Time For A Change! And No, That is not a pillow!

First a teaser and then an explanation:

While I hope the weather will clue into to the title of my blog post, I really mean this for you my dearest 29 followers. How you make our hearts happy! Every comment puts a bounce in our step! Thank you so much for supporting out endeavors in the world of the craft blog! We are hoping that you won't terribly mind the change of name. "The Craft Bucket" was originally meant to be like my own pinterset board until I discovered pinterest. Otherwise I would have thought of a better title right off the bat. So, our new title will be

"Made From ScrAtch."

We hope to provide you with fun crafts, recipes, sewing techniques, household tips and activities that will make your day to day activities more fun!
Please share our site with your friends!

And now . . . for the Craft!
Let's make a Beautiful Soft Covered Fabric Photo Album! It is really quite an easy craft and best of all . . . no sewing!

My cousins did this for a final during their senior year of high school. . . I never had a cool final like that!

You can really adjust this to any size you would like but to make one like mine you need:

1 yard of fabric, batting, cardboard (I used my diaper box), 5 ft of ribbon, scissors, a hot glue gun and 8-10 12x12 scrapbook paper.

I cut my card board to be 12.5 inches in ht and the width was 12 in.
Then on each page of the scrapbook paper I measured off a half inch and folded that piece back and forth a few times. That will become the spine of your photo album.

Then I glued all the hot glued all the pieces of scrapbook paper together
and created the spine . . . (p.s. you can see a bar code in this picture and it didn't matter because I will be attaching that part to the cover of the book. You should make sure that no bar codes are shown on the other pages.)

There is your spine!

I measured my fabric to allow 3 inches around each edge of the cardboard. My length ended up being 31.5 inch and my ht was 19 inches.

I didn't connect the two pieces of cardboard because I wanted to allow for the spine of the album. I left about an inch of room between the two pieces.

Then I wrapped the cardboard like a present and stuffed it with a generous amount of batting.

Pay attention to your corners and fold them as nicely as you can. Most of this area will be covered with scrapbook paper, but still, you want it to look nice:)

For the back cover I laid the batting down on top of the fabric and then laid the cardboard on top of it like a sandwich. Glue the fabric around the sides remembering to leave room for the spine.

How on earth did I miss taking a picture of attaching the scrapbook paper?!

Take the pages that you glued together and place them on your photo album so you can get an idea of where you will need to hot glue the edges of your scrapbook paper to you album. Once you have it all "eyeballed" glue the scrapbook pages to the album making sure that your spine lines up in the middle of your album.

FOR THE BACK COVER: Put the hot glue on the back side of your first scrapbook page and close the album to seal the two sides together. This will ensure that your album opens and shuts properly!

I measure out five feet of satin ribbon and hot glued the back of the ribbon to the back of the album only, then I tied the bow in the front.

I am so happy with the way it turned out!

Can you imagine all of the cute fabric/ribbon/scrapbook paper combinations you could come up with! Seriously, this project is only limited to your imagination! You could even add flowers to the front.

I think this would make a great gift as well. Fill it with your favorite family photos and then give it to Grandma! Christmas is coming you know. I'm just sayin'!

Happy Crafting!

xoxo, Amy

Caribbean Sea- Upgrade your black coffee table!

Hello! I'm Sarah. Amy's sister in law. A little intro about me.. I have been married for almost a year now. My husband is attending school out here in Hawaii. He loves it more than anything and I have actually learned to like it, not love yet. Chris and I will be transferring to BYU Provo in December. I love crafts and my goal is to be an interior designer. So I am going to be adding tutorials of crafts to this blog. The best part is that they are so easy and cheap. A caveman could do it.

Amy called the other day and asked if I wanted to be her partner in crime. I was so thrilled to be invited, I immediately started a craft.

I have a lot of black furniture. And very white walls. Since I live in a place where I can't paint the walls. I am painting my furniture. (No, not my couch). I have a cute black table that I have been using as a coffee table. Then we got a bigger TV so I used it for that. But it was still a lot of black. So I found a print I wanted to use and I went to the good ole Wal Mart for the paint.

This is the print. I am absolutely in love with it. I want to use it on everything.

Chris and I went to the paint isle and there it was, bold, bright and beautiful. My color.

Caribbean Sea

The paint was about ten bucks for a quart. (Honestly I have no idea how expensive that is. I am so use to Hawaii prices. This will all be cheaper if you live on mainland).

What You'll Need:

paint (however much you want) one or two colors

paint rollers

yard stick

scissors

sanding block

blue painting tape

pencil

cardboard

How To:

1. Start by sanding down the table using a sand block. Don't do it too hard.

2. Trace your print onto a cardboard. I didn't have a stencil so I made mine up.

Don't freak out, it's easy. All you need is a yard stick or ruler, a pencil and a piece of cardboard.

Here's how..

On the cardboard, using the yard stick, draw two parallel lines three inches apart.

a. Make a mark on on both parallel lines every four inches.

b. Draw a line connecting hash marks to desired pattern.

c. Then cut it out. You have your stencil.

3. Take your stencil and with a pencil, trace it onto whatever your are painting. (Table, chair, wall, etc.)

4. Take your blue tape and tape of the edges of every other line.

5. Pour a little of one color of paint into a rolling pan and start painting.

6. Let it dry!

I left mine overnight. I didn't want to risk it looking bad.

7. Take the blue tape off. Be careful. Although it should be dry.. just be careful.

8. Then start over. (If you are using two colors).

So use the blue tape and lay it on the edges of the first color.

9. Start painting.

10. Let it dry. At least four to five hours. Just to be safe.

11. Take the tape off and you are finished!