Friday, April 18, 2008

recycle

Before you throw out your junk mail and catalogs, give them another look with your art eye. I do this with catalogs. Clothing and quilting catalogs are the best. I also use colorful envelopes.

Pick out the colorful and fun prints that you like. Cut them into one inch strips and put thru the Xyron sticker maker ( make them just long enough to wrap around the straw) Don't worry about the patterns of the pictures. Use the permanent cartridge in the Xyron. Cut the strip on a diagonal when you remove it from the Xyron. Take a drinking straw and wrap the printed paper around it, putting the straight side on first. Then using scissor's cut the printed part off.

I put this piece on the end of a wooden dowel. Then roll it onto an embossing pad and sprinkle clear UTEE (ultra thick embossing enamel) on it and use the heat gun to melt it. Then dip each end into gold embossing powder and now you have a neat bead to embellish with.






These are beads I made with photo's from the Coldwater Creek catalog. I stamped them and used them as sample's at my stamping class last night. They look like glass with metal ends.




11 comments:

Joanne said...

Pure genious! I love this idea..going to have to try making some of them! Thanks for sharing the tip....

PennyBlue said...

Is there no end to your ideas? (:
LOVE THIS!! Thanks for sharing and HAppy Friday!

Anonymous said...

Great fun looking beads : ) did you use Diamond Glaze or gel medium ?? haven't tried making these beads but I certainly have "collections" of colorful catalogs. when you posted about this upcoming technique, I quickly pulled out "my" copy of the same ColdwaterCreek catalog. Thanks for sharing : )
Love & Blessings, Sandra in AZ

SandyQuilts said...

Gosh and I throw stuff like that away everyday. Off to check my trash.

Ms Dragonfly said...

cool beads!

deb musick said...

Loved the class! Loved meeting you...finally! I can't wait for another class--these beads are way cool! Thanks for the inspiration & the chocolate.

~ maggie brudos ~ said...

fabulous!!
i love that
thanxs...

Rella said...

Your beads are divine!!! How have you used the beads?

xo RElla

suze said...

I like putting the beads on the sides of my journals & artered books. I have plenty of them but they are so much fun to make.

shrink on the couch said...

they absolutely do look like metal ends. when I first saw the pic, I thought they were decorated rifle shot casings.

shrink on the couch said...

they absolutely do look like metal ends. when I first saw the pic, I thought they were decorated rifle shot casings.