Tutorial - 3D Butterflies and Hearts

Good afternoon! Hope your day is going well! I just got back from volunteering in my son's preschool class. It was so much fun! I was in charge of a Valentine's craft table and helped 16 three and four-year-olds glue hearts to construction paper.

So here I am at my virtual craft table with a tutorial for the butterflies and hearts that I posted yesterday.

Three Dimensional Butterflies and Hearts

Supplies Needed:

• White glue (the stuff you used at the craft table in preschool!)
• Bowl for mixing
• Paper plate or other work surface (you just need a place to get messy)
• Paintbrush
• Assorted fabric scraps
• Pencil or fabric marker
• Double-sided tape (if you're going to attach these to your wall or other surface)
• Iron and ironing board
• Sewing machine or needle and thread for hand sewing
• Cardstock (to trace your templates)
• Templates for your shapes (you can make your own or download my pdf below)

Click to View

Here's how you make them...
Assemble all of your supplies and trace and cut your templates onto cardstock. For the purpose of this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make the hearts but the process is exactly the same for the butterflies.

Now you need to stiffen your fabric scraps. You can buy commercial fabric stiffener but I usually just make my own with white craft glue (with a three-year-old in the house I tend to have it on hand).

To make your own fabric stiffener, mix three parts glue to one part water in a bowl.

Paint a generous coat of your glue concoction on all of your fabric scraps and allow to dry about one hour. I drape my wet scraps over coat hangers for drying.

Once your scraps are dry, give them a quick press with a dry iron to flatten them out.

Now fold your scraps in half with the wrong side showing. Place your template on the fold and trace with a pencil or fabric marker. Cut all of your shapes.

Once you have your shapes all cut, you're ready to assemble them. For the hearts, I chose three coordinating fabrics and cut a large, medium and small to stack together.

At this point I like to sew them together. I just do a quick line of stitches with my machine but you could easily hand sew a few stitches if you prefer.

That's it! You have an adorable three-dimensional piece of fabric art.

There are so many things you could do with these little beauties. Here are just a few ideas...

• Glue them to blank cards to make sweet valentine's or birthday cards for your friends
• Frame them to make adorable wall art
• Use double-sided tape to attach them to your wall (I've had the butterflies up in my daughter's room for about a week and they haven't fallen yet!)
• Glue to the top of a gift box for an extra special presentation
• Attach a ribbon loop and hang from a cabinet or doorknob
• Glue to a picture frame for a sweet embellishment
• Sew several together to make a little garland

I'm sure there are many other things you could do with these. Get creative and have fun.

As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.

Happy Crafting to you!

Tutorial - Fabric Covered Boxes with Ribbon Ties - Part 3

Hope you all had a nice weekend!

I'm back with the third part of our fabric covered box tutorial. I hope it's been easy to follow so far. Please feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail if anything is unclear or if you have any questions.

We should have our box forms made, our fabric cut and our inside fabric glue-hemmed.  The next step is to apply the fabric to the cardboard with some mod podge.

Start with the exterior piece of fabric for your largest box. Flip it so that the wrong side is up on your work surface.

Now flip your box over and paint a layer of mod podge on just the center (bottom) section.

Working pretty quickly, flip the box onto the fabric and smooth out with your hands (or a burnishing tool if you have one).

Now your bottom piece is glued. Flip back over and we're essentially going to wrap the fabric all around like a present.

The first step is to notch those corners like we did with our interior pieces. Just cut a diagonal line that meets up with your box corners.

Flip one of your sides up and apply a layer of mod podge as shown.

Gently lay that flap onto the fabric and paint a small bit of mod podge around the interior edges.

Smooth the fabric against the cardboard and pull it up and over onto the interior of the cardboard.

Now for the corners. We'll do them the same way we did on our interior fabric pieces.

The corners will be a bit bulky. Use clothespins to hold them in place while your mod podge dries.

Repeat this process all the way around until you have something that looks like this:

Set aside and allow to dry for 20 - 30 minutes.

Remove the clothespins and paint a thin layer of mod podge to your center (bottom) cardboard.

Making sure that corners and flaps match up, place your interior fabric piece wrong-side-down on the portion you've just mod-podged.

Again - burnish or smooth with your hands.

Cut 8 lengths of grosgrain ribbon. I cut mine 8" but you can make them shorter or longer depending on your desired size. If you would prefer to make ties instead of bows (like on my smallest polka dot box - see bottom of post for photo), you can get away with a shorter length (maybe 4" or so).

Working with one flap at a time, apply mod podge, place your ribbons toward the top (maybe 1" down) and burnish the fabric against the cardboard.

I used two clothespins in each corner to hold my box together during drying time.

Repeat this process with the three remaining flaps.

Prop up each side of the box with household items and allow to dry overnight.

Almost done!

If you have a sewing machine and want to go the extra mile, you can actually put a few stitches into the cardboard to hold your ribbon. If you've applied enough mod podge and allowed your boxes to dry really well, this may not be necessary. But I did it on mine. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to sew through cardboard. Just take it VERY slow and don't backstitch or you might break a needle.

The only thing left to do is tie your bows or ties. I sort of hold the box between my knees while I do this to get a nice tight knot.

Now trim your ends and apply a small bit of fray check.

That's it! Repeat with your two smaller boxes and you've got a set of three coordinating storage boxes made from an ugly old shipping box. 

I'd love to get your thoughts on this project. I know it's a bit involved but once you get the hang of it, you'll be whipping these up in no time flat.

* This project featured on Mod Podge Rocks here.

** Linked up to Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog here.

Tutorial - Fabric Covered Boxes with Ribbon Ties - Part 2

Hi friends. Hope you're all having a great day.

I'm back with Part 2 of the Fabric Covered Box Tutorial. We're ready to start working with our fabric to make the outer and inner portions of the largest box.

A couple of thoughts on fabric selection...

I recommend using a geometric print or some other design that does not have a direction. You'll see that I used a sort of toile for my largest box here which means that my pattern is upside-down from some views. I don't mind but if you'd like your box to look more uniform, go with a directionless fabric.

I thought I'd throw out a plug for one of my favorite manufacturers of home decor fabric - Premier Prints. The fabric is incredibly reasonable and the weight is perfect for a project like this. You can find Premier Prints at many online retailers or directly through them. All three of the fabrics chosen for my first set of boxes were Premier Prints.

Here are the fabrics I chose for this next set. Two were purchased at Joann (I think they're Waverly) and the third was a Premier Print.

OK. Enough about that.

Take your fabric and fold it in half with right sides facing. Smooth it out on your work surface and place your cardboard cross on top. Trace a tight line all the way around your cross form using a pen or pencil. Then draw a second line about one inch out all the way around. I just eyeballed this. The measurement doesn't have to be exact.

I drew a little line in the corners connecting the outer line with the inner line. We're going to notch that line later.

Now remove the cardboard and cut through both pieces of fabric following the outer line.

Once you're done, separate your two pieces of fabric. One will wrap around the outside of your box and the other will cover the inside of the box. We're going to work with the inside piece first. It doesn't matter which is which.

Cut those notches on your interior fabric.

We're going to draw four more lines on this inside piece... about 1/8 of an inch to the inside on the four flaps as shown in the picture below. This is to account for the thickness of your cardboard. You'll see what I mean when we start mod-podging.

I like to use my iron and ironing board for this next step. We're going to glue a "hem" all the way around. I used a glue stick but you could use any kind of fabric glue or probably even white craft glue. I say use what you have on hand.

Starting with one of the flaps, apply glue all the way across then fold over onto your innermost line. I like to work from left to right.

After each fold, just run your hot iron over the hem. 

When you come to a corner, apply a bit of glue and fold the corner over as shown.

Now apply some glue to the top of that fold and continue down to the notch. Fold over and iron. 

Repeat this process all the way around.

When you get to your last flap, you'll need to do the corner on the right before you glue your flap down as shown in the photo below.

And that's it for your interior piece. It should look something like this.

Repeat this process of cutting fabric and glue hemming your interior pieces for the two smaller boxes.

That's it for today. 

I'll be back on Monday for the third and final part of this tutorial - attaching the fabric and ribbon.

Have a wonderful weekend!

* This project featured on Mod Podge Rocks here.

** Linked up to Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog here.

Tutorial - Fabric Covered Boxes with Ribbon Ties - Part 1

I've been working on the tutorial for the fabric covered boxes and it's kind of involved. I originally planned to show you how to make one box but decided it would be more fun to show you how to make all three out of a regular old shipping box. I'm going to be posting the instructions in three parts. Here's part 1...

Fabric Covered Boxes with Ribbon Ties

Materials Needed:

• One shipping box (corrugated cardboard type... size doesn't really matter but I would imagine it would be tough to make these if your box is really small. The one I'm using for this tutorial measures 11 1/4"x 8 3/4" x 4")
• Mid to heavy weight home decor fabric to cover boxes (yardage kind of depends on the size of your original box. For mine, 1/2 yard for the big box and 1/4 yard each for the two smaller boxes seemed to be the right amount)
• One small jar of Mod Podge
• Paintbrush (I used a small foam one)
• Fabric scissors
• Regular scissors 
• Fray Check
• One small tube of Fabri-Tac or a regular old glue stick
• One spool of coordinating grosgrain ribbon
• Iron and ironing board
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Clothespins (16 if you have them, but you can get away with using as few as 8)
• Masking tape (I used blue painters tape but any kind will do)
• Sewing machine and matching thread (optional)

First, find one of these... (I've been known to dig them out of the neighbors' trash) :-)

Now we're going to disassemble our shipping box to make the insides of our three fabric covered boxes.

Box #1 (largest box)

Cut off the four top flaps and set them aside.

Now cut the sides of each flap as shown.

So you have something that looks like this.

Now cut off those extra flaps on the bottom of the box and set them aside as well.

Depending on how well the box was taped up to begin with, you may be done here. I felt that my box was a little flimsy so I added some masking tape to two sides.

Your box should now resemble a cross shape when lying flat. You're done with box #1. Set it aside and let's make the inside of box #2.

Box #2 (medium-sized box)

You should now have four small rectangles and two large rectangles. We'll make box #2 with the four smaller rectangles.

One rectangle will be the bottom of your box, two rectangles will be the long sides and you'll cut the last rectangle to make the two short sides.

I measured the short side of the rectangles and determined that they were 4 1/4" long (exactly half the length of one of the long rectangles). I drew a line at the 4 1/4" mark and cut. 

Now lay out all of your pieces and attach them with masking tape as shown.

When I pulled my box sides up, they were not all the same height. The two longer sides were about 1/4" too tall, so I drew a line and cut them to the height of the two smaller sides.

You're done with box #2. Set aside and grab your two long rectangles to make box #3.

Box #3 (the littlest box)

We'll make the small box out of the last two (longer) rectangles. 

Start by measuring the length. Mine was just slightly longer than 11". I thought it would be easier to work with a whole number so I drew a line at the 11" mark and cut that piece off.

I then measured two inches on each end, drew lines, then cut those pieces.

To make the sides, take your other rectangle and mark lines delineating two 2" pieces as shown.

Cut those pieces and assemble all four into the cross shape. Apply masking tape as you did with the two larger boxes.

That's it. You're done with the interior pieces of all three boxes.

I'll be back soon with Part 2 of the tutorial which involves cutting your fabric and maybe even a little mod podging.

As always - if you have any questions, leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.

* This project featured on Mod Podge Rocks here.

** Linked up to Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog here.