Maya Road Design Team

Twine for Texture

Hi everyone!

This is Karen and I am here to share a little tag with you today. If you're like me and have been hoarding twine and pins, this one will appeal to you:

 

The first thing I did for this tag was to cover the background with lots and lots of glue and lay down strips of twine. I didn't even cut the ends first and just went back and forth until the whole thing was finished. Then I cut the edges and painted all around with a bright green acrylic paint.

I then adhered my little envelope and filled it with all the pins that make me happy. For the canvas butterfly, I sprayed some Maya Mist on a baby wipe and just blotched it all over my butterfly (beautiful system for people like me who are deathly afraid of the spray itself.)

Then I grabbed two chipboard words "love" and "you" and painted them with the same acrylic green I'd used on the edges of the tag. I decided I wasn't loving the finish so I covered the whole thing with glossy accents and voila! it looked much shinier.

 

A few colorful strips of paper twine cording (one of my favorite products ever!) and my little tag was done. A lovely addition to any present!

Have you ever covered your tag with twine? If not, I definitely recommend it, it's a fast and lovely way to introduce some texture. If so, please link me up in the comments, I'd love to see them!

A, B, C... is easy as 1, 2, 3

I just had to use that as the title of my post because I made a fun and colorful ABC learning Flip Book a while ago that I am sharing here today.  Was it really easy to make?  Easy as... well... you know!!  ;-)

All it took was a fun collection of Maya Road products and some simple crafting techniques and I think that it would make any little learner happy to turn the pages that are mounted on the acrylic stand.

I wanted to used different textures for the pages so that it was sort of a touch and feel book too.  Every page has a canvas button that I machine stitched on with red thread and there are also lots of chipboard pieces.  All of them were painted then either coated with crackle paint, Diamond Glaze or glitter.


There are some of the Maya Road Wood pieces added to the pages too, like the snowflakes shown above.


I think that it's fun to make something out of the ordinary with my scrap and paper crafting supplies.  I love a family album, but something like this is just as unique and interesting and it's even a bit of a challenge to create with something besides photos... and it's useful too!



Another fun texture is the zipper!  Especially since there really aren't a lot of "Z" words that I thought would be fitting in an ABC learning book... now how did you know, Maya Road?!?! :-)

I started by adding vintage alphabet pictures to the tabbed chipboard pages that I covered with patterned papers.  The tabs were stamped with the cute "Just My Type" Clear stamp set and the alphas are the" Jonathan Mini Alphabet" set.


After the basics, it was just a matter of adding all of the fun texturized elements.  There are so many choices in the Maya Road product line and I was amazed at how easy it was to find something for each letter of the alphabet! 

Here is a link to all of the Maya road products that I used:
Jonathan Mini Alphabet set
Just My Type Clear Stamp set
Canvas Button Pieces
Mini Kraft Jotter Tags- white
Kraft Large ticket strips- white
Mini Gingham Trims
Love Chipboard Banner set
Home Tweet Home Mini chipboard set
Autumn Mini Chipboard set
When Skies Are Grey Chipboard set
Zipper Trim- Bubblegum Pink
Vintage Wood Snowflakes 
Vintage Paper Posies
Motifs Chipboard 
Super Nova Chipboard 
Twine Cording- Tomato Red

Happy creating!

Christmas Mitten Gift Sack

Hello everyone!  Now that Thanksgiving is officially behind us, it's really the time to start thinking Christmas!  I always love creating cute Christmas gifts for teachers, and I think that I've already come up with that special something!  I am beyond thrilled, let me tell you. :)

I first started dabbling with the Clear Acrylic Mitten Coaster Book and I thought I would do the traditional mini-album project.  Well, the creative juices started flowing (and that's a rarity so I have to take full advantage) and I pulled out some fabric to see what I could do.  Well, I didn't have any kind of holiday-themed fabric so I grabbed the next best thing....BURLAP!

Can you see where I am going here? :)  I simply took one of the pages from the acrylic album and cut two pieces from the burlap and quickly sewed them together...no special stitch, just a straight stitch all along the edges (minus the top!) 

I was so excited that it makes the PERFECT sized little mitten gift bag!   That is a full-sized candy cane tucked in there, and, of course, I used my favorite Maya Road products to embellish with!

One of the pieces of the Snowflake Chipboard Set fit perfectly atop my mitten for decoration. 

Also, the Ruffle Crochet Trim - Double was a perfect match for the cuff of the mitten.  I swear, it's little discoveries like these that make me just giddy!  I glued some Small Organza Roses Ribbon - Olive right along the middle of the trim

And finally I added a Vintage Alterable Trinket - Large, along with some of my favorite trinket pins, Hearts, Vintage Black Pearl, and Vintage Round Pearl.

Easy Peasy friends I promise!!!  I hope you got some great ideas from this.  I know I just love it when I can think outside the box.  :)

Melissa Sauls

Join in the chalkboard fun!

Alright, I guess I might be late to the party - I read lots of DIY-projects involving chalkboard paint like, a year ago or more - but only recently actually got to play with it myself. But my oh my - what great fun you can have with just a little chalkboard paint! Truly!

For this project, I used the Pennant Chipboard Album.

Here's the instructions, although it's fairly easy to do so you shouldn't really need instructions =)

1. Find the clean edged chipboard and apply chalkboard paint on it as per its instructions (the paint, that is. I have no idea if all chalkboard paint acts the same :) ). For mine I tested it both with and without gessoing the chipboard. I think I actually prefer to do this without gessoing the chipboard - without it took me two layers of chalkboard paint, with gesso I needed three layers for a proper coverage.

2. Find the scalloped chipboard and either spray or paint it. The front chalkboard was covered in orange acrylic paint, the back chalkboard was covered in Maya Mist (one layer of Bublegum Metallic Mist then topped off with Dragon Fruit Pink Mist). Note: I adhered the chalkboard layer upon the scalloped chipboard, hence didn't need to paint/mist all of the chipboard, only the scalloped part.

3. Find some ribbon (here: Candy Striped Ribbon) or twine to decorate the top of the chalkboard. Optional: I wanted to decorate the twine some by adding small, cute trinkets to it: Wooden Mini Spools and Trinket Beads: Hearts and Butterflies.

4: I decided to attach the chalk pen to the chalkboard. This by securing the twine to a wooden button before hot gluing the chalk pen to the button.Tip: Depending on whether your kid is right or left handed - make sure the twine is on the "right" side for your kid.

There you have it - an easy peasy chalkboard project your kid will love! Mine sure did (aged 6 and 10)! And - it really didn't take that long to assemble - like 90% of the effort was spent waiting for paint&mist to dry.

Hope you enjoyed this mini-inspiration project and is now tempted to try it yourself. Remember - just because it says it's a mini album doesn't mean it have to be used for that, you know! :)

Have a lovely week!

-Ania

Let's Go! Beep Beep Bus

Morning Roadies and TGIF!  Today I have a fun project I made using a mini album for CHA-S. I used the School Bus Mini Album is a very different way.  Not having any little ones of my own in school I was stumped for ideas.  In an art class back in high school we had done something similar with chipboard cut outs of our names.  So channeling my inner Mrs. Hyke I made my bus 3D.

I scored and folded an extra piece of chipboard between two of the pages of the album to create the bus.  Similar to what I did on THIS tutorial to put it all together.  

I used a lot of dimensional foam on the extra bus parts to create some depth.  I punched holes in the top and added wood dowels to hang my mini banner from.

Supplies Used:

School Bus Mini

Foundations Chipboard

Maya Mist Sand Metallic 

Acrylic Alphabet

Trinket Flower Pin

Mini Banner Chipboard set

Have a good weekend!

Jen

Two Minis

Hello Roadies,

I have two mini albums to share with you today. 

The first is a little mini art journal album.  I used the interior pages of a binder album to create the cover.  I love the little tabs sticking off the side.  I covered these pages with old book texts and distressed them.  Next i added the adorable Noah acrylic letters on top of the book pages. 

*NOTE: So your acrylic pieces don't get scratched, Maya Road protects these pieces with a plastic coating.  Make sure you peel off this plastic coating before using them in your projects.

I used a page from the Coffee Cup Coaster Album and covered it with pattern paper.  Outlining it with a brown pen & popping it up with Helmar's Pop dots help make it the focus.  The interior has watercolor paper so it can stand up to anything i choose to do on the interior...mists, paints, etc.

This bee hive album is so adorable.  I decided to capture the roles each of us take in our house.  The front is actually the back of the album.  I just love those honeycomb pieces.  I coated the cover with gesso, Hydrangea Blue Mist, and a little bit of glitter.  I love the way gesso makes the mist really pop.

Here are some of the interior pages.

Lots of mists & gesso & paints through out the mini.  Love how well the kraft envelopes & tags complement the pages.  I hope you find some inspiration in these pages.

Love

Ronda

Bottlecaps

So a funny story about our bottlecaps - our mega bottlecaps  were one of our very first products we ever released.

We released these in 2005 and we had a lot of them. I honestly think it took us a long while to sell out of them. After we were done with them, there was this sudden interest in them. We would get 2 calls a day for people begging us to find them some. People offered to buy our mold for them. So we brought them back in 2009 and we added 3" ones in 2010 and 4" ones this time for CHA-W 2011.

At the show, DT member Lia made some of her FABULOUS bottlecap creations:

(and yes after I took this photo, I did notice the sun was missing so we did a quick repair job at the show)

Anyhow, Lia does an amazing job with bottlecaps. Things that I cannot do but she did inspire me.  So last night, I dug out a couple of my 2" bottlecaps and put my spin on them:

I took some of our bottlecaps and started layering some papers, stickers, mini photos and embellishments in them. One trick I picked up from Lia is FOAM DOTS! Foam dots under the circle paper gives it a nice pop. Foam dots under the photo gives it another lift:

And some of our new acrylic houses layered on a transparency piece looks so lovely too:

I added some of our satin pleat edging to this bottlecap to turn it into a flower center:

All so easy to do and great little embellishments to turn into necklaces, magnets or even for mini albums. 

I hope you are inspired too! 

Oh Boy Clear Acrylic Wavy Layer Book

I thought I would share an acrylic album with you today. I actually haven't had a lot of these but did love the end product! Love the wavy Layers!!!! This is my nephew Reilly

 

1.    Clear Acrylic Wavy Layer Book

2.    Gears Mini Chipboard

3.    Turns Chipboard Sheet

4.    Bethany Mini Alphabet Chipboard Set

5.    Mixed Scallop Mini Triangle Banners

6.    1 page Modern Label Coaster Album

7.    Kraft Journaling Tags

8.    Kraft Mini Tags

9.    Kraft Library Tags with envelope

10.    Microchips Bright Stars

11.    Vintage Crochet Trim-Wave-Turquoise

12.    Buttons Mini Chipboard Set

13.    Olivia Mini Alphabet Chipboard

14.    Kraft Envelopes Square

15.    Papers are Basic Grey

Thanks for Looking

have a great day!

Sarah M

Christmas Countdown

Hi Roadiesl! :)  I know we have a little while before Christmas, but I just wanted to share this Christmas countdown idea with you today. Maybe you'll get inspired to get an early start for the holidays.

I used Maya Road's Clear Acrylic Calendar Stand w/ chipboard pages  to help me create this project.  Basically the acrylic stand is used to hold up the snowman and a little felt pocket (in the back) that holds the extra chipboard pages.  Since the stand comes with 6 pages I numbered both sides of the chipboard to get a 12 day countdown. To apply the hooks just screw them though the front of chipboard body, then line up the screws ends to the acrylic stand's pre-drilled holes. Use washers to secure the ends.  Tip: I didn't have washers, so I used Wood Bingo Numbers  at the back of the screws instead. They were the perfect size and kept the end of the screw concealed.

 

For the body of the snowman I used one of the Birdcage Book pages and then cut the head and hat out of 2 layers of raw chipboard.

Yummy Maya Glitter was applied to the Philadephia Chipboard Numbers and Mini Snowflakes.

 

In this close up you can see how I embellished the snowman with some of MR's new trims.  My favorite trim and favorite part of the snowman has to be his mouth.  I just spritzed a 2 inch piece of the Bubble Dot - Crochet Trim with Brown Mist, let it dry and then glued it in place.

With Halloween coming up this project could easily be adapted into a little monster or ghost.  Have fun!

Jennifer

Maya Road supplies used:

Clear Acrylic SM Calender Stand w/chipboard pages

Birdcage Chipboard Book

Large Organza Roses Ribbon

Satin Pleat Ribbon

Bubble Dot - Crochet Trim

Philadephia Chipboard Letters

Snowflakes Mini Chipboard Set

Crystal Trinket Pins

Vintage Pearl Pins

Mixed Scallop Mini Triangle Banner Album (nose)

Snowflake Coaster (arms)

Kraft Mini Tags

Maya Glitter (Cherry Red and Iridescent)

Wood Bingo Calender Numbers

An album cover of new CHA-S yummys

Hi everyone! How is your weekend going? Today I'd like to share with you an album I created for Maya Road's CHA-S booth. The cover is full of new CHA-S goodies, and I love them all!

  

What are your favorites from those you've seen so far? Lots more yums to be shared, stay tuned!

x

Lia