Diamond Painting is a newer craft that is similar to a paint-by-numbers type of activity without the paint. The finished piece also reminds me a bit of a cross-stitched piece, but instead of using embroidery thread, like DMC floss, the image comes together by placing faceted resin diamonds to a sticky canvas with a design imprinted upon it.

While attending a craft group meet up, I was pleased to see that one of the group members was working away on a large piece that was colorful and had a gorgeous shimmering finish. I could not stop asking questions about this clever activity. She was working on a cheeky cow design where the cow had a brilliant mask of flowers and there were so many colors to work with that I was immediately inspired to get my hands on a kit and try diamond painting for myself. There was only one downside to this activity...I had no idea what to do with the finished design!

My home is full of antique furniture and art. These diamond paintings, although beautiful when they are completed and framed, are just to modern for my home. I wanted to find a scaled down option so I logged on to my Amazon account and starting searching.

There are some small card designs on Amazon and probably on other places on the web, but the selections were limited to holiday greeting cards. Diamond painting tools were plentiful as well, but the "diamond drills" or faceted resin diamonds were a bit harder to find. Fortunately, I did find two options that worked; one for square diamonds and one for round diamonds. Once I managed to find the materials that I needed (the "diamonds", the tool kit and the way to make my cards sticky) I was ready to create my own DIY Diamond Painting Greeting Cards. 

 

Now I needed some designs, so I got to work. First I designed a beautiful Vintage Rose so I could created Mother's Day cards for my mom and my mother-in-law. Next I created a cute Narwhal design, then a simple Geometric design. These are all for sale in the shop. Just click here to see the whole collection.

 

I have long desired to play with quilling techniques and use quilled paper designs on handmade cards. I have purchased some of the basic tools over time and for one reason or another I had lost track of them. While perusing one of my local craft stores I saw a small selection of quilling tools and most of them were from Quilled Creations. This was a company I was familiar with because in the past I had purchased their Quilling Design Board and I loved using it.

I didn’t take long for me to decide that this was a craft that I needed to revisit and the Quilled Creations Beginner Kit ended up in my hands. Now as a working business owner, I could not just sit and play and that kit waited for me for a bit, but while it waited I just kept accumulating more tools and soon I had a collection.

In this unboxing video I will show you the tools I have collected and give a brief overview of how to use them. There will be plenty of follow up videos to show how to make basic shapes and then advanced designs. Ultimately I hope to provide a comprehensive set of videos to give you a one-stop-shop full of ideas and projects on the subject of quilling.

The tools I have gathered are extensive, but in the video I do not show a fringer or a quilling coach, and I have even begun designing an SVG file to see if I could use the Cricut to cut regular strips of all sizes and also the fancy strips for petaled flowers and the swirled flower designs as well. I will keep you posted on my progress with that Quilling SVG file.

Quilling can be used to create card decorations, wall art, jewelry and miniatures. Customizing and creating artistic names is also very popular.

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The Cricut Maker is the latest digital cutting machine made by Provo Craft. It is able to cut paper, vinyl, cardstock, chipboard, bass wood, balsa wood, leather, fabric, felt and iron-on transfers...and I'm sure there is more! This is an elegant machine that is perfect for the home crafter and solid enough to make industrial quality cuts. At Craft Curiosity I have a number of tutorials coming for wonderful products to create and enjoy.

I have been a big fan of the Cricut cutting machines for a long time and I have spent a fair amount of time creating my own SVG files to use for greeting cards, box cards and most recently I created perpetual calendars which I will share here on the website. It's really great if you can design your own patterns, but the beauty is that you do not have to do that to enjoy the machine. The Cricut Design Space is full of amazing patterns, cuts, prints and now even sewing projects that are so easy to accomplish that you will not need advanced design skills to create beautiful projects. I highly recommend subscribing to Cricut Access where you have the choice of having the fonts only, standard access and premium access. If you can do an annual subscription you will save quite a bit, but you can choose fonts only or standard for a nominal monthly fee.

Unboxing the Cricut Maker is just the beginning of a world of new projects, tutorials and creative ideas that will be made available to you from Craft Curiosity. I will do my best to give you solid tutorials and share everything I know and as always your comments, suggestions and questions will be answered to the best of my ability. I'm so happy we can take this journey together!

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Handwritten Foil Embossing is a new technique for me. Imagine how exciting it will be to add your signature to a letter or card and then emboss it with beautiful foil. Think of how many items you could personalize with a truly elegant finish. I can think of so many items where this could be useful and beautiful.

This Craft Curiosity video shows an introductory technique that you can recreate without a large investment in a foiling application machine such as the Heidi Swapp Foiling machine. You can skip the embossing altogether by using a bone folder. A bone folder is a dull flat tool that can be used in paper folding or origami, but it would also be very effective here to press the foil down firmly onto the Zig Memory System Two Way Glue Pen.

When you use thermal reactive foil products one thing that you want to keep in mind is that you can use every bit of the foil. If you create a project with a design like you can see in the Handwritten Foil Embossing video; a design where you are going to press the foil and then peel it up, and then have a scrap piece with a lot of remaining gold foil, you can use the rest of the foil for additional projects. Be mindful of this when you are making something. You want to keep every scrap until no foil remains. Another little secret is if you pull up your foil and one part didn’t stick, just put some more foil over it and press again, firmly. Peel back the sheet and you should have a nicely covered area.

Check out the video to see what I did in just a matter of a few minutes and if you have any comments, I would love to hear from you.

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