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| This shows the size difference of the laminate chips |
At this point, we have all seen the laminate chips you can
get from home improvement stores free (or you can purchase them at some smaller
independently owned art supply stores).
Those chips are small, about 2 ½” x 1 ¾” – which makes them perfect for
key rings, necklaces and a whole slew of other projects. Well, not only do I have a lifetime supply of
the small laminate chips I also have a ton of the larger sample chips – the
larger chips are about 5” x 3” – too large to make a key ring or necklace
(well, I suppose you could make either out of the large chips, but. . .). I have had these for ages, and truthfully, I
forgot I even had them until I went into the garage and saw the plastic bin
marker with “Laminate Chips & Misc.” I opened the bin and grabbed a bunch of the
larger chips and brought them inside, put them on my desk and proceeded to
drive myself insane trying to think up for a use for them. I picked through the chips and found some
that were textured and/or a color I wasn’t too fond of. A few even had some partial writing on them
with what appeared to be a thick black permanent marker. I took four of them and gessoed them with a
few coats until you couldn’t tell what color they were and the writing was gone
(using thin coats and letting them dry completely between coats – as I still
wasn’t sure what I was going to make with them I wasn’t in much of a
hurry).
So I had these four large laminate chips all gessoed up with
no where to go. Finally, I thought of an
idea – how cute would little art boards be? Something that you can use to
display your current favorite ATC or small piece of art work? I thought they’d be adorable! I colored them with some Distress Paint (I
used Chipped Sapphire, Fired Brick and Mowed Lawn – I kept one just white)
spritzed with water, painted some more and let them dry. I protected the chips
with a wash of matte gel mixed with water to just ensure the paint I used to
decorate the chips wouldn’t rub off or flake.
Now comes the genius part (I know, hard to top my idea, but
I think this does) I had been saving pop tops from soda cans and cat food
cans. The little ring inside the part
that attaches to the can fit perfectly inside the ring at the top of the chips!
I took a picture of what part of the ring I am talking about – sometimes it is
too hard to put what you mean into words and a picture really can be worth a
million words!
Anyway, I hooked the little ring inside the hole at the top
of the chip and figured out that was what I’d use as a hanger. Perfect!
That way you can hang them on a push pin that is already on your bulletin
board, hook them on a hook (I’m thinking of those heavy duty magnets you can
get with the hook on them so you could put the chips on your fridge) or hang
them on a nail. If you use soda can pop
tops the hanging opening is smaller so choose the size opening you’ll need
based on where you plan on hanging them.
But, even if you use the smaller tab, you can always add ribbon,
ornament hooks, unfolded paper clips or whatever to make them so you can hang
them anywhere. You really don’t need the little part on the pop tab since you
are going to glue them on anyway, but I think it’s a neat trick. I used E6000 to glue my tabs on, putting the glue
on the back of the chip over the hole in the chip and all. You aren’t going to be able to see it and in
the next step, you are going to add even more glue to stabilize it further.
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| Small binder, or bulldog, clips |
OK, I have my hook situation down, what about a hanger of
some sort so you can change whatever it is that you have on the chip? Back to the drawing board again. I thought
about paper clips, but I thought that using something like that would make it
too easy to tear whatever it is you had displayed; I thought about some magnetic
attachment, but then you’d have to make whatever you wanted to hang magnetized
in some way, too. Then I realized that
something similar to what is on a clipboard would be perfect! But I didn’t have
anything like that in my stash. After mulling the situation over, I decided
that the mini bulldog (also known as binder clips) clips would work perfectly! They are small enough,
only about 1 ½” when they are closed, even smaller when they are open. And I have those; I have a lot of those! And if you don’t have these you can easily
purchase them in any office supply store, I have even seen them at the dollar
store. I took my mini binder clips and
glued them on the front using the E6000 again and a craft stick to sort of
smear the glue around and level it off a bit.
You aren’t going to see this either so don’t really worry about it.
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| This blob of glue holding the clip also helps to stabilize the pop tab |
Since I left the binder clip black for the silver &
white chip & I had a blue clip I used on the blue one, I ended up painting
some of the mini clips to match the 2 chips I had left. I first painted them with gesso then with
alcohol ink markers, but I should have sanded them first because some of the
gesso came off in spots. I decided to
leave them to dry (the alcohol ink) overnight and see if I could save them in
the morning. I didn’t like the way the
clips came out so I tried another route to coloring them. I just pouring some colored alcohol ink and
smearing it all over the binder clip with a q-tip. That covered much better
than the marker did. I really didn’t
like the red bulldog clip at all, so I trashed it and colored a new one with a
gold Krylon Leafing pen. Much
better! I decide to go with red &
gold so I also used the leafing pen to color the pop tab and I edged the chip
as well.
For the little signs, I used Publisher, made them and
printed them out but you could just as easily use any word processing program,
your own handwriting, cut out letters, stickers or stamp them. I matted one on silver card stock & the
other I edged in Faded Jeans Distress Ink; put one on the blue tile and the
other on the silver & white tile. The trick is to attach the signs with pop
dots so they go over the blob of glue and where the pop tab and the hole in the
tile meet. Since I used the pop tab
“backwards” on the silver & white chip, I finished off the tab
by wrapping a sparkly silver ribbon around it and gluing the ends to the back.
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| Tab on the left is the "wrong" way |
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I
then went through my sticker stash and used some stickers on the red one and
the green one – I also think rub-ons would be cool, but the green chip has a
texture and I didn’t want to chance messing up any of the others (my track
record with rub-ons is not the best. I
even bought a special tool that is supposed to make it so much easier and
almost foolproof. Note the “almost”
foolproof). Once I was done with the
stickers I gave the red chip another matte gel & water wash; I left the
green chip alone since the stickers are dimensional (the epoxy sticker kind)
and I was afraid the wash would cause the stickers to fall off. Since the backs of the chips were a mess of
glue, paint and gesso, I covered them with some patterned paper; being extra
careful around where the pop tabs had been glued. I think these are a great
upcycle project and they are really cute and useful.
I have SO many ideas for these large chips now and I know
you will be seeing more projects using them in the future. I am finally going
to be hitting some tag sales tomorrow & I can’t WAIT – I hope to score some
arty stuff. Thanks for reading & looking!
I am entering these in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
“Going Green” which features projects using recycled material or projects
featuring the color green. Have a crafty
day!
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| Here is the blue chip at work |
