merry christmas (stockings)
December 26, 2010 at 3:48 pm | Posted in chatty, crafting with kids, holidays, I love to make things... | 3 CommentsI finished Everett’s stocking up, along with one for my mom who is visiting us, at 2:30 Christmas Eve afternoon – success! I ended up making a little tree design in fall colors for my November baby. I really love the vintage ribbon I found for the top, too – I think this one is my favorite of the whole set.
Here are all five together. Each one has a little wink to our birthday seasons – Andrew’s (Mt. Hood in summer), Pearl’s (spring flowers and buttons), my mom’s (hearts), Everett’s (fall tree), and mine (winter crafty things). I really love them together! I’m very happy to wind 2010 down on a crafty high note after some long stretches with no time to make things for fun, or write blog posts, or anything like that.
And here are all five stockings hanging on the mantel late on Christmas Eve, about nine hours after I finished the last two, and just after Santa stopped by for milk and cookies. He brought Pearl an awesome dollhouse, which took over the whole coffee table, along with a 2.5-year-old-friendly sewing kit (hint: plastic canvas is involved) which she likes a lot too. More on that later…
Speaking of sewing, Pearl’s dollhouse has a teeny little craft room! I love the mini sewing machine and iron so much.
Hope you had a wonderful Christmas (or weekend of dim sum and movies). Happy new year! See you next week!
winter wonderland
December 22, 2010 at 3:35 pm | Posted in button it up, chatty, holidays, house crafty, I love to make things..., projects to do, vintage crafty | 1 CommentI saw the cutest winter wonderland ornament tutorial when Vickie Howell linked it this week, and jumped on the chance to make a whole set of them to add to our Christmas decorations!
This is a very sweet project that is super-customizable, depending on your craft stash… I used miniature trees and animals from the Decorette Shop and Bake It Pretty for my little scenes, along with leftover quilt batting for snow, Martha glitter in gold for fanciness, and vintage rick-rack from the Kitten to edge each one. I’ll detail my ornament hacks later on, after some photos.
Along with our favorite reindeer and squirrels (the first photo, and the first ornament I made – to make the button + ribbon rosette, you can check this post out), I knew we needed a couple of fancy ballerinas on the tree.
This hula couple ornament is a gift for someone special.
After making four hanging ornaments, I decided to switch things up a little bit and make some winter wonderland mantel terrariums instead. I love how these turned out… the spinning ornament style is cool, and they’re adorable on the tree, but I really love these little stationery worlds.
We needed some more reindeer, of course, and then we had to have some super cute bunnies. Pearl dug those the most.
And a friendly gnome visiting with a little pack of squirrels,
and some spun-cotton mushrooms with an evergreen tree for the last one.
I really love how these teeny winter scenes look on the mantel with all our other little treasures. Pearl’s favorite is the Snoopy Christmas plate, so that is the king of the decorations, but I got to set out my gossamer thread trees from last year, along with a herd of vintage reindeer, two angel candlesticks, two gnomes, two champagne-cork mushrooms and a vintage Santa on a sled.
Updated living room picture! Still need to sew a stocking for Everett (I settled on a fall tree theme!) and one for my mom. And still hoping to make a tree skirt. I might see if there’s a round vintage tablecloth I can cannibalize instead of starting from scratch.
So, the original winter wonderland ornament tutorial is right here, but I made a few changes to mine. I used a hot glue gun to set my little miniatures’ feet in place under the batting snow (instead of tacky glue). I also added a vintage rick-rack trim set in place with tacky glue all the way around the bottom of the cup, and a dab of hot glue to secure the ends, instead of using decorative scissors to edge the cardstock circles (I couldn’t find mine, to tell you the truth, but I like the rick-rack better!). I used a flattened recycled cardboard gift box for my circles instead of the pretty silver cardstock in the original, and a thinner batting left over from quilting projects that I could kind of make landscape-y, instead of the thicker fluffier stuff.
So, two thumbs up for sure. I rarely get the chance to make eight of anything for fun, and this was really nice to do. It’s supposed to be for kids to do with you, and I’m sure older kids would have a blast. I’d say that judging from my afternoon, 2.5 is not old enough to really participate, but definitely the right age to admire the finished ones with a lot of enthusiasm. Maybe next year it will be more of a collaboration between us, I have a dozen more drink cups saved for the next round.
Last little holiday project idea: I added some button-and-holly-leaf embellishments to my Christmas cookie boxes this year! The super-simple how-to is over here on my Button It Up blog if you want to try this one, too – it would be perfect for fancying up a gift box, bag, or canister.
Okay, hopefully I’ll have a new felt stocking, preferably two, to show this week too! I hope your holiday crafting has been fun, if you’re as last-minute as I am…
holiday cheer
December 14, 2010 at 1:10 pm | Posted in chatty, crafty events, holidays, oregon, own it love it | 2 CommentsHello again! I’ve been hoping to post here and there but I’ve been swamped the last few weeks with a very cute baby keeping me busy. The only things I’ve had time to do that seem crafty-photo/post-worthy is some holiday decorating and Crafty Wonderland shopping… oh, and I baked a lot of Christmas cookies to go with our local baby thank-you notes, but better photos of those will hopefully come along on a less gray day. My food photography needs all the help it can get.
We got a real live tree for the first time ever! I’m pretty excited. Somehow we filled all eight feet of it up with my handmade and vintage ornaments collection. LOVE seeing them all. Our little silver tree, which is now in the rec room, was getting so crowded. I also hung the stockings — this is a major before picture, since I still need to make Everett’s. (And I also want to decorate the mantel and sew a tree skirt.)
I’m trying to decide on a good background color for his stocking, having used a lot of my favorites on our first three… light green, light blue or red seem to be my main contenders. Pearl wanted purple for his but that’s not a color I’m crazy about so I kind of overruled her. I think I might do an animal theme. My deadline is Christmas Eve, of course, so hopefully I’ll have a photo to share soon!
Andrew, Everett and I also went to Crafty Wonderland last weekend which was awesome. We got some good holiday shopping done and found a few treasures for ourselves too.
-2 t-shirts from Monsieur T. (gifts – plus two more that I’m picking up at the Crafty Wonderland Pop-Up Shop this week)
-Portland pennant from Bishop Art (keeping this one!!)
-monster t-shirt from Dishy Duds (for Pearl, to replace her outgrown 18-24m one, yay)
-coloring book from S. Britt (also for Pearl)
And then there were these lovelies…
-everything is going to be okay print from Seattle Show Posters (for us!)
-500 worst passwords print from Kate Bingaman-Burt (a gift)
-cardinal prints from Berkley Illustration (for Pearl!)
-Oregon Coast calendar from Red Bat Press (for me! an annual necessity)
I came up with some cute button-craft holiday gift packaging for cookies and other small things, so I will be back with photos of that, I hope soon… if this weather ever lets up again while I have the camera and not the baby.
ps: Thank you SO much for the congratulations for Everett! He is awesome.
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