Hi! I’m back after my holiday hiatus, let the creativity begin again. I got overwhelmed with holiday orders on Etsy, and then I totally hibernated to recover, but enough with excuses, all that’s important is that I’m back and ready to go!! I have a LOT of catching up to do, so I’m going to try and post as many projects as I can, because I may not be posting a project every week, but I will finish my 30 projects by my 30 week deadline, I promise!!
Project number 9 all began when I spotted this large pile of phone books sitting in a corner of my lobby and I thought, what a waste, maybe I can do something with those! My good friend Ann from All Things Paper had asked me to think up some projects using paper so I decided to focus on phone books as my inspiration.
One of the projects I came up with was a centerpiece, for a dining room table or maybe a coffee table. I designed it to be used with small glass votive candle holders, which protect the paper from the flame.
The technique I used for this centerpiece was to bend the pages of the phone book into the petals, and then glue a ribbon tight around the exterior to hold the pages folded in place but letting them form their own natural curve. For each of the bigger petals (three in each quadrant) I first folded two pieces in towards each other, to make the smaller interior petals, which help give the whole shape a stronger structure. In terms of where to get the pieces of phone book, I first sliced a whole thick phonebook into a strip that was roughly the same height as the candle holders. (Actually I cut two strips that height.) I then had a cardboard mailing tube that I cut into a piece the same height as my phone book strip. The tube formed the center, and then I glued a strip of the phone book on each side of the tube. I then created 4 additional teardrop shaped pieces to hold the candle holders. I created the petals out of the main strips, and then added in the teardrop candle pieces. Finally I wrapped a ribbon around between all the pieces of the petals and around the center tube vertically, to cover the center completely.
Finally I inserted the glass votive holders, lit the candles and I’m ready for a party!
Enjoy, and stay tuned for Project 10 to come soon!
Ciao, Allison
the 3 R's blog 
Nice work! Clever arrangement. Thanks for posting this great idea — lots of possibilities.
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I love this! I’ll have to reblog it, so cute.
How did you cut such large amounts of the phone book? What kind of glue did you use? I’m all intrigued..
I used my large heavy duty Olfa cutting knife to cut the phone book. I held it in place with the ruler and then just kept slicing thicker and thicker (start with your Olfa blade closer in, so it is sturdier, then as you get a thicker cut, lengthen the blade slowly. Long blades will be really floppy for cutting.) The cut usually doesn’t turn out perfectly, but its close enough and you can trip any stray pieces once you have the piece separated from the rest of the phonebook.
For glue I used my trusty glue gun, pretty much my default glue of choice. Its strong, sturdy and sets quickly so you don’t have to hold things in place.
Allison
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Best of luck for the next!
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