Newspaper Coasters

What do you think of this lovely coaster? Isn't it vibrant with colors! This is my sister OliveOil's latest projects.

Start by cutting a newspaper page to two equal halves. Then divide each half into four strips of paper. You can also use magazine pages or anything similar you have. Now get busy coiling them. Of course you will need to use the glue.

Now you have your coils ready.

Start shaping each coil into the desired shape. You can make circles, triangles, squares, or whatever fits your design. Use the glue to fix each piece.

Here is how she made the circles.

After the glue is dry, start coloring your pieces with acrylic colors.

Now you can assemble the pieces and glue them together according to the design you have in mind.

One last and important step is to seal the coaster with a sealant.

Now you can start using them!

Enjoy!

Picture Frames with Shells

It has been a while since our last craft. In fact we were at the beach enjoying the sun, the Mediterranean, and the delicious seafood :) I came back with lots of shells too. I wanted to use them in decorating a big picture frame but then I had a better idea! Why not make more than one smaller frames!

I started with a milk paper carton. It is silver and smooth from the inside. Do not forget to wash  the milk cartoon and dry it well before using it.

Then I cut three squares from the milk cartoon (front) and another three squares (back) from normal cartoon to back it with. The square is larger than a 4X6 picture.

In two of the three squares, I glued the front and back together and used a silver tape to hide the edges and make a nice frame.

In the third square I opened a window to insert the picture, before gluing the back square. This is my sister OliveOil when she was 5 years old :)

Then I decorated the frame with some stars and shells at the corners. I attached them with the glue gun because the milk cartoon silver surface is so soft.

In another project I used some colorful paper for the front and back instead of the silver paper. In this case, I cut rectangular shapes.

Then I started making up designs with shells to decorate my frames.

At last, I joined the frames together with some chains and put a longer chain at the top for hanging the final piece.

A friend's birthday was the following week, so I used her picture in one frame and decorated the other two colorful frames with shells and wrote her "Happy Birthday!" with a silver pen.

Enjoy!