the effect and since I already had the old book pages and fringe scissors it cost me nothing. Of course you can create fringe with regular scissors too, just cut slits ever 1/8 if an inch.

The brown background paper is brown grocery bags. I simply cut a grocery bag into panels (you get a ton from one bag!) to cover a card nd ran it through my BigShot with an embossing folder. I am going to emboss lots of panels with different textures for the kids to use for their cards tomorrow. I know the kids might not dig my vintage projects so I am going to have some stamped Robots and Aliens (You’re out of this World Valentine) and some animals (I’m wild about you, Valentine!) and I will emboss the bags to match. I will have my special “artist” colored pencils for them to use and if they want to highlight the embossed texture of the paper they can rub it with crayons. Oh the possibilities!

 

OK, now here is my desk, thrilling huh? Actually, I love seeing that pile of watercolor book page hearts!

 

If you want to see the tutorial on how to make the hanging heart pocket you can see it here. If you want to download my tutorial and sheet music freebie you can here.

 Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!