Upcycling and Recycling for Christmas....

Today I am a participant in the Faber-Castell, Creative Imaginations AND Xyron blog hop! The theme is upcycling or recycling for the Holidays....and this is right up my alley, as I LOVE to find new ways to use old things.

For my first project, I started with this metal frame with a white mat for a 5x7 inch photo...I had used it to hold a family photo in the old house, but we've since had our photos retaken and now display them differently, so this frame was unused and in my stash of alterables.

and THIS is where I ended up....

The mat board in the orignal frame was covered with the Holiday Berry Snowflake Paper with Varnish Accents paper from Creative Imaginations AFTER I altered it with the Faber Castell Gelatos...I used a light blue, dark blue and silver gelato and scribbled randomly on the the paper. Then I blended the colors with a wet paint brush. Before the paper was completely dry, I soaked up any liquid on the embossed areas with a paper towel. To adhere the dryed paper to the mat board, I ran the mat through my Xyron Creatopia (with permanent adhesive cartridge) and then centered and adhered to the backside of the paper. The mat is embellished with some snowflake die cuts (Create a Flake Four by Spellbinders) and crystal flourishes (Prima). Here's a close up shot of the embellishment cluster:

The diecuts were stenciled with some more of the Gelatos, using my finger to apply a small amount through the stencil component of the die.

Wouldn't this be perfect as a gift? You could purchase additional mat boards and alter them for each season too!

For my second project, I started with this gift box with a magnetic flap closure:

It's a pretty box, but I wanted to use it for a Christmas gift, so it needed some work...to start I painted all the edges with a white acrylic paint. I then traced all the sides of the box onto the reverse of 2 of the papers in the Creative Imaginations Holiday Joy collection. I cut out all the pieces, ran it through my Xyron 5 inch Creative Station (with permanent adhesive) and adhered the pieces to the box. LOVE this 'no mess' approach to altering boxes!! The next step was to color the edges with a red Gelato from Faber-Castell and blend with a wet paint brush. Then the whole project was aged by applying a couple of brown chalk inks (ClearSnap) along the edges. A new button pull was created by layering a red button on top of a clear button and attaching to the magnetic flap with dimensional adhesive and embellished with a string bow....here's the finished project:

It definitely screams 'holiday gift giving' now and will get used when I exchange holiday gifts with some of my crafty friends!!

Both of the above projects left me with some scraps, and not being one to waste much, I created this fun bookmark from my leftovers:

I printed a favorite quote onto vellum, ran it through my Xyron 2.5 inch create-a-sticker and adhered it to the background created from the project scraps. The edge to edge adhesive coverage on the vellum makes it invisible...a really neat trick! Can't wait to tuck this into a holiday card as a little 'bonus'!

Well, thanks for stopping by today! Hope to see you here again soon!

Comments

[Seth]

Thanks for the visit to my blog Angela and for your very nice comment. I look forward to checking your site out!

[linda]

Cute projects, Angela! The frame is beautiful - love the color.

[Kel H]

really cute projects, esp like the Christmas gift box

[tinamcd]

Fabulous projects Angela!!!

[Dorina D]

Great tutorial and they came out so cute. You did a great job. Thanks for sharing.