Striped Vase

Materials:
*Vase
*Painter's tape
*Acrylic paint
*Glossy acrylic sealer
*Paintbrush
*Optional: glitter paint

Directions:
*Using painter's tape, cover up the regions of the vase that you want to keep unpainted.  This probably would work better on a cylindrical vase than a curvy one like the one I chose because the tape has a difficult time fitting over the curves.
*Paint the part of the vase not covered by tape in a color scheme of your choice, then set aside to dry.
*Optional: add a coat of glitter paint.  Let dry.
*Once your vase has finished drying, carefully peel away the tape.  If you end up with some paint beneath the tape line, carefully scrape away the excess paint with something like a butter knife or a fingernail.
*In a well ventilated area, spray on a couple of coats of acrylic sealer, following the directions on the spray can.

Book Print Paper Rose

Materials:
*Double sided text (e.g. newspaper, ebook pages printed out double sided, old book, etc.)
*Acrylic paint
*Water
*Paintbrush
*Pen
*Scissors
*Wire
*Wire cutters
*All purpose adhesive

Directions:
*Select the text you would like to use for the project.  For my rose, I selected the digitized version of the book Old Time Belles and Cavaliers (one of the many books in public domain that has been digitized by Google) and printed pages from the section on my ancestor Rebecca (Smith) Blodget onto heavyweight paper. 
*Select two pages (or one page if you are using a newspaper) from your source.
*Mix acrylic paint with warm water, then brush the paint across one side of each sheet of paper.  Your paper should end up looking like this:

*Let the paper dry.  If you are in a hurry to finish the craft, try drying the paper using a hair dryer.
*Paint the other side of the pages and let dry.
*Draw petal shapes onto your painted paper like this (they are a little hard to see, but they are drawn in black ink over the text):

*Cut out the petals.
*Cut a piece of wire slightly longer than the length you would like the stem of your rose to be.
*Curl the petals a little so that they develop the shape of real rose petals, then begin gluing the petals to the wire.
*Add some adhesive to the bottom of one of the petals, then attach the petal to the wire.  Wrap the sides of the petal so that they overlap, then glue together.  Repeat for a second petal, creating less overlap than you did with the first one.
*Add additional petals by placing a drop of glue on the base of the petal and affixing to the wire.  As you go, you'll want to add more and more petals to each row.
*Once satisfied with the size of your flower, crease the tops of the outermost layers of petals.

Need a vase for your paper rose?  Come back next week to learn more about a neat technique to decorate a plain vase.

Butterfly Checkers Game

Materials:
*12" x 12" piece of wood
*24 circular wooden pieces about 1" in diameter
*Butterfly patterned paper
*Other paper in two distinct colors
*Glue
*White paint
*Paintbrush
*Scissors

Directions:
*Paint one side of the 12" x 12" piece of wood white, then set aside to dry.
*Cut out 32 butterflies.  Make sure that your chosen butterflies are not much more than an inch at their widest.
*Once the piece of wood has dried, arrange butterflies on the board in a checkered pattern, then glue down the butterfly.
*Trace around one of your wooden circular pieces to create 12 circles of each of the two colors you have chosen and glue these circles to the circular wooden pieces to make your game tokens.

Colorful Cat (or Other Animal) Storage Jars

Materials:
*Empty jars (e.g. pickle jars)
*Plastic animals
*White acrylic paint
*Acrylic paint in colors of your choice
*Paintbrush
*Hot glue gun

Directions:
*Carefully glue plastic animals to the lids of the jars using your hot glue gun.
*Paint the lids and the attached animals white, then let dry.  Depending on the color of your animals, you may need to use multiple coats.
*Once dry, paint the lids in colors of your choice.

Tip: For a smoother, more even paint job, you may want to try using spray on paint instead.