Papercraft – Keep it Thimble

First, a big Happy Birthday to my friend Sharon Stewart at Liberty Rose. Have a great day!!

Second, Sharon was the master mind behind this project – a Sewing Scrapbook made out of paper lunch bags. She offered this as a one of her scrapbooking classes and I fell in love with it (I hardly ever scrapbook) so I had to take the class.

Sharon always does a lot of prep work for her classes and this was no different – she provided all the goodies for each page in the book – including the antique buttons. I added a few more embellishments when I got home – there are tons of great sewing images you can download for free from the internet!

Once you have a collection of images you want for your theme, you can use a color printer to print them out on cardstock. We used off-white and brown kraft cardstock, which coordinates nicely with the paper bags. Once the images are printed, you can cut them out, distress them, and place into the book. You can use this for tons of different themes (I have a few ideas) and they are a great craft for kids. Use colored pencils to add a dash of color to some of the drawings, and scraps of fabric and trim are put to good use as well.

We also used some of the paper from old patterns to add some texture and visual interest. For the pockets, you create square cards, print an image on them, add a tab, and have a little surprise in the book (see Interior 5 for an example, the little girl on the right is one of these tabbed cards that goes inside). Sharon used images of embroidery stitches we would have a handy reference for how to do some basic stitches.

They are very easy to make. Start with three brown paper lunch bags and fold them in half. Stack them by alternating where the opening is placed so there two openings on side side and one on the other side (also make sure the bottom bag flaps are on the inside pages, not the front and back covers), and then staple down the middle.

Once you have your little book – you can decorate it however you want! I have made a few of these for my son already. He enjoys drawing pictures on each page and using rubber stamps and stickers to embellish them.

Keep it thimble!

I found this great tutorial online for making Moravian Stars. I used 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper to make my strips. I made two different sizes. The strips for these small ones are 3/8″ wide by 12″ long.

: Small Moravian Stars

The strips in this larger one are 1″ x 24″ wide (I had to tape two strips together in order to make it long enough).

Here’s how they compare in size to each other.

I was looking for paper that was the same color on each side, however, I was able to get nice variations by arranging the strips differently before folding them. In one of the smaller ones, I folded the strips in half so that the wrong side of the paper was facing out. This created a pattern where the centers on side were patterned, the center on the other side was white, and the outside points alternated between pattern and white. On the red star, I used two strips that were right side out and two strips that were wrong side out. This created the pattern seen in the picture above.

These are a lot of fun to make. If you have trouble with the tutorial pictures, check out the video at the bottom. The only step that can be difficult to understand in the last one where you create the center points of the stars.

You can use these for all kinds of things – package tie-ons, ornaments, and garlands. I’ve also read you can dip them in wax (which is a nice way to preserve it and make it one color).

Category: Papercraft

Brown Bag Sewing Scrapbook

Moravian Stars – Tutorial