Summer Garden Journal Cover Tutorial

Ah summer! The warm breezes, the smell of green growing things, the lazy buzz of insects. Capture your own little slice of summer in this Summer Garden Journal Kit!

Here is a quick tutorial on how to make the cover of this journal.

You will need:

• Cardboard Box
• Scissors, Glue, Paintbrush
• Lace if desired
• Summer Garden Journal Kit from My Porch Prints on Etsy
• Summer Garden Mini Books, if desired
• Green Leaf Ribbon, if desired

Cut Your Box

The journal pages in this kit are 5x7 inches. So I cut my box slightly larger than the pages and added a 2-inch spine as shown.

Print Papers
To cover the outside of the journal, you'll need to print 2 sheets (8.5x11) of the printable papers that come in this journal kit. You could also use your own paper if you like. Cut off the white edges and overlap the papers slightly, then adhere them together with glue, using a brush to smooth the glue before attaching.

Glue the paper to the outside of your journal cover using glue & a paintbrush to smooth it.

Smooth the paper, working from the center of your spine to the outside edges of your cover, pushing the air bubbles out. Don't worry if it's a little wrinkly. These will usually work themselves out as it dries.

Flip your cover over and cut off excess paper and the corners as shown. Leave a border of 1/2 to 1 inch as shown.

Also, cut triangular notches on either side of your spine.

Apply glue, using a brush to smooth, and fold the flaps over as shown.

Once all the flaps are folded, print 2 more sheets of printable papers and glue them together like before.

Place the seam in the center of your journal inside the spine. This will help to hide it.

Fold the paper at the edges of your journal and then cut where the folds are.

Again, smooth your glue with a brush on the inside of your journal cover and then place your paper over the glue, smoothing from the spine outward toward the journal edges.

When glue is dry, gently fold up the sides of your journal, working slowly to stretch the papers and create creases.

Your Journal Cover
Next, cut out your journal covers & spine. Attach them as before, using a brush to smooth out the glue and then gluing the papers to the front & back covers and spine as shown.

If desired, use lace to cover the spine. Attach with glue.

And that's it! You have a completed journal cover. Now you can add your pages & embellishments.

Get this Garden Mini Book in my Etsy shop. 

Want to make a tassel like this one? Here is a video tutorial to show you how.
And here is a video tutorial for how to make this garden journal.

Christmas Wishes Printable: Free Download

Merry Christmas from My Porch Prints! 

Here is a free download for you (at the bottom of this page). Use it in your crafty projects. Would work as a cute journal cover or part of a card-making project.

Happy crafting!

Follow Crafting Ideas by My Porch Prints on Facebook for lots of fun & beautiful paper crafting inspiration.

To download, click the image below, then right click and save it to your computer.
Visit my Etsy shop to see more printables.

COPYRIGHT
PLEASE NOTE: This image is not to be re-used in digital form (as in do not re-post it on your website or anywhere else or try to sell it in digital form).
You MAY PRINT & sell it as part of a journal or art project (please credit My Porch Prints).

Click to Download

VISIT MY ETSY SHOP for more downloads.

Black & White Halloween Craft Pumpkin Tutorial

When witches go riding, and black cats are seen, the moon laughs and whispers... tis time to make this awesome black & white craft pumpkin, yo.

Okay, that's not quite how it goes. But it doesn't matter. We're going to take the moon's advice and make this pretty pumpkin... yo. ;)

You Will Need...
First, we need to gather supplies. Even Cinderella had to start with a pumpkin. If it was good enough for her, it's good enough for us! I got mine at Hobby Lobby. You can also find similar pumpkins here. You could potentially use a thrift store plastic or foam pumpkin, too... as long as you can stick images to the surface. Just keep in mind if it is a bright orange, you might want to paint it first.

You will also need:
- Romance Writer Scrap Pack from My Porch Prints (for the papers)
- Black & White Halloween Scrap Pack from My Porch Prints (for the images)
- Mod Podge (I used glossy)
- Foam Brushes
- Black Lace (optional)
- Fabric Flowers (optional)

Decoupage
To begin, cut or tear your papers into small pieces, about 1-2 inches in size. I tore some of mine. Others I cut. I didn't want them identical, but rather of various sizes and shapes. Pour your Mod Podge into a paper bowl and use your foam sponge brush to apply the Mod Podge to a small area of your pumpkin. Then place one piece of paper over it. Using the brush, apply another layer of Mod Podge on TOP of the piece of paper.
Tip: If parts of the paper won't lay flat, I used a craft stick to smooth it down.

Layer Papers
Repeat the process, layering the papers over each other. You can use a few different papers, or just one, whatever you like. I layered a few different kinds of paper.
Tip: I left the bottom uncovered because no one would see it.

Add Halloween Images
To add the black & white Halloween images, carefully tear around the images you want and use the Mod Podge in the same way you applied your paper.

Finishing Touches
When finished, allow to dry for a few hours. Then use the black lace to tie a tag to the top of the pumpkin. Embellish with black & white fabric flowers. All done!

Spring Flowers Monogram Wreath

Spring has sprung! Or it will soon. Be ready for it with this pretty monogrammed letter made from cardboard and thrift store flowers. (I used a letter "S" for our last name, but you can make any letter you want!)

I began in Photoshop, creating a file that was twice the size of an 8.5x11 paper (so, 17x22). Then I made a big old letter "S" using Times New Roman. I made it white and added an "outline" effect in black. Then I cropped the top half of the picture to 8.5x11 and printed it. I went to my history and stepped back, then cropped and printed the bottom half.

*If this step feels too complicated for you, try making a smaller letter in a simple program like Word.

After printing, I taped the two halves of my letter "S" together and used an old mailing box as my cardboard. You can use anything you want... a cereal box, shoebox, pizza box, whatever. Then I taped it down and traced it with a pencil. This left an indentation of the letter. If you want something a little more readable, try coloring on the back with charcoal or black crayon and then tracing it.

Next, I cut out my letter "S". I used a bag of Spanish moss (you can get this in Walmart's craft section, usually) and some old roses I found at a thrift store. I took the roses apart (leaves, too!) and piled them according to size. I used the smaller ones on the ends of my letter and bigger roses in the thicker, middle sections. I glued down leaves first, then moss, then just added my roses wherever they made sense, often grouping them in two's and three's.

To hang my monogrammed spring flowers, I used a length of pink rick rack (Walmart sewing section) and taped it to the back of my armoire door with packing tape. :) Classy, I know.

It adds a pretty touch of spring, don't you think?



 

 

 

How to Paint Shabby Chic Florals on Furniture

Hello Porch Fans! Today's post is about how to paint pretty little shabby chic roses onto wood furniture. First of all: Disclaimer! I really had no idea how to do this, so I turned to my trusty how-to guide (AKA Google) and tried to find a "how-to" guide to painting shabby chic flowers on furniture. There's a lot of pretty stuff out there, but not a whole lot of "how-to's". That's when I decided to wing it myself and see what happened.


So, don't consider this a one-and-only-way kind of tutorial. It's more of a guide on how you could, maybe, sort of go about painting shabby chic florals.

Step 1: You need a shabby piece of furniture. This table started life as my computer desk. (Actually, it started as a bad Craigslist purchase that fell apart before we even got it into our van. Like, literally FELL APART in the guy's driveway. Hubby was NOT happy. But he fixed it. I love that man.) It was that golden color of wood that some people like, but personally is not my favorite. I shabbied it up with paint and sanding and love.

Step 1 1/2: So, as I dragged my furniture out onto my Porch (a process I am VERY familiar with). I looked around for floral inspiration and found it in full-bloom. Punny!

Step 2: Once your furniture is prepped, you can begin to paint your flowers. Ha ha! No, not really. Not even close.

You need to gather supplies:

• Tape Measure
• Pencil
• Acrylic Paints in the colors you want
• Jar of water
• Paper Towel
• Brushes (small and large)
• Sanding Block

I also chose a pic from the Internet as a kind of basic idea of what I wanted. I'm not good on the fly. I need some kind of reference, even a basic one will do.

 

Step 3: You need a shape to serve as the background for your floral. I chose a circle, because it's what I had on hand, and by on hand, I mean it was a pizza pan on top of my fridge. I measured to find the center of my table, plopped my pizza pan down and traced it out.

Step 4: Next, I lightly brushed cream-colored paint in my circle and tried to fade it toward the edge to hide the pencil mark and make a kind of blurry line between the cream and the blue of the table.

























After that, I penciled what I call Smilies and Frownies all around the edge of the circle. You can see them in the pic.

Step 5: I chose an earthy brown to paint over the smilies and frownies. Then I added little "leaf" shapes on the tips of my smilies and frownies. I filled in more leaves and added some curlie Qs or whatever looked right. This was a trial and error kind of process till I got the look I wanted. After I was finished with the Smiley Frownies I realized they were awfully dark, so I went over them with some watered-down cream paint, just to mute the color a little.

Step 6: This is the step where I make a big fail. I decide to try to pencil in my flowers before painting them. Not only are my freehand drawing skills spectacularly awful, but I realized after painting a few leaves that the pencil shows right through the paint. I tried to erase the pencil marks, another massive fail. They just smeared, and I scratched up my table a little. No big, I like scratched up tables, but I had to hide those pencil marks, so I painted over them with the cream paint, which brings us to...

FAIL.

Step 7: Painting your flowers!
So, since I had no pencil marks to guide me, I really had to wing this part. I wish I could give you a Happy Trees guide to painting roses, but I can't. I just started with dark pink blobs that were the centers of my roses. Then I added some light pink blobs as petals. I used water and cream paint to blend these until they started to look rose-ish. Again, I know that's not very helpful, but it's the best I got for ya. I did the same thing with leaves, making vague "fern" shapes, starting with the tip and zig-zagging once side of the leaf, then the other, adding a "stem" with a quick swipe of the brush down the center of each leaf. I added little curlie-Qs here, too, to fill in the blank spaces and round out the design.

 

Step 8: When I was done, it was kind of pretty, but obviously not pro. I remedied this by using watered-down cream paint to dull the extra-bright green and pink parts of the painting. When it was dry, I used a "dry brush" technique over it, which means I dipped a large paint brush (like for painting wall trim) in cream paint and dried it off on a paper towel. Then I lightly swept it across the painting, letting the texture of the table grab it.



 For the final touch, I went back and sanded here and there when all was dry. For my first attempt at floral painting, I don't think it's too shabby. ;)