Tie Dye Envelopes

First I should apologize for not blogging for a whole week. I can't believe how fast this week has gone by. Anyway, I had done this project last weekend to make the envelopes that go with the homemade Christmas cards a bit prettier.

I first got the idea from this site. Instead of dyeing regular paper, I dyed envelopes.

Materials:
aluminum pan
shaving cream
food coloring
lots of paper towels
skewer (or something to stir with)
foam brush (optional – just for smoothening out the foam)

Instructions:


1. Spray some shaving cream into pan and spread it evenly onto the pan. Go easy, that stuff spreads a lot.

2. Put a couple drops of food coloring, whatever colors you'd like to use.



3. Stir the food coloring around some. I found that going in circles one direction works well for some really good designs. Also, don't over do the stirring, the swirls will not be as defined.


4. Put the envelope onto the foam and gently tap down so the foam/color hits a lot of the envelope.


5. Remove the envelope from the foam and blot the shaving cream off. Don't worry if you don't see the swirls when you first pick up the envelope from the foam. Once you blot, you should see the design. I've tried to wipe it down, and it smears the color – so I wouldn't suggest it. Blotting seems to work the best. Did I mention that you'll be using a lot of paper towels?




6. Once you got the shaving cream off, you just need to let it dry.

As an added bonus, the paper feels smooth and smells pretty good at the end of it all.

Gravlax Recipe

Following my Thanksgiving blogs, a good friend of RadLinc Crafts, Captain Monkeypants, asked a few questions about the salmon that we had pictured. So, as I answered her, I thought that this was a perfect time to do a blog entry on it. I can't admit to being an expert to making this seeing as how I've only learned about making it (and about what it's called) earlier this year, but we've made it three times and so far so good.

Gravlax is a Scandinavian way of preparing salmon literally meaning “buried salmon.” I guess, back in the day, fresh salmon was buried under dry sand where it was fermented and cured. Nowadays, we can control conditions better by burying the salmon in a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, pepper and dill weed and “curing” the fish in our fridge. The recipe I'm following is taken from this really cool site for foodies called Cooking For Engineers.

The best parts about preparing this dish is it's easy (since you only need 5 ingredient), and it's delicious. The not so great part is that it takes 48 hours before you can taste the goods. So let's get started.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb fresh salmon fillet (we used skinless)
• 2 tbsp kosher salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp pepper (I used a 50:50 ratio of white and black pepper, mostly because I had it any combination should work fine tho)
• dill weed (a small bunch from the grocery store works well).

Preparing:

1. Lay down a big piece of saran wrap and place the salmon
2. Mix the salt, sugar and pepper together in a bowl.

3. Cover the salmon with the salt-sugar-pepper mixture... all over, both sides, and on the sides of those.

4. Divide the dill weed into two. Put one half on the top of the salmon and the other half on the under side of the salmon so the salmon is sandwiched between the dill.

5. Wrap tightly with the saran wrap.

6. Now you need to compress it. I used two pyrex dishes and three cans of corn. Stacked like this from bottom to top: pyrex dish, wrapped salmon, pyrex dish, three cans of corn.

7. Put the whole thing in the fridge for 48 hours. Within that 48 hours, every 12 hours turn the salmon over, and pour out the oil that will inevitably form. A lot of oil comes out, so don't freak out.
8. After 48 hours, take the salmon out, drain the oil, toss the dill and saran wrap, and rinse the salmon really well.
9. Slice the salmon thinly using a fillet knife or an otherwise sharp knife.

We like to eat this on toasted bagels with some cream cheese. Crackers and baguette slices work really well too. This makes an awesome make ahead appetizer or a really good snack.

Enjoy!

Fabric Gift Tags

I was thinking about fusing some fabric onto cardstock one day, and decided to google up how to do it. Anyway, I found this site that shows how to make gift tags by fusing fabric onto cardstock. So, I gave it a try. Thought it would look really good with matching cinch bags like the ones I made a month or so ago. Anyway, here's my how-to.
Materials:

• Card stock
• fabric
• no sew adhesive (heat n bond) fusing material.
• Ironing board and iron
 

Download Template Here. (for 8 x 11 paper, not 12 x 12)


Instructions:
1. First, I start out with penciling the lines that I'm going to cut for the tags


2. Next, I cut the adhesive to the size of the cardstock.

3. The adhesive material has a paper side and the adhesive side. Put the adhesive side next to the wrong side of the cardstock (where you don't have the drawn lines). Place both the adhesive and the cardstock lined up on top of an ironing board with the adhesive's paper side up. Iron, the sheets together, staying at each spot for about 2 seconds. Once you've thoroughly fused the two pieces together your about ready to introduce the fabric.

4. Cut the fabric to the same size as the cardstock and adhesive.
5. Remove the paper side of the adhesive. The adhesive should stay with the cardstock as you peel the paper away.
6. Put together the fabric's wrong side to the cardstock's newly fused adhesive side and place onto ironing board fabric side up. Iron all together same rule as last time... about 2 seconds on each spot. Be careful when ironing the fabric on. Start with one side and work your way slowly to the other, or the fabric might bunch up. You should now have a good fuse between the cardstock and fabric. Let's finish it up.

7. Alright, so remember those lines you drew on? Time to use them and cut out your tags. Don't forget to erase the lines once your done.
8. Use a hole puncher, and punch a hole out for the ribbon. I used an 8” piece of ribbon for a tie down.

9. In addition, you can stamp on a To:/From: label onto the card... and there you have it. Optionally, instead of drawing lines or stamping, you can print out some gift tag designs onto cardstock and fuse fabric on the other side.

These cards pictured are about 1 1/2” x 3” and a 12 x 12 cardstock gave me 30 gift tags.

Now that that's all done, all I need to do is buy the gifts to tag. :-) Happy Shopping!