Paper, Glue, and Tape

I had a great day this past weekend crafting with my sister and her daughter. They drove to my house and we spent the afternoon working on our own projects while watching Dr Who rescue planets.

My niece was working on a crocheted baby blanket. A pretty shell pattern. At one point she had to start a new ball and it turned out it was one of those skeins where you can't find the end from the centre without pulling out half of the ball.

And then it was knotted. So I worked on that for about 30 minutes while she grabbed a different new ball and kept crocheting. (What a prepared crafter to have at least two extra balls with her! Or maybe she was ambitious and thought she'd go through them both...)

After I had that sorted, I rewound the yarn with my ball winder. She was delighted to have a yarn "cake" instead of a skein. She agreed it was a good name for it because it was delicious.

My sister was working on sewing mittens from felted sweaters. Well, she never got to sewing them, but she cut out a lot of pieces and matched them up. I brought out all my felted sweaters that I have been saving up for a blanket. But that day is a long way off, so I let her use what she wanted with no dibs. She was delighted and couldn't help asking several times, "Are you sure? Even this one?" Yup, even that one. I can get more and even more important, I was glad to see them getting used.

And I decided to work on something completely different. I have been hankering after some magazine boxes for a while. The kind that hold magazines up on a shelf. But it has never been worth buying them.

Then while visiting my mother-in-law while she was trying to empty a house they were selling, she offered me a box of them. I was amused to see that they were from the same company I still get office supplies from at work, but obviously decades old. I think there was a 25 cent sticker on the box so I suspect she got them from a yard sale. These boxes have been waiting a long time to be used!

While my company was with me, I went through a bunch of magazines and ripped out anything that caught my eye. I also had leftover papers from my trip to the Netherlands because I had finally finished up my photo album by sticking in the papers and pamphlets I wanted to include. All the extras became fodder for this project.

After my sister and niece had to leave, I kept working on the project. (Watching Notre Dame get killed by USC certainly wasn't keeping my attention!) I assembled a box:

and then mixed my own decoupage glue. The online recipes recommended three parts white glue to one part water. So that's what I used.

I covered two boxes with the pictures and text that I had cut out:

Elephants, of course, because always elephants.

I loved this line of turtles looking like round little rocks.

Hands shaking:

And text from a sample book by Clara Parkes I thought was appropriate:

I was worried about the durability of the paper along the edges of the box so I decided to wrap the edges. I considered gluing paper or fabric like binding around the edge of a quilt but then decided on duct tape.

Fancy duct tape:

Coincidentally this was a gift from the very sister who was visiting me.

I cut strips long enough for sections of the box and then cut them in half lengthwise so they wouldn't be too wide. I didn't try to carry the strips past the non-square corners, but cut the strips and trimmed them so the pieces would meet neatly.

Unfortunately I didn't know I would be doing this when I put the paper on so I lost some of the elements like these turtles:

and some of the text and small pieces that were right near the edge.

I'm happy with my two boxes and also happy that I have eight more that I can do when I'm in the mood to pretend I'm in kindergarten again and work with some paper and glue.

Although I might try some spray adhesive instead of glue because of the way that the latter wrinkles the paper. I've done a little research online about how to avoid wrinkles (they say to let the first layer of glue dry before adding the top coat) but I'm not confident that it's going to work because I'm pretty sure I let one of the boxes dry before doing the top coat.

In the meantime, the only problem I will be addressing is whether to put the boxes on the shelf with the tall side or short side showing!