Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Recycled Crafts Contributor, Anitra from the blog “Coffee Pot People”.

It’s Christmas in August! Have you started getting ready for Christmas yet? After all, December is just four months away, which for a crafter qualifies as “just around the corner”.

For me, a big part of the festivities is the gift wrap, and already I’ve made up a small group of package trims from store-bought paper doilies, to be added to as I have time.

I was inspired by this tutorial, and have added some of my own touches.

Begin with a paper doily that has several rounds of design, and cut those rounds apart:

Take the largest round and fold and pleat it into a ruffle, and glue it to a circle of cardstock about 2″ in diameter. Take the next size round, ruffle it, and glue that on top of the larger round. You’ll probably have to mash the doily a bit to do this.

Cover the center of your cardstock circle with the center of the paper doily, adding a button, as you see in the picture at the top.

If you want to add color to your altered doily, you can do that either before or after the ruffling and gluing. Here, I’m coloring afterwards (I used pink and violet for this one):

Another idea is to add a layer or two of silk flower. Just poke a hole through the disk and thread the stem of a flower through, gluing another disk on the back to hide the stem and hold it in place:

Is your doily solid at the center? Try cutting the center into pie-wedges:

Gather and flatten the wedges, and glue them to a 2″ cardstock circle:

For this altered doily, I layered metallic gold and white, and finished up with a bejeweled brad:

Need more ideas? Here’s what happens if you turn the largest round cut from a doily “inside-out” and pleat the inside edge instead of the outside:

This altered doily was made using a variation of that technique, and finished off with wired crystals and a bridal spray:

I hope you enjoy altering your doilies as much as I did mine!