Creative Home Living Tips

Replenishing our Creative Spirit

Cultural Creative Home Living Craftiness

As a life-time crafter, every day is creative time for me. But what if your work and family life have squeezed out every ounce of “me” time? There’s a cool creative movement underway that reminds us to take time to create. The recently launched CRE8TIME movement reminds us that the time is now to express your creative passions.

Are you open to trying some new creative projects? Whether it’s just creative doodle time for yourself, creating hand-made gifts, enhancing your home décor, party celebrations or garden art, creativity can be expressed in many different ways.

Crafting has taken on many different interpretations from generation to generation. Did you know that today’s modern day craft industry didn’t start until the late 1960’s when Aleene Jackson launched a Craft Caravan. Craft designs were packed into several trucks and this caravan toured the US introducing communities to new crafting techniques and the joys of trimming your trash, decorating your discards and glittering your garbage.

The 1970’s and ‘80s burst onto the scene with thousands of crafting supply choices. In the late 1990’s, indie crafters shared their own style of creating outside the box while scrapbookers stayed cleanly within the lines. The current craft movement is more about anything goes where knitters have embraced yarn bombing, scrapbookers and paper crafters smash, smoosh and crinkle, mixed media crafters combine anything and everything and new generations are finding their creative spark

Creative Home Living Craft IdeaCreate Something:

Aleene’s T-Shirt Roses Lampshade

Here is a really cool way to transform a lampshade with an old t-shirt! What a cool way to upcycle your old t-shirts into fabulously feminine style. Yes! It used to be a shirt! T-shirt strips and Aleene’s Fabric Fusion Peel & Stick Sheets bring new life to home decor accents.

Materials Needed:

  • Aleene’s Fabric Fusion Peel & Stick Sheets
  • Old (or new) t-shirt (color of your choice)
  • Non-stick scissors
  • Lampshade (size and shape of your choice)
  • Fabric colorant of your choice (fabric paint, fabric ink, fabric dye)

Instructions:

  1. Cut bottom hem from t-shirt.
  2. You can leave t-shirt laying flat on worksurface so that you can cut through two layers at a time. Cut strips from side to side. The strips should be cut about 1/2″ wide. Cut away side seams.
  3. For large roses, cut Aleene’s Fabric Fusion Peel & Stick Sheets into quarters. (Downsize the quarters into smaller pieces for medium and small roses.) Round edges of cut pieces with scissors.
  4. To create the rose, remove paper backing from Peel & Stick. Press end of t-shirt strip into center of sticky adhesive.
  5. Begin wrapping and pressing t-shirt strip around center, twisting and turning the strip as you continue to coil it around the center. The more you coil the fabric strip, the tighter the design. Press fabric firmly into adhesive until you have the entire piece of Peel & Stick covered. Cut end of fabric.
  6. Place rose on solid work surface and press each coil of fabric firmly into adhesive to be certain that all pieces are firmly glued.
  7. Repeat to create various shapes and sizes of roses.
  8. Apply a light application of fabric colorant of your choice. (I used chalk ink to color my roses. Simply rub the inker across the rose and the color will catch on the ridges.)
  9. Remove paper backing and adhere rose(s) to lampshade.
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