{back to school} mood...

it´s a great feeling to be inspired, lots of ideas popping into my brain... but why do I have to wait until the last day???!!! well... that´s me!
I made another pencil holder with these adorable cups (first pencil holder here). This time I used Mary Margaret, teacher´s pet from Michelle Perkett (her Etsy shop here!)

this is my first paper piecing work and I LOVED the technique! I don´t know why I didn´t use it before... I printed the image twice: one on white paper and another on a digitalized dictionary text made by Mel (if you can visit her awesome blog, you won´t regret it!). I took the white image and colored it with colored pencils leaving out the dress. I cut around her arms to make room so I could slip under the dress. Then I colored MM´s dress with colored pencils, cut it and glued it to the base image, and I slipped a piece of cardstock under her dress and the apple to give a little bit of dimension.

To decorate the cup I started with a strip of craft paper and distressed it with chalks. I made two borders to layer the craft paper: the first one I cut it with a hand drawn scalloped shape and the second one with edge scissors, and distressed them both before attaching them to the craft paper. The apples: I started with a scrap of polka dot paper and printed on the wrong side apples, cut them around and distressed them also. Took some green felt and cut three circles that I decorated their borders with decorative stitches, my first try! that´s why they are not even at all... I found how in a very old fabric dolls book that belonged to my grandma. And I finished the apples with buttons my MIL saved for me with a couple of stitches to hold everything together before gluing them to the pencil holder.

The pencils on the first picture seemed to plain, so I made tags for them. My first inchies!! (I´m full of firsts today!) I cut four 1.5 in diameter circles of craft cardstock and decorating them with scraps of everything.
Side 1

Side 2

Part of the images are from Shirley´s 2 girls and I colored them also with colored pencils. I distressed the edges with chalks, added some stickers (hearts and stars), used edge scissors, doodled with white gel pen, used scraps of felt, made a hole with a paper punch and tied them to the pencils with raffia.

Hope you like my project and maybe inspired you to make a set like this one too!

I´m joining:
Cupcake Craft Challenge #106: let´g get digital
Digital Tuesday Challenge #74: make a gift set
One Stitch at a Time Challenge # 28: girly
Bee Crafty Challenge #37: anything goes