Christmas crafting

Today is the last day of 2012. Man, that went fast. And that means that tomorrow, I have to take down all my Christmas decorations. It's one of the saddest days of the year. Since they're coming down tomorrow, I figured I'd share some of this year's new decorations, including the several crafts I *actually* finished (that NEVER happens!) What did we ever do before Pinterest? I found almost all these ideas there and love that most were cheap and very easy. If you found and tried any great Christmas crafts on Pinterest, please feel free to share! Maybe if I start now I can finish before next Christmas....

Nativity Canvas

Easy peasy! You just need a cheap-o canvas, a couple shades of blue, silver, and gold acrylic paint, a silver paint pen, and chipboard letters and a glue gun. Paint and glue. Tip: Use chalk first for the "adore" to make sure it's where you want it before you go over with the silver paint pen.

Noel and mantle

Last year's mantle had red and green swag. This year I saw this house and sleigh at Hobby Lobby and loved them, so I decided to redo the mantle around them.

It's plain garland that I stuck in silver beads and branches. The silver and white snowflakes used to hang on the wall, but now they're on the mirror (Target - $1!) I think the Santa Dude is from Hobby Lobby, but it's been a couple years.

And I'm not sure how I feel about the rustic "Noel" yet, but we'll keep it around for next year.

2x4 characters

At a RS Enrichment activity a few weeks ago we made this Santa guy and I thought he was so cute! But once I got him home, I thought he seemed so lonely.

On Pinterest, I found these candy bar wrappers and thought I could easily make them into 2x4 friends for Santa.

Voila!

Wreath

I liked this on Pinterest, but I forgot how long yarn wreaths take. And I think I should have used a darker red instead of a bright red - it kind of looks like a life preserver!

Christmas cards

I never knew what to do with all the beautiful Christmas cards we get each year. This was the perfect solution! We taped red velvet ribbon to the back of the kitchen cabinets and then clothes pinned them on. I love seeing them all the time and I'll be so sad to take them down!

Reindeer Subway Art

I love the look of subway art, but always thought it would be too hard without a silhouette or cricut. But I really loved this idea for a sign with the reindeer names and so I decided to see if I could do it. And now you can, too :)

What you need:

• A piece of mdf or plywood (something light!), mine is 20 inches wide by 42 inches high
• graphite tracing paper
• brushes
• acrylic - i used cream, black and red, but I think other color schemes would look great, too!
• a pen

Start by coating the board with cream. Mine took about three coats. My MDF was bigger than the sign, so I didn't go all the way to the edges, knowing we'd cut it later. Allow to dry.

Print out this template. I made it in Indesign (so I could make it large enough) and then chopped it up to print on my home printer on 8.5 x 11 sheets. Then I stitched them back together and taped the pieces to make one big template.

Place the tracing paper between the board and template and trace over the letters to transfer.

Use a small paint brush and the black paint to fill in the letters. Don't fill in the "o" in Rudolph with black! Paint the whole thing red. After it dries, smudge a bit of black around the edge and add the white shine.

Add tacks/finishing nails and twine to the back and hang.

What to do with extra burlap?

After my banner craft, I had a ton of burlap leftover. It seemed such a shame to just let it go to waste...

And I had this Halloween pillow that I figured I could do *something* with.

So I found some clip art offline. Cut it out. Taped it down. And sponged on some paint.

I'm sure there's a better way to do this... but I just wrapped it around the pillow and safety pinned it in back. It's just for decoration, so I don't think anyone will ever see the back of the pillow. I didn't want to sew it because a) it's burlap and that sounded hard and b) I want to take it off next year to use for Halloween.

But for now, it works for me!

Fall burlap banner

My favorite kinds of crafts at the kind that can be done in one sitting! This was a perfect craft to do while watching election coverage last night :)

What you need:

Burlap

Flag template

Cardstock

Orange paint

Stamp brush

Jute rope

Scissors

Hot glue

Trace the flag template onto the burlap and cut out. Do this somewhere you don't mind burlap fluff covering everything. Especially your clothes.

This part would have been much easier with a Cricut or Silhouette machine. Instead, I printed my letters on cardstock and cut out the letters to make the stencils. I think the font I used is called Bell MT.

Tape the stencil onto the burlap. Make sure you use the side that doesn't have the template traced on it. Make sure you put your stencil right-side-up. I just noticed that my "g" is backward.... ooops :) Carefully sponge paint the stencil.

I didn't take photos of the next step. But you're all smart people. Fold the top of each flag down about an inch and iron it in place. Hot glue to the jute rope. And... voila!

I went ahead and hung it, but I do want to get some sort of fray guard or something to line the edges. I really like how it looks with the wreaths in the dining room... just gave it a little something extra.

Easy Halloween Crafts

I like crafts that can be done in one sitting. It makes me feel like I accomplished something. That and it won't end up in the guest room for months...

Last night, I made little ghosts for our chandelier. These were really easy and actually pretty fun to make!

Here's what you need:
Cheesecloth (Found this at Michaels for about $4... It was in the sewing aisle next to zippers!)
Fabric Stiffener
Paper/plastic cups
Balloons
Black felt
Glue gun
Thread

Turn one cup upside down, and then set another one right side up on top of it. Place a barely-filled balloon inside the cup. Like this:

Fill a small bowl with the fabric stiffener and add a little bit of water to make it runnier and easier to use. Cut the cheesecloth up into smaller pieces. Then, one at a time, dip each cheesecloth into the stiffener bowl, wring it out, and drap over the balloons.

Let that sit for 20-30 minutes and dry. Use something sharp to pop the balloons. Cut out small circles from the black felt and and hot glue them on for eyes. Thread some string or thread through the top to hang and voila! Chandelier ghosts. I'll let you know how long they keep their shape...

While that was going on, I also made an easy centerpiece. 

Pumpkin pie pumpkins were cheap at Home Depot. The longer the stem the better... Brush on some modge podge and then use a spoon to sprinkle glitter on. Then let it dry! I do this every year, but used different colors this time. I like the variety. I used Martha Stewart Fire Opal, Bronze, and Brownstone (I think).

Happy Crafting!

Halloween banner

I actually finished a craft! It's always a small miracle when that happens. This one wasn't even hard or anything, it was just about finding the time.

What you need:
Chipboard banner - I found mine pre-made at Hobby Lobby for about $2
Craft paint - orange and black
Orange glitter
Paint brush
Modge podge (or watered down elmer's glue)
Halloween wood cut outs - I went with ghosts
Halloween wired ribbon, 2 rolls

Paint the letters black and let it dry.

Then add orange accents - I went with polka dots, but you could just as easily do stripes or something. I thought about painting on the dots, but was worried they'd be all different sizes. So I got a little inventive... I hot glued a dime to an ikea pencil and used that to stamp on the orange paint.

After everything dries, paint modge podge (or watered down glue if you're cheap like me) onto the orange dots. Use a spoon to add glitter on top. I alternated glitter colors because I didn't think I had enough of one color to do all of them.

After you shake it off well (outside - but don't worry you'll still find it on the rug, the chair, the piano bench, your face, and your puppies), cut the ribbon into small pieces (I think mine were about 6-8 inches each). Starting next to the letters, tie the pieces onto the banner in knots, alternating ribbons. Then glue on your wood cut outs and you're done!

Pantry labels (and download)

As I continue my cleaning and organizing project, the next step was the pantry. It's already pretty organized since I got these OXO containers a few years ago. But I saw this thing on Pinterest with dictionary labels and loved it, so I decided to give it a try. It comes from an Australian blog, The Painted Hive, and she gives a pretty great tutorial on how to do it, as well as some free downloads.

And here they are!

Here's what you need:

inkjet clear waterslide paper (mine from Amazon here)

clear acrylic sealer (This one, but I got it from Michaels)

printer

bowl of water

containers (mine are Oxo Pop)

labels

The original blog posts her labels for download. I had to remake them to fit my containers - I had to make some of them smaller. I also needed some things she hadn't made labels for. So here are mine if you want to use them:

Click to enlarge and save to your desktop. These are 2x2 inch labels

Click to enlarge and save to your desktop. These are 4x3 labels.

Here's what you do:

1. Once you have the design the way you want it, flip it horizontally so you print the mirror image.
2. Print the design onto the glossy side of the paper.
3. Before the ink dries, spray on a decent coat of the sealer 
4. Cut out the image. Try to cut a nice square because it does show up once the label is on
5. Fill a little bowl with hot water. Doesn't have to be boiling, but pretty warm.
6. Immerse one label (only do one at a time!) in the bowl, design up. Keep an eye on it... as soon as you see the transparent film start separating from the backing, pull it out of the water. The hotter the water, the quicker it happens. The instructions I used said 30-45 seconds... that was way too long. The transparent film had already curled on top of itself and it was ruined. In really hot water, it took less than 5 seconds. In warm water maybe 10. I only got 2-3 labels done before the water was too cool for the backing to separate.
7. Quickly flip the design onto the container and place it where you want. Gently (VERY gently) peel the backing off. You can slide it off, but I found that the ink smeared more that way. Wet your finger and use it to smooth all the air bubbles out.
8. Leave it to dry for a couple hours (otherwise it'll rub off!)

Chevron corkboard

I actually completed a craft!

We recently moved into new offices for work and I've been having fun pretty-ing up my little area (more on that to come). I thought about putting up a cork board for pictures, but that's so boring. So I decided to fancy it up with a little paint!

These are 12x12 cork tiles from Michaels. With a 40% off coupon, they're less than $5. The paint was on sale for about a buck. Then you just need some painters tape, a pencil, and a yard stick.

I marked off three lines, 3 inches a part each. I randomly decided how high I wanted each stripe to angle and laid the yardstick down to mark the top of each zig (or is it zag?). I taped the first line. Then I laid the yardstick flush against the line I had just taped in order to mark where the next taped line should go - that means that each purple stripe is a yardstick wide. It took a while to get all the taping down.

Then the painting went quickly. Just use a yardstick to keep your stripes the same width - I actually did one prior to these two and just kind of eyeballed it - it didn't work too well :) The end!

DIY floating wall clock

Here's another great craft-y pinterest find. This blog, Faded Plains, gives some pretty detailed instructions, including links on where to buy supplies. I used her same vendors (all three from etsy) to order two sets of wooden numbers (in different sizes and fonts) and the clock hands/mechanism.

Then you just paint everything with acrylic paint. This brand seemed a little thin and took several coats (which frustrated painter Hans).

After that, we stuck it to the wall. With sticky tack. For reals.

And it's pretty and fun.