Levine - Paper goods projects: coffee filter flowers, doily butterflies, cupcake paper cards, and 57 more crafts

Copyright 2015 by Jodi Levine

Photographs copyright 2015 by Amy Gropp Forbes

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by
Potter Craft, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division
of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.pottercraft.com

POTTER CRAFT and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

eBook ISBN9780804186964

Trade Paperback ISBN9780804186957

Cover photographs by Amy Gropp Forbes

v3.1_r1
a

THE FIRST RULE OF CRAFTING is Dont Drop the Glitter. The second rule of crafting is Keep it Simple. It takes more finesse and skill to make a simple project than one that is expensive and time-consuming. After two decades of working on the staff of Martha Stewart, Jodi Levine has mastered the art of clever yet effortless ideas. Jodi is a crafting legend. I remember seeing her genius projects on the pages of magazines when I was planning my own wedding. Her style is fresh yet familiar.

As a craft blogger at the website Oh Happy Day!, Ive always thought the best craft projects are the kind that are easy, accessible, and uncontrived. The kind that make you say, Why didnt I think of that? Paper Goods Projects is so innovative that it had me shaking my head and repeating those words on every page.

Paper Goods Projects is the epitome of uncomplicated fun: clever enough to impress any PTA committee, but easy enough to make with kids. Jodi has taken simple techniques and materials, like balloons and cardboard, and reimagined them into new creations that have never been seen before. The supplies for the projects are common and can be found around the house or at any grocery store, but the ideas are brilliant enough to compete with the best Pinterest has to offer.

The projects in this book will add surprise and delight to holidays and celebrations throughout the year. Paper Goods Projects is a reminder that the best ideas are simple and right in front of you.

Jordan Ferney, creator of OhHappyDay.com

COLLECTING PAPER GOODS, like bags, plates, and doilies, and searching the aisles of supermarkets and hardware and variety stores for supplies to use for craft projects have been lifelong passions of mine. Maybe it all started because there werent craft superstores back when I was a kid (and certainly not websites). I still find so much inspiration in everyday materials and Im excited to have gathered the fruits of my years of collecting and making things into this book!

As a craft editor at Martha Stewart Living magazine for nineteen years, I worked on many everyday materialthemed craft stories. My colleagues and I created no-sew Halloween costumes and challenged ourselves to use only nontraditional, nonfabric materials. We created black garbage bag witches, a coffee filter fairy, a paper doily princess, a brown bag cowboy, a flapper in a dress trimmed with cupcake paper scallops, and a knight made with disposable baking tins. As editorial director of Martha Stewart Kids , I featured a craft story in each issue, where my staff and I celebrated everyday materials like tin cans, cardboard boxes, and Popsicle sticks. Transforming these materials became my favorite challenge.

Just as every preschool teacher knows, everyday supermarket supplies are not only cheap, plentiful, and easy to find, but transforming them helps us retain the youthful skill to see the potential in things. Its the ability to see the world differently, not to look at a bottle cap as garbage but as a mini frying pan for a doll, or a paper towel tube as a giraffe, waiting to be snipped out. Paper Goods Projects is all about that process, because the projects included here are based on materials that you most likely already have in your pantry or recycling bin.

After many years of thinking about doing a crafty food book, I fell in love with the photographs that my longtime friend and former colleague Amy Gropp Forbes was posting on her blog Eclectic Mom, and I asked her to partner with me. We had worked together on many kids stories when she was a food editor at Martha Stewart Living, but our friendship deepened when we found out that not only were we pregnant with our firstborns at the same time, but that we even shared the same due date! We both love crafting and cooking with our kids and talked for weeks about the idea of doing a book together. We agreed that crafts using accessible supermarket materials were really at the heart of what we wanted to do and our collaborative project, Super Make-It , was born. Our first book, Candy Aisle Crafts , came out in August 2014 and contains ideas for edible projects made from common supermarket sweets.