tiny crafty… and a contest!

during thanksgiving weekend, i got together with a young friend of mine to do some christmas gift crafting.  although we had plans to make lots of different things, the only one we ended up having time to do was ye ol’ marble magnets.  i’ve made these a million times, but i still enjoy making them.  to make it a little more interesting, i also brought out my collection of empty mint tins and we decorated them with glitter to use as gift packaging.

these were mine that i designed using my giant bag o’ stamps (purchased at an antique shop in michigan city for a pittance).  hers were cute too, but i forgot to get a photo before she went home.

in case you’ve never made these, all you need are some clear, flat marbles (available in craft stores and probably other places too), some strong magnets no bigger in diameter than your marble, and some paper or relatively lightweight fabric and some crafting glue that dries clear.  pick an image from your paper or fabric that you’d like to feature.  i often will move the magnet around on the paper or fabric to see what it will look like when slightly magnified by the marble.  when you find an image that you like, trace a circle around the marble and cut out the circle.  then, apply glue to the flat side of the glass and smush it down onto the paper with the patterned side up!  apply glue to one side of a magnet and attach that to the back side of the image you just glued onto the glass and wait for the whole thing to dry.  i would have done a photo tutorial, but really, hasn’t everyone already made these?  if you would like a photo tutorial, leave a comment to that effect and i’d be happy to put one together for you, dear readers.

i also wanted to try making gift boxes out of cereal boxes (see this instructable), specifically out of these fun boxes from “back to nature” that i sometimes buy cereal or crackers in that have leaf cut-outs on the front.  the instructable instructions didn’t work for that particular box, so i just played around with the design and made my own version.  isn’t it cute?

i added the polka dot paper and it’s not perfect, but it was a fun, brain-building exercise and now i have a cute gift box.  just gotta find a good gift to put in it….

it will take some serious clamoring for a tutorial to get me to make one for this project.  i’m not 100% certain i could duplicate it again…

i was also thrilled to spend several hours in my craft room this weekend avoiding my homework working on a quilt for my friend who gave me a painting.  i hope to have the top finished this morning before i go to work.  here’s a sneak peek:

how about a contest?  the first person to leave a link in the comments to either the flickr page or the blog post of the quilt that inspired this one will receive the leaf box pictured above (or one very similar to it) filled with goodies including a paper ornament made from the same artist that created these, some samples of my current favorite teas, and a cd of my favorite children’s music from this past year.  (as always with happy stuff giveaways, winners have the option of refusing any portion of the prize package that they do not want.  if you hate tea or children’s music, just let me know.  just realize that this cd will contain no music by barney or the wiggles.  i won’t even make them into clickable links on this site.)  who knows?  if they fit into the box with all of that stuff, i might even include some marble magnets.  good luck!