Cathe Holden’s Inspired Barn | Creative Lifestyle

Kanzashi Flower with Words

Thursday, September 17, 2009 by Cathe Holden

I know in my last post about Kanzashi In Bloom I said we’d spend a couple of weeks on these flowers and meet up here later, but obviously I couldn’t wait. However, I still expect all of you to complete your assignments, and I will definitely be making more Kanzashi flowers, pushing the envelope each time and sharing with you along the way.

So, with book in hand, I made “Gramma’s Flower”, a gift for my mom. This was super easy and would work great with not only names, but I thought how wonderful to make a flower of encouragement with positive and loving words for a friend who may be going through a personal battle, such as cancer. Or a few flowers for the teacher with the names of her students. Everyone loves a personalized gift!

I won’t be giving a tutorial on how to make these flowers, that’s all in Diane’s book, but I will share the part about printing the names. Below is the basic layout for 6 petals. Click to keep.

Choose a light colored fabric that doesn’t have a pattern that would compete with the words. Using the layout as a guide, create squares and place names in the red area. I used 12pt. lowercase SandraOh font. Don’t print the guide, place it on a layer that can be hidden or removed when printing. Be sure to print your own square outlines, this will keep things accurate. Test your layout by printing a sample out onto plain paper and fold the petal with the longest word to make sure it will not fall into a fabric fold. Note: If I were to make one like this again, I would flip a few names before printing so as the flower petals turn, the words along the bottom don’t go upside down.

Then, cut a piece of fabric just under the size of your paper, tape along the entry end and up the sides a bit. (I used white paper tape, not showing up so good in the photo.) It took a few times for my printer to take the fabric covered paper, it helped if I loaded extra plain paper in the tray behind the piece I was trying to feed through.

Once printed, remove the tape, cut the squares out and start folding & pinning. The rest is in the book. I made and added a fabric covered button to mine and finished off the back with a brooch pin-back.

Diane posted a video tutorial of how to make another kind of Kanzashi flower, check it out! {LINK}

And one last thing…Hi Mom! Guess what I’m sending you this week!

32 Comments | Tagged grandparent gifts, Kanzashi flowers, Kanzashi in Bloom, personalized gifts.

Your JSIM Craft Assignment

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Cathe Holden

My Amazon.com order arrived yesterday, and in my shipment was one book I’d been very curious about since spotting it on the wwcw (that’d be the world-wide-creative-web.) It’s Kanzashi In Bloom, by Diane Gilleland of CraftyPod.

I just spent my lunch hour poring over all of the delicious pages of instructions and ideas and I can tell you for sure, I’m going to have a hard time sleeping tonight. I’ll be dizzy with ideas of how to take this flower craft to the max, which won’t be easy, as Diane has already taken it so far that I almost had to lie down from creative overload.

So, your assignment is to first: get your hands on a copy of Kanzashi In Bloom , it’s around $15, either HERE, your local bookstore, or borrow from your local library (if they don’t have it, be sure to request it,) second: make a unique Kanzhi project and third: meet me back here in a couple weeks and let’s all share what we made. Ok? Ok.

To send photos of your completed assignment for my follow-up post, please email me HERE.

17 Comments | Tagged Diane Gilleland, Kanzashi in Bloom

Decal Penny Pendant

Monday, September 14, 2009 by Cathe Holden

Remember those sweet little vintage Meyercord decals we were all sticking to everything chippy a few years back? They used to be so popular that I’d have to pay around $12 a sheet. Today, I find them often for under $5.

I’d been thinking about using them in a pendant and today decided to experiment with something I’d never crafted with, a penny. Now, before you nail me on the legalities of defacing US currency, I did an exhaustive search on the subject and feel that my project is well within the law as I am not altering any coins for fraudulent purposed as defined by law. So, that being said, (and with due respect to our late president Lincoln,) I went to work with a hammer and a screw. Why not a nail or drill, you ask? Ok, people, you should follow me around in a day. I grab what’s closest and this screw was sitting there in the garage looking sharp enough.

I hammered a hole from both sides of the penny on a piece of wood and gave the penny a few more whacks for good measure to flatten out any warping that occurred in the process.

I placed the penny over a slice of wine cork cut to keep the penny from being glued to the foil lined pan once baked and dusted it with Amazing Glaze embossing powder.

I placed the penny in the toaster oven to melt the powder.

Once cooled, I began soaking a small decal in warm water to remove it from its backing.

I slid the decal onto the glazed penny, patted dry with a paper towel, and turned it over to trim with my Xacto blade any extending pieces of decal.

I dusted the decal with Amazing Glaze and popped it back in the toaster oven to heat.

Before the piece was cooled completely, I twisted a toothpick into the hole to keep the glaze from plugging it up.

And here is the finished decal penny pendant, jump-ring attached, being modeled by my lovely daughter, Sarah, in her jammies.

I also experimented with spray painting a penny, adding the decal and then baking with the embossing powder. A few strange things happened, bubbling paint, cracking decal, but I thought in the end it looked kind of chippy chic.