Newspaper organizer

I hope you are all having a wonderfully crafty Saturday afternoon!!

Today I'm going to share with you a modified tutorial from a book I just recently purchased. One yard Wonders

Find it on Amazon here

I think many of these projects are neat, but the instructions can be quite cryptic. It took me a good 30 minutes of reading and look at the pictures over and over again until it finally sank in what they were trying to 'teach' me.

One of the projects in this book was really interesting, but I don't have easy access to 30" heavy interfacing, the largest interfacing my local hobby store sells is 20"

So I decided to make this out of newspaper, and alter the project a bit to fit my budget and time constraints (another pharmacology exam on Wednesday...eeek!)


Here is my finished project so you can get an idea, each of the squares is about 4" by 4"

First gather your supplies:
- scissors, paper cutter (optional)
- tape
- glue stick
- newspaper
- cereal box
- ruler and marker

The fabric box

Good evening!
My pharmacology test went well, in case you were wondering. I had planned to get this tutorial posted around 3pm, however it actually rained here in desert-like South Texas and the power was down for several hours. Which means no iron, sewing machine, computer, or internet. I ended up passing the time, cutting fabric for future projects. During my silent solitude of fabric cutting I started thinking how we as a culture have become so dependent on electricity. It almost made me want to get a foot pedal sewing machine--then it's like a work out and sewing all in one! That is an entirely different topic however....

Anyways back to the tutorial. A few days ago I put together the first tote depicted in the "sneek peek" post and I liked the out come, but the whole thing was kinda floppy looking. So I decided to install cardboard sides/bottom in the next one to see if that helped stiffen it up and if it was actually do-able.

The one on the left has cardboard, and the one on the right has just one layer of interfacing.

Cardboard is very unforgiving and I had quite a hard time lining everything up perfectly--If I ever make anymore, I'll just interface the outside and liner of the box. this should be plenty stiff to hold fabric, yarn and other various semi-light weight projects.

So here are the supplies:
- 1/2 yard of fabric for the outside
- 1/2 yard of fabric for the liner
- a little over 2 yards of 20 inch heavy fuse-able interfacing (if you want to interface liner & outside
- bias tape or materials to make double bias tape (1/2 inch or an inch, its your preference)
- approximately 3 cereal boxes, duct tape (optional)
- sewing machine, matching thread, scissors, ruler, fabric marker, bias tape maker, pins

Newspaper basket

Good morning all!

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

Today I'm going to share with you an awesome tutorial I discovered a while back. Its a great way to make something useful, recycled, and a definite conversation piece!

Supplies:

Newspaper, scissors, stapler, mod podge, and anything you may want to decorate your basket with: ribbon, gems, paint, etc.

The small "test" basket

Phone books!!

So how many phone books do you have at your house? I managed to acquire 3 in less than 6 months. There always seems to be a new one arriving at my door, or a pile of them at the mail box room at my apartment complex

Who even uses a phone book anymore?!?! When you can hop online and look it up, if your fancy you have an iphone, or you can be like me and "text message" google (466453) when you are on the go and get an instant reply. Say I'm running errands and I want to make a call to (fill in the blank) but i'm not fancy and have an Iphone, so I text message google: fill in the blank, Laredo, TX....a few seconds later = all local listings with addresses and phone numbers! Easy as pie, and it doesn't cost a thing except for maybe a regular text message charge.

Anyways back on topic...phonebooks, and having too many of them.

This was by far my favorite thing to do with a phone book...but oh the possibilities!