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Category Archives: crafting

Whimsey: February

Still making progress through my backlog of Whimseyboxes.  I may have said last time that I wasn’t working through them in order.  If I didn’t, well I’ll just say now that I’m not going through them in chronological order.

So this week’s craft was courtesy of February’s Whimseybox…as in last month’s.  February’s box was for washi tape mini memo boards.

Washi, for those not in the know, is a style of Japanese paper making.  Combine long, thin rolls of that paper with some acrylic glue, and you get tape.  Washi tape is typically fairly decorative and is low tack, so you commonly see it in stationery.

In the box were three wooden boards, a pad of paper, two rolls of washi tape, and a small box of colorful rubber bands.  I think I might have gotten some small Whimseybox buttons in this shipment.  I can’t remember and I’m stuck in a hotel right now, so I can’t check.  We’ll just say there were some buttons and that was the advertisement for February.

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Only two boards are shown because I accidentally started working on one before I took the materials picture. Oops.

Directions for the project was to decorate the boards with washi tape however you wanted and then to either use the rubber bands to support the pad of paper or to kind of haphazardly loop the rubber bands around the board so that you’d have a memo board.

Here’s their example.

Links back to source.

Links back to source.

And here are my boards.

WP_20130227_004I  decided to paint some of the boards because I thought it might make a nice contrast with the tape.  Otherwise, I followed the instructions.  There’s not much else to do besides follow the instructions, really.

The memo board on the left was painted white (acrylic) and then the tape was in applied in a woven pattern.  Um…you can’t really see that it’s woven.  I opted for only green rubber bands to complete the board.

The center board ended up being a notepad holder.  I didn’t paint this one and covered the entire board with tape in alternating stripes.  I looped the rubber bands around in rows to support the back of the pad.  You might notice that the upper right corner is missing some tape.  There was tape there, but it fell off before I took the picture.  I didn’t notice until after.  Alas.  Also, you get a sample of my handwriting.  Um…I haven’t practiced.

The memo board on the right was painted black (acrylic) and then I used the star tape only as a frame.  I finished it off with lots of orange and blue rubber bands.  It may have been too many rubber bands.  If you use a huge mess of rubber bands on such a small board, it gets kind of hard to stick anything onto the board.  Just FYI.

So, there they are.  The business cards you see are for Scottevest and Operation Write Home.  Why did I pick these business cards for the photo?  Well, because I actually made the memo boards to help me hold business cards that I use a lot.  But I didn’t want to use client and colleague business cards for the photo and both Scottevest and Operation Write Home gave me a TON of their business cards.

I have a couple jackets from Scottevest.  I like the concept (POCKETS! POCKETS EVERYWHERE!), but I have found that the quality of their products can vary.  Their customer service is nice and responsive.  They will take care of you if you’re really unsatisfied with what you receive.

Operation Write Home is really great if you like to make cards or write letters but don’t have a lot of people to send stuff to.  Operation Write Home sends snail mail to the troops overseas to help cheer them and ease the homesickness.  You should check it out.

And…here ends this week plug for a whole bunch of things, I guess.

Whimsey: September

I’m finally going back and hitting my backlog of Whimseybox projects.  This one is from September (2012).  I didn’t do the project when I got it because…I didn’t really have a need for gift wrap.  I still don’t really, but I figure I should clear out some of these boxes.  Also, I really like to glue things and September’s box held much promise for gluing.

So, September’s box (Box 12) was for confetti gift wrap and involved a lot of things.

WP_20130222_002 (2)In the box were an assortment of gift bags, a few gift tags, a small box, a fairly large packet of confetti, and a tube of glue.  Also in the box, but not directly related to the project was a length of ribbon.  I think it’s an advertisement of sorts.  There’s normally something small and advertise-y in each Whimseybox.  For September, it was some ribbon and it had the added bonus of being useful to the project if you chose to use it.

Directions for the project idea was basically: put glue on stuff and then sprinkle confetti all over the glue.  It’s pretty standard for something like this.

Here’s their example.

Well, it turns out I can’t show you because
there seems to be no record of it at all
anywhere on the internet
and I have no interest in taking a picture of
a tiny picture on the directions card.
No really, I googled “Whimseybox confetti giftwrap”,
“Whimseybox box 12”,
and “Whimseybox September”
and no matching projects came up.
This project idea isn’t even on their blog.

Here’s my version, having followed the directions exactly.

WP_20130305_001 (1)It looks SO. GOOD., no?  No, it doesn’t really.  The glue they included with the box is a really wet gel glue.  It’s the stuff I liked to play with and use as a kid, but it doesn’t really glue that well and it makes the paper wrinkle because it’s so wet.  And I realize that you can’t compare it to the example from Whimseybox, but let me tell you that they don’t look anything alike.

BUT!  The direction card also included suggestions on applying glue in stripes or in some shape instead of over the whole area.  I tried that too.

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Here’s the front and back of another gift tag I did, this time in stripes.  I also didn’t just randomly dump confetti all over the place but used that weird tool whose name I forget that came with my Silhouette.  I think I’ve talked about it before.  It has a mildly sticky putty that you can squeeze out on one side to help you pick up and place small pieces of paper and a reversible proddy thing to prod the pieces you just placed into position.  I kind of like how this one turned out.  It’s still kind of wrinkly.

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Here is the small gift box that was included with all the stuff.  I went with a flower design.  This one turned out ok too.  I don’t really like the giant flower thing I did on the lid though.  I might peel it off and do it again.  Which is another thing with this glue.  It doesn’t stick well to glossy surfaces.  You can peel the glue and everything off the box and it doesn’t look like anything was ever glued there.

WP_20130305_006 (1)Here is a…lollipop?  I’m not really sure what I was going for.  I used normal white glue this time.  It sticks a lot better to glossy surfaces.

WP_20130305_007 (1)And here is that pink bag.  I went back to the glue included in the box.  I also went back to the dump confetti over everything technique.  I don’t think it worked out any better than last time.  You can kind of see that it says “hi.”  Kind of.

Are you a bit underwhelmed by this project idea?  I am a bit underwhelmed by this project idea.  I realize that I didn’t even confetti everything; there are a few bags I left undecorated.  I just didn’t see any reason to decorate the other bags.  I like plain brown bags.  What’s wrong with them?

Anyway, even though there was a lot of stuff in this box…well, it’s still kind of hard to justify the 15$ spent on it and the elementary school craft idea.  I mean, it IS a good craft for the kids though.  I remember really enjoying the glue/paper/mess in elementary school, when I last did something like this.  I just don’t think it was worth 15$.  And if you paid 25$ for this, I feel really bad for you.  I kind of feel like Whimseybox also feels bad for you and has tried very hard to erase the record that they ever sent out this box.