Altered Letters

Sorry that I haven't updated in a long, long time. Working full-time has kind of killed any ambitions I have to do much of anything after work lately.

I altered these letters for my sons a few months ago. I covered the letters in patterned paper in their favorite colors (blue and green) and then picked ribbon I thought they'd like and added that. I modpodged over the paper and ribbon after I was done. If I do this again, I'd modpodge before adding the ribbon, because it made some of the ribbon not stick as well. I had to put heavy things on some of areas to keep the ribbon down.

Otherwise, it seemed the letters turned out okay. The boys seemed to like their new art for their bedroom walls : )

These are the letters before I covered them.

My younger son's Z.

My older son's A.

Disneyland Altered Notebooks

We are going to Disneyland this weekend with my sister and her family (we leave Utah on the 25th and come back on the 30th). I decided that I didn't really want to the money on the signature books at Disneyland (last time we went, in 2000, it was $8 a book), so I figured I could make some myself. I picked up 2 four packs of small spiral bound notebooks at the dollar store (total $2.14) and then covered them with paper I had left in my paper stash from when I did the 2000 Disneyland pictures (yes, I do occasionally get rid of things, but I figured I'd use Disney paper eventually). I mounted the paper on the front and back covers using moge podge. I cut some character faces from a paper that had the faces in little squares and mounted those on the front. I put a good coating of moge podge over everything once I was done to make sure that it wouldn't rip easily. After these pictures were taken, I strung ribbon through the spiral binding so the kids could wear them around their necks, making it less likely that they leave the book on a ride like my oldest did last time. My sons got to pick which characters (and background paper) went on their books, as did my nephew I babysit who is going with us. For my sister's other 3 kids, I just picked for them.

This is my younger son's book. He loves Mickey Mouse, so he picked Mickey paper and also Mickey and Minnie faces to go on the front.

This is my older son's book. He picked some character signature paper I had and picked Goofy and Pluto to go on the front since he loves Goofy.

This one is for my nephew that I babysit. He's only 3 and loves the idea of going to see Mickey Mouse, so he picked the Mickey Mouse head paper. I picked the characters for him.

This one is for my other nephew. This one is the only one of the other 3 that didn't have girl characters on it so I figured it was best for him.

This one only has girl characters so it's for one of my two nieces that are going with us.

This one is for my other niece that is going with us. I mounted the cut out characters on white paper to set them apart from the background paper, since it's the paper I cut the characters out of.

My first altered item

I tried my hand at altering something this past week. I had made up the other 4 pirate card kits I had (see this post) and decided to make a "Captain's Log" notebook to go with it. I tried to find composition books, but wasn't willing to pay $2 for one of them, so decided to try it just using the spiral notebooks I have at home. I was at Micheal's to pick up mod podge to coat it with and found a set of 3 cute pirate foam stamps for 50 cents. My husband designed a "Captain's Log" logo to cut out on my craft robo.

I attached a piece of black paper to the notebook, cutting a little tab at every spiral piece along that side so I could put it through the spiral and cover that part of the cover also. I then folded it over to the back, and covered the folds with a black piece of cardstock on the back of the front cover. I stamped the foam stamp on the paper and another smaller skull stamp I had. I then attached the "Captain's Log" logo and then mod podged over it so that the paper wouldn't tear as easily (mog podge is a paper sealer that makes the paper stiffer and thicker basically). It looked good, but it was really hard to see the skulls. So the next day I took the big skull stamp, stamped it on the paper again, then covered it with embossing powder and melted that. I did the embossing powder so the stamps would be protected but I wouldn't have to do another layer of mod podge and possibly have them be muted again. I think it turned out well. Unfortunately, I only sold one at the fair, but my boys are thrilled about that because it means they each get one instead of having to wait for me to make more of them.