"Vintage" Music Easter Prints

I don’t know why I am so drawn to using sheet music in so many of my craft projects but I am!  Maybe because I always wished I had learned to play a musical instrument or wished I had a great singing voice but for whatever reason, I just love incorporating sheet music with my projects.  Add to that my love of anything “vintage” and this is what I came up with the other day.

 

To begin with, I had to find an internet site where I could download and print sheet music legally and for free (of course!).  I found this site that allows you to print out just the first page of the music (which is all I wanted anyway!) .  The site is www.freehandmusic.com and you can search by title or in my case, I also searched by topic such as “bunny”, “Easter”, etc.  I chose "Easter Parade" by Irving Berlin, Peter Cottontail and "Bunny Hop" which is a 'standard' for children learning to play the piano.

Once the page was up on the screen, I right clicked on the image and copied, then pasted it into a Word document, adjusted it to the size I wanted, centered it and then printed it out on cream colored card stock. 

Next I went back to the Word document and inserted a Text Box into the document on a SEPARATE page.  To find the image I wanted to superimpose OVER the sheet music I just did a Google search for “Vintage Easter Postcards”.  Once I found the image I liked, I right clicked on it, chose “copy” and then pasted it INTO the text box I had created.  At this point, you may have to change the properties of the text box so that there is no outline and no fill.    (The ‘trickiest’ part may be getting the image aligned vertically so that it prints where you want it to on the sheet music.  You can play around with you’re your alignment on scrap paper first and then do your final prints on the card stock.) Finally, I re-inserted my card stock with the music already printed on it and ran it through the printer a second time, this time printing the image page and there you have it . . . your sheet music with the image over the top of it, music still showing through.

 

Now for the fun part (in case the first part wasn’t fun enough!) – aging and decorating your images.  I use a number of background type stamps with a combination of beige, gray and brown inks to get that ‘aged’ look.  Then I tore the image out around the edges and using a sponge, rubbed ink on the torn edges and slightly inside the image.  You can curl up and bend the edges for an even more aged look. 

I then mounted the images on decorative paper, then dark brown card stock and added a few colored eyelets for decoration.   

But my favorite part was adding the ultra-fine glitter.  Using a 2-way Glue Pen from Stampin’ Up! I drew/colored a few spots on the images where I wanted glitter.  I sprinkled it on, tapped off the excess and wow – that really added to the ‘vintage’ look of these.  

 

I already had the pre-cut vintage tags so to print on them, I printed my image or saying on paper then using removable tape, adhered the tag OVER the typed words or image and ran it through the printer . . . the image/words are exactly where you want them on the tag!  

  

I decided to add them to this existing arrangement in my dining room by simply putting the Easter cards in front of the pictures I have in year round.  Also, I added the little decorative tags using “Sticky Tack” so after Easter, I can just remove the tags and the pictures and these go back to ‘everyday’ decorations.

 

Now you see that I made three of these and I have one extra.  Hmmm . . . what should I do with it?  I know – I’ll give it away!  Yep – follow the instructions below to my first ever “Give Away” and you could win this adorable framed Peter Cottontail picture!  And if you don’t win it . . . well now you can “hop” off (sorry) and make your own!

 

Congratulations to Bobbi at "A Few of My Favorite Things" for winning this picture!

"Vintage" Inspired Jewelry Bookmarkers

Probably like a lot of gals out there, I have bags of orphaned earrings, necklaces that I always intended to get repaired, pins and other jewelry I always liked but just never wore.  Recently while at JoAnn’s I was looking for some silver jump rings for another project and I saw these great little “clasps” (don’t know the real name for them) and I grabbed a bag not sure what I’d do with them .  Then while cleaning my stamping room and trying to organize my ribbon "stash", it occurred to me what I could do with those clasps . . . make book markers!

So taking one of the clasps (shown here) and pieces of ribbon, I put one end of the ribbon inside the opening and squeezed it shut using pliers.  One thing I realized is that if the ribbon is very thin, you need to fold it a few times so the little ‘teeth’ of the clamp can hold tightly.  

Then I foraged through my bag of ‘jewelry’ and found these pieces that I thought looked pretty dangling from the end of my ribbon bookmarkers.  I used a simple jump ring to attach them to the clasp. 

To seal the other end of the ribbon and keep it from raveling, I just used a lighter to carefully melt/seal the end of the ribbon.

 

Warning:  Making these is ADDICTING so you better have a lot of friends who like to read and need pretty bookmarkers because once you start, you may not be able to stop!