Lynne: I was going to make some joke about poo in the bush not in the hand, but I won’t. I used colored pencils and markers. The markers formed the base only.
I wanted to work with violet and orange with a move from orange to yellow in the bird and the red and green of his breast and head. Two complementary pairs.
I realized that I haven’t posted any of my jewelry lately and decided that I would show some earrings I have made as presents for Christmas this year. They are all made with pearls and sterling silver. I made the earwires as well.
I just love the almond shape for earwires. I have made several pairs of these for myself and they always look so beautiful. I think I will have to make a pair of the white pearl earrings for myself too. These would look good with just about anything!
Eight days til Christmas and we are now more than half way done with our Christmas Ornament Countdown. Cheri’s Teeny Tiny Places was just awesome!
My ornament for today is based on some crochet work I am doing for another Christmas present and just sort of made itself up last week. It is a simple wreath made of green cotton yarn.
I used a 3″ in diameter metal ring for the base, making a single crochet stitch around for the first row. The next row is half double crochet and the last row is half double crochet as well, but is stitched into the front leg of the first half double crochet row. This gives the wreath a nice thickness and also makes what I call a pie crust edging.
The bow is made with red cotton yarn. I pulled the yarn through the stitching at the bottom of the wreath and made a standard shoe tie bow and then used the ends of the thread to make two more bows. Nice and easy!
Happy Holidays from Kristin!
Cheri: I received a call from my sis, (Lynne), the other day discussing the button give away. She wondered if I could make the next ornament in the Christmas Ornament Countdown with vintage buttons to coincide with the Vintage Button Giveaway. And my reply was, sure, let me see what I can come up with.
I love buttons, and as I have said before, I have a lot of them. So I picked up two of my jars and poured them out on the coffee table and started sorting them. As I was looking at them, I noted that I had a lot of vintage white glass buttons. These buttons are beautiful, but they are pretty plain.
I spent some time looking at them conjuring an image in my head of what I wanted to make. I decided I would use a styrofoam ball and hot glue to make the ornament resemble a snowball.
I started gluing, and gluing and gluing. I was shocked at how many buttons I ended up using, but I really love how the ornament looks. I think the glass buttons give it a really nice reflective sheen and the glue that you can see looks a little bit like ice.
I hope everyone is able to get in on the button giveaway and I hope you all have a Very Merry Christmas.
Cheri: Teeny tiny terrariums are pretty fascinating places. Those little spaces made with very few items can evoke a whole world by what you see when you look into it.
These little spaces are really quite easy to make and once you have your materials, you can make several at once.
I love to buy things from gumball machines, not only do I like the prizes, but I think I like the containers the prize comes in even more. They certainly lend themselves to this kind of craft.
Gumball vending machine containers
Air dry white clay
Small piece of mirror or tiny glass
Glitter
Small animals
Chenille stems
To start with make a hole in the container. To do this you need to remove the cap and hold the clear dome so you have the convex part toward you. I heated an ice pick to make the hole.
After I had the hole completed, I took a piece of wire and made a loop on one end. I threaded the end of the wire without the loop through the hole and made another loop on the outside of the dome and cut off the wire.
To make the base of the tiny space, I used the cap of the container. I glued a small bit of air dry clay into the base and squished the piece of glass, or mirror in the center. Then I took a piece of chenille (I used tinsel chenille) and cut it very small to look like a tree. I glued this into the clay.
I glued very small animals beside the chenille tree to make it look like a snow scene and let the bottom portion dry overnight. I do this to make sure that there is no shrinkage. After it dries I take a small paintbrush and brush glue over all the surfaces that I want to put snow/glitter on. Shake off the excess and glue the bottom onto the top. This makes it permanent. Make sure you use just plain old glue for this part. I used an epoxy once and melted the face off of a deer (kind of creepy).
And there you go, all done. The little ones would look great on a small tree and the one that is a little larger I made just to set on my desk. I really enjoy looking into it and feeling the mood of the season any time of year.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
I first heard about putting a spider ornament on your Christmas tree from Cheri years ago, but had never heard the story until recently. I have put a spider in my wreaths and decorations for years now.
Here is my spider for this year:
He is a simple fellow. His legs are made with black bead stringing wire and the body is the same wire in silver. He only took me about an hour to make, but will last a long time.
And in case anyone wants to read it, here is the story behind the Christmas spider.
On Christmas Eve, a gentle mother was busily cleaning the house for the most wonderful day of the year, Christmas Day, until not a speck of dust was left. Even the spiders had been banished from their cozy corners and had fled to the farthest corner of the attic. The Christmas tree was beautifully decorated. The poor spiders were frantic, for they could not see the tree, nor be present for Santa’s visit. Then the oldest and wisest spider suggested that perhaps they could wait until everyone went to bed and then get a closer look.
When the house was dark and silent, the spiders crept out of their hiding place. When they neared the Christmas tree, they were delighted with the beauty of it. The spiders crept all over the tree, up and down, over the branches and twigs and saw every one of the pretty things. The spiders loved the Christmas tree. All night long they danced in the branches, leaving them covered with spider webs.
When Santa Claus came with the gifts for the children, he saw the tree covered in spider webs, and smiled to see how happy the spiders were, but he knew the mother, who had worked so hard to make everything perfect, would not be pleased when she saw what the spiders had done. With love in his heart and a smile on his lips, Santa reached out and gently touched the spider webs. The spider webs started to sparkle and shine! They had all turned into sparkling, shimmering silver and gold. Ever since this happened, people have hung tinsel on their Christmas trees and included a spider among the decorations on the Christmas tree.
Happy Holidays from Kristin!
Lynne: Crafty Challenge 5 was a challenge for me. I don’t believe I have made any Christmas ornaments for several years and it was tough to get my mind back into that red and green groove.
I like long garlands and I like them to be lit. Strings of Christmas tree lights seemed to me to be the best way to start, so I bought a strand of 100 clear Christmas tree lights. I needed the light strand to be decorated and the longer I looked at them the more the bulbs looked like the centers of flowers. Why not put a flower around each light bulb? The flower I made for my Do It Best Purse in the hardware store challenge would be the perfect fit to go around the collars of the light bulbs.
I plugged in my strand of lights for two hours to check on how hot they would get. I could still hold them in my hand at the end of the two hours so I used red tissue paper. However, be safe and turn off your tree lights whenever you leave the house.
Tissue paper comes folded in its package. When you unfold the paper the creases are good guidelines for cutting the long strips. I cut through all of the layers at the same time, because there was less chance of the sheets slipping while they were still in the original folds. I used a rotary cutter and the resulting strips were about 3″ wide.
I folded the strip in half and then separated the layers into stacks of two strips each. (The number of layers can vary depending on how thick the paper is and how frilly you want the flowers.) I taped the unfolded edge with scotch tape. I put half the tape on one side then flipped the strip over and folded the tape up onto the other side. Then I used scissors to cut the folded edge of the strip into fringe.
Once you’ve fringed the length of the strip, cut it into 5″ sections. 5 inches worked best for me but you can make the sections longer if you want fuller flowers. Take each 5″ section and roll it around one of the light bulb plastic holders. The holders are plastic and I found that a dab of hot glue when you first start to roll the flower is strong enough to hold the flower in place. Once you have the flower rolled use a piece of tape to keep it closed. I put a flower on every other light bulb and I was just able to finish the garland in two hours.
I liked the results so much that after the challenge was over I made another garland and bought a white Christmas tree to put them on.
I just barely made it under the deadline for my ornament in our countdown. Cheri’s paper snowflakes were amazing!
This particular ornament is for me a sort of homage to some ornaments of my stepfather’s.They were popular in the 70’s to make. We have hung them on our Christmas tree for years and I have always loved them. Here is my version:
I have tons of styrofoam shapes from another craft project that I used to do, temari balls (more on that one later), and used a 6″ egg as my base. I wrapped it in yards and yards of red thread and stitched the thread under other threads to end it. I then followed the steps for marking temari balls. The process is here, under How To, and then Dividing Hints and Help.and is a very easy process to do. This ensures that your pins are all the same distance apart from north to south.
I did have a lot of fun purchasing the sequins and pins. I have never had a project that needed sequins, so now I have a selection if I ever need them in the future. The seed beads were already in my collection.
Happy Holidays from Kristin!
Cheri: I find that a lot of the things I create is because I can’t create something in the usual way. In my perfect world I would be able to make jewelry from silver and have a jewelry bench with a torch, a jewelers saw, and the like. Since I don’t, I have decided to do the next best thing. I create out of what I have.
These rings are similar to how they would be made if I was using a precious metal, only a whole lot easier. The bezels are created by gluing a strip of cardboard into a ring. Then glue the edges of that ring to another piece of cardboard. After it is dry I cut closely around the strip.
I then make a ring band with another strip of cardboard and glue the bezel on to it. I painted the whole piece to give it a patina like finish. After that is dry, I filled the bezel with sparkle glue and covered it with Mod Podge Dimensional Magic.
This was a really fun project and is quite easy. I have to thank Loryn for coming up with the great name of “Tiphony.” I just love the name and it really sums up the whole project.
the crafty sisters 