Brown Paper Packages with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

I feel so luck to have gotten Julie Fei-Fan Balzer for this Friday’s tutorial.  If you haven’t heard of Julie, go check out her blog/website (click on her name above).  I love the boldness of color of her art pieces but her doodling blows me away!!!

I’ve taken this from bio from Julie’s blog.

“

Hello! My name is Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and I am a mixed-media artist living in New York City.

I tend to focus integrating my every day life into everything I do. I love art that looks handmade - lots of tearing and inking and handwriting and hand cutting. I'm also a technique and tool junkie, always trying to find a way to push my supplies further and see all the possibilities.

I'm a general craft-a-holic. I've dabbled in everything from polymer clay to cross stitch to paper making. But the great crafty loves of mine are scrapbooking, art quilts and jewelry. And I like to combine all three of my favorite methods of expression into mixed media creations!”

Read more: http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/about-me-julie-feifan-balzer.html#ixzz1MCo49WEX

Julie wanted to share the following tutorial with you.  While it was originally written for the holidays, it could certainly be used for anytime of the year!!!

One of the things about the holidays is that there's lots of cooking and baking going on.  At our house that means paper bags.

We are going to transform those bags into funky home made wrapping paper!  I've got three different decorating ideas for you, but the prep is the same every time.

Cut the handles off of  your bags.

Cut down the side of the bag and around the bottom...

...so that you'll be left with a long strip and the bottom of the bag (which you can throw away).

Flip that long strip over and you've got a great surface for decorating!

STITCH IT

Cut out a collection of fabric circles.

Using the free motion foot on your machine, stitch around each fabric circle.

To get to the next circle simply doodle with your sewing machine in a swirling line.

Your finished wrapping paper is ready to be wrapped around a gift!

You can see that I added one of the leaves from this tutorial to finish off the packaging.

PAINT IT

I'm the girl who can't stay away from paint, so here's a quick way to use a little bit of acrylic paint for some holiday cheer!

Paint stripes (no points for neatness) with teal paint.

Add some red stripes.

Do a little bit of doodling with black paint.

Add a bit of gesso (the white paint doodles) and you're done!

I simply added a decorated tag to finish off my gift!

MIST IT

Place several large doilies on your bag.

Mist over them using your favorite spray ink.  I used a combination of Adirondack Color Wash and home made Glimmer Mist.

Remove the doilies to see your design.

Check out the shine from that home made Glimmer Mist!

I used acrylic paint to add a little note inside each of the doilies.

Here are all three of my packages together:

I hope you feel inspired to transform those brown paper bags into fabulous wrapping paper!

I love Julie’s tutorial, don’t you?  I’m inspired to go out and make some wrapping paper!!!