craftgrrl | First post: rainbow stationary and stars & stitch counters

This is my first post here, so hello everyone! I hope you enjoy the photos.

I'm an avid letter witter but I'm also in the process of moving, so my stationary is packed up in boxes. To make up for this, I spent spring break making rainbow stationary and rainbow oragimi hearts as a minigift to go with it. I used printer paper, sketchpad paper, and markers for the star paper and stationary, just making a huge gradient with the markers (put a piece of scratch paper underneath so that you can color to the edge safely.

The scrap paper under the paper I made. It was a colorful project.
The stationary was large sketchpad paper, cut in half, with rainbow gradients on both sides. I ended up using for sheets of it—that's a pretty huge letter. The stationary turned out really well.

The stationary.
I also made a bunch of origami wish stars. General instructions can be found here for those that are interested. For these, I made my own star paper by coloring a gradient, with markers, printer paper, and then cutting paper strips. The gradient has to be pretty steep in order to get a good array of colors when you fold the strips. I used two pieces of paper, one with the hot colors and one with the cools, and cut my strips at about 1/3 inch strips (measure, draw lines on the back, then cut—strips need to be straight). I wrote wishes (good luck messages, little prayers, other things for the recipient) in black on most of the strips (keep the text near the end of it will peek out of the star). Folding in from alternating ends and using a steep enough gradient, you'll end up with a rainbow of stars.

Midway through the star making. You can see blank strips, strips with wishes, and finished stars.

Finished paper stars.
I set aside a full rainbow of some of the best and, using a needle, thread, and seed beads, made a charm. The needle should slip in one point and out another without much problem. If you force the needle, you'll end up with a hole in the star. I added a loop to the charm so that it can be hung or displayed.

One set of stars strung with seed beads to make up a cute little charm.
I packed up the rest of the stars in a small display bowl, wrapped it in plastic, and added the charm around the outside. The stationary (with letter written) and stars were mailed off to Lyz in a padded envelop yesterday. Cute, huh?

Wish paper stars wrapped up for shipping and gifting, with a cup for display. Charm string is attached.

I also made stitch counters using sakura beads to celebrate spring and give me the chance to make more complex knitting work. I used "nail heads" to string the beads (half of the set have just sakura beads, half have the sakura beads with three matching or contrasting seed beads), made the loop at the top, and added the jump rings. Not very complex, but the end result is effective and pretty. It's also my first project with beads, findings, and anything resembling jewelery, so I'm pretty happy with how well it went. The inspiration came from my recently decorated birth control case, although I couldn't find the perfect yellow sakura blossom at the bead store.