Bored with Cards

I’ve been making a lot of cards lately, and truth to tell I’m a little bored with them.  That isn’t to say I don’t love cards and card-making.  I certainly do — it’s just that I wanted to try something different.  So I made this last night:

It’s a paperweight!  Here’s a side view:

(God, the camera is unforgiving!  It doesn’t look nearly this thrown together in real life. It’s nice.)

I got these fill-them-yourself paperweights from Oriental Trading.  Oriental Trading, if you don’t know them, is a swaggy novelty company — they sell the kind of little crappy favors you give away at a kid’s birthday party, or the kind of simple crafts small kids make at summer camp.  But they also happen to have a pretty decent selection of crafting supplies. Beading, papercrafting, flower arranging, that kind of thing.  They have a ton of customizable “make your own” kind of stuff — tote bags, aprons, gift boxes, journals and blank spiral bound books, picture frames, Christmas ornaments, Frisbees, you name it — most of it aimed at kids, but there’s no reason adults can’t use them too.  I bought a few of these paperweights to make as Christmas gifts — two years ago! — but as usual, didn’t do anything with them.  So last night I hauled them out.

The base or stopper of the paperweight is a thick slab of foam rubber, which you pull out, and then you can add things inside the hollow glass square.  As you can see, the rubber is dead black.  I think next time I’ll try and cover it in some colored paper to match the insides.  But I won’t try and do it for this one — I’ve already glued the paper insert onto the rubber base, and if I try and pry it off I’ll just destroy it.  I’ve learned that, with rare exceptions, trying to go back and fix a craft project usually just makes it worse.  Better to leave well enough alone, and do better next time.  Don’t you agree? For this paperweight, the little paper flower is from a Recollections card-making pack , which is on my stash list.  The sentiment (Bloom Where You’re Planted) is one of those one-dollar clear Studio G clear stamps you get in the bin at Michaels, stamped in VersaFine Onyx Black and touched up — carefully! — with a black Sigma Micro pen.  I’ve never used it before.  The paper is from K & Company.  And that’s all there is to it.

I’ll add a new Category to my blog’s index now, for this kind of project — “not a card.”  Hope you like it.  Thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE: Adding this to the Simply Create Too challenge, Shop in Your Stash, because that’s what I do! 🙂