Basket & Books.

Hi everyone,

sorry for the lack of a post recently. I have been busy behind the scenes, just not blogging my 'efforts'. To day I thought I'd show you a couple of things that I've been playing with.

Firstly, I've been making a few miniature books for my printer's tray. Over the years my tray has become a bit of a shadow box displaying mementos from my holidays abroad, plus a few other bits & bobs which have take my fancy. I've already got twenty or so  books but to my mind these trays look more interesting when they're filled with plenty of nicknacks and I do love my books.

Here's a picture of three of my newbies...... I made fifteen in total.

It's ages since I made some of these tiny books. I tend to make the full sized versions these days but here's a link to the first batch I made when I first got my printer's tray .........     printers-tray.html

Something else that sparked my interest, when I spied it on YouTube, was making baskets out of newspaper. The mess newsprint leaves on everything is a pet hate of mine so I decided to use brown paper instead of newspaper. I won't go into detail on the making process as there are literally oodles of YouTube videos that show how to make the paper tubes and  how to weave them.

Suffice it to say, I decided on a small, simple basket and set to rolling tubes. That, I found, was a knack in itself and no where near as easy the YouTube videos made it look!  After  twenty tubes, and with the help of a small bamboo knitting needle, I got the hang of things but the tubes still took me ages to roll and you need a lot..... I used a good few hundred for my small  basket. But it using the brown paper was a eureka moment. It's as cheap as newspaper, most definitely cleaner and more robust for the weaving process. Here's a small bundle of my rolled tubes........

The weaving process was hard but again there is a knack to weaving these paper tubes together. More than once I found myself muttering under my breath that it would have been easier to have bought some wicker! But what it is, is forgiving and I'm more than happy with my end result.....

Yes, it is rustic but it is sturdy and for a first attempt I'm happy with it.  

Originally I had plans to stain my basket when finished, mainly because I ran out of paper and the second roll I bought differed in colour from the first, but in the end I sealed it using Ranger Matt Medium and left the colour variation to add to the baskets rustic appeal. Matt medium is perfect as it not only seals the paper, it makes it more robust and this little basket is definitely and surprisingly sturdy.

Here's a quick close up picture of how it looked unsealed with the matt medium.......

Hope you enjoyed reading what I've been up to lately. I'll post a couple of new journal page makes soon but in the meantime if you fancy brown paper basket weaving I'd give it a go.... definitely a challenge but fun.

Happy crafting.

Carol. xx