Names of Christ Ornaments

Last year I saw these ornaments at Deseret Book and loved them. This year they were no longer available so I thought I'd try making them myself.

There were a few different ways I thought of doing these. I could have gotten a pack of star gift tags, or stitched on some felt. I chose to do wooden stars because I didn't feel like hand-sewing and the wooden stars were easier to find. I got 2 packs of wooden stars for like $2 each, a small can of metallic silver spray paint ($3), and puffy paint ($1).

I drew where I wanted the little dots to go and then used the puffy paint. Hand cramp!

Then I spray painted them. I learned that the vinyl doesn't stick as well to that metallic paint. I sprayed a coat of clear acrylic spray and then the vinyl stuck better. I made a couple extra ones with a nativity scene on them for a few of my friends. And one more coating of the clear acrylic spray. I hot-glued a loop of jute to the back and hung them on the tree. Yay!

Fabric Ornaments

Loved this project. And I got to use some of my cute Christmas fabric scraps and cover some of our existing ornaments. This cost me a total of $1 for the ornament hooks. Found the tutorial here. She says to use a 13x13 square piece of fabric but I thought that was a little big. I think mine were 10x10 or maybe even smaller. I'm considering recovering my music note ornaments with music fabric....

Burlap Christmas Wreath

I've seen burlap coming up all over Pinterest for home decor stuff and I just love it. And I LOVE this wreath. I wanted to do a burlap/lace Fall wreath but I ran out of time to do that. This was such a fun, cheap project and I love how it turned out. I bought a moss/grass wreath for $5 and wrapped it twice with some burlap ribbon ($3.50). Then I added some white poinsettia flowers, pine cones, holly leaves, holly berries, and ribbon ($3) with lots and lots of hot glue. I couldn't wait until next week to hang it up so, yes, it's hanging on my door now before Thanksgiving :)

Bumble bee costume

Brandon chose to be a bumble bee for Halloween this year. My kids picked such easy costumes!! I bought a black shirt and black sweats for about $10. Also bought a pair of fairy wings, headband, and pipe cleaner at the dollar store. I had some yellow felt on hand and hand sewed strips to the black shirt. I spray painted the wings black, attached pipe cleaner to the headband and done!

Tinkerbell Skirt

Katy wanted to be Tinker Bell for Halloween. Yay! I found a green shirt for her to wear and made her a little skirt to go with it. I found a simple tutorial at Make It and Love it . I bought one yard of satin green fabric for about $2. The tutorial uses fabric that doesn't fray but my satin fabric wouldn't be doing that. I just sewed two pieces together and turned it right side out, made a casing for elastic and done! (Katy's waist was 22" so I made the width of the skirt 44" and 16" long since I would be folding over a casing.)

Birthday Banner

I love this banner!! I made mine out of felt. I got my inspiration here.

I made my triangles 5" wide and 7" long.

Then I printed off the letters I wanted and pinned them to the color of felt I wanted and cut, cut, cut.

The white circle behind I traced from a cookie cutter an used my pinking shears.

 I also chose to hand-sew the letters to the white circle. Then used my sewing machine to attach that to the triangle.

The trianges would be attached by bias tape. I overlapped the trianges by 1/2 inch and sewed them togher

Attachign the bias tape was a cinch. Open up the tape and sew right on the line. Then fold over.

I used ribbon for the hook. I cut mine 5 inches long and attached it will hot glue before folding over the bias tape.

All done! I love it!

Christmas Stockings....again

So, last time I made Christmas stockings was before I had Pinterest. The more cute pins I saw of Christmas stockings and the more times we've used our stockings the more I wanted to re-do them. If you know me at all, you know that I research and research and research before I do anything. I want to make sure I've been exposed to all of my options before making a decision. It's so hard being a Type 2.

I found the perfect shaped and sized stocking I wanted. (Find here) Our old ones were just too small to hold anything. I know, I know. The bigger the stocking the more stuff you have to fill it with. Whatever. This turned out being harder than I was expecting. Not because they were hard to make but because of my own doing. At first I felt that the stockings would be too big. So I trimmed them down 1/4 inch. Got them sewn together and it looked weird and they ended up being too small. I'm so dumb. Back to the fabric store. But it ended up working out just fine because after doing the first set I knew more of what I wanted. It's so hard being a Type 2.

So here they are. *12/24/13 I just finished putting the names on. When you're using Heat 'n Bond, make sure you turn the steam off on your iron. I had not been doing that and it was making me so frustrated that it wasn't cutting well on my Cricut. I love how they turned out! It feels like Christmas now!

A few tips:
1. I found that felt worked as a good, cheap batting.
2. I made my accent piece 1.5" wide instead of 2".
3. The inner lining doesn't get turned right side out and was too big to slip inside the stocking. I sewed a 1/2" seam instead of 1/4" and trimmed off the excess.

Cheesecloth Ghost

Such a fun project! Halloween isn't my favorite holiday but I can still decorate my house with cute stuff, right? I remember my mom having a ghost decoration that she would hang from the ceiling. So fun and cute. I remembered that ghost when I saw this tutorial for a cheesecloth ghost.

It was simple enough. She uses cornstarch mixture to make them but you can also buy liquid starch. I feel like the cornstarch mixture was great for making just the 2 ghosts that I did BUT it got really chunky and so there are chunks of dried cornstarch all over my ghosts. The liquid starch would have made them look prettier but I would never use the rest of that huge bottle for anything else.

I found the cheese cloth in the fabric section. I got 4 yards and used two pieces for each ghost. I have a little bit left over.

I used a tall cup and a small balloon as my mold for these ghosts. The balloon was great because when they were dry I just popped the balloon and it peeled away from the cheesecloth. My ghosts took 2 days to dry and then I glued on two felt eyes on each of them.

So, here ya go!

Baby Food jar Snowmen

I got the idea for this on Pinterest. It was super easy.  A little time consuming since these are our neighbor gifts this year and I made 10 of them. But it was totally worth it. I would have done a third jar filled with crushed peppermint candies but it would have taken like 10 candy canes per jar. Not gonna happen.

Lots of hot glue for these. I just used paper for the hat and scarf. I used acrylic paint for the face.

The stockings were hung...

I don't have a mantle and nothing cute to display our stockings on. I'm sure some of you have seen this floating around on Pinterest. It totally spoke to me.

I used that pencil stencil technique again here and used a black sharpie to color in the letters.
Then I got some cabinet knobs at Walmart (two for $2) and hot glued them to the board. (I wanted the option of removing them in case our family grows).

Nativity Board

Do you remember this Christmas board make-over I did last year? Yeah, it's cute and all but it wasn't doing it for me this year. I don't have a nativity at all and I wanted a way to display it without having to worry about losing any of the pieces over the years.

An idea I got from Pinterest here  helped me accomplish this.

I used Google to help me find silhouette Nativity images and printed them. Then I had to cut them out by hand onto white contact paper. (I would not recommend cutting this many detailed images by hand...)

 I also learned a great trick through Pinterest (can't find the source though) that has opened up a whole new world of crafting for me. Pencil transfer stencil is a good name for it, I think.

First, print out your desired phrase and font and cut out

On the reverse side, color over the words with pencil

Lay your phrase on your project and trace over the letters

The pencil scribbles on the back get transferred onto your project!

I used glitter gold 3D Paint over my letters. SO pretty!

Fleece tree skirt

I've been wanting to make a tree skirt for a long time. I heart Pinterest for giving me some ideas. I found this cute little tutorial here and knew I could do it! She uses an already made fleece throw from Wal Mart and I was planning on doing that but in the fabric section at walmart I found a piece of "Fleece remnant" as they called it for $1.75 that was the perfect size. I bought 2 yards of the pom-pom trim for $2.50 (I should have gotten 2.5 yards) and decided to hot glue it to the fleece. I also decided to sew on some bias tape to the circle in the middle to make it look nicer. Otherwise this would have been a no-sew project.

 I love it so much!!!!!

Halloween Costumes

I made Brandon and Katy's costumes this year and it was so fun! Brandon was a pumpkin (tutorial here) and Katy was a ghost (tutorial here and here for the tutu). I would recommend the Make it and love it tutorial for the amount of tulle you need and the other link for instructions.

Fall Wreath

I was inspired by this fall wreath here. I didn't have all the fancy stuff she had but I've had this plain wreath from the dollar store for like a year planning on making a fall wreath. I used the fake leaves from this project and used hot glue to attach them to the wreath. I used some old ribbon that was conveniently already tied in a bow and hot glued that on too.

It's simple but sometimes simple is better. Yay!!!

Harvest Blessings Embroidery

I got this great printable here. I looked through her blog and found a post she did of another pumpkin embroidery. She used crayon to color the fabric and then placed a white sheet of paper over it and ironed it to transfer the wax, leaving on the color. Awesome! I always wondered how they did that. So I tried it. I LOVE how it turned out. You may be seeing more projects like this from me :)

BOO sign

My mom has one of these and I think it was my favorite Halloween decoration. Probably because it wasn't scary :) I was inspired by this post. So I bought some wooden letters at Joann's, painted the letters to match the paper and modpodged the paper to the letters. Then I tied them together with jute. I LOVE it!! I love Fall....

V-Day Wreath

This was a fun little project. I've noticed there's been a trend going on in the craft world for seasonal wreaths. I was getting kindof annoyed with it but then I kept seeing so many cute ones! So, I embraced it. This Valentine's Day Wreath was the first of, hopefully, many that I will make. Be prepared to have a lot of time and glue on your hands for this project. I got the tutorial here. I tried to take my own pictures for you but my hands were so sticky! (In the tutorial she uses just regular school glue but I found it was easier to just use Mod Podge). So here is the finished project. It didn't turn out quite the way I was expecting but it's still pretty darn cute.

Easy Craft Clay

How did people EVER survive without the internet??? I wouldn't know how to do anything without it. Like making clay ornaments. How do you learn that? Word of mouth? Anyway, we had a lot of fun doing this one. Although it was a little stressful because Brandon thought it was play dough and just wanted to smash everything. And then when they dried he thought they were cookies. Oh, Brandon.

Here's what you'll need...
• 1 box baking soda (about 2 cups)
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups water
• Sauce pan
• Bowl
• Spoon

Here's how you make it...  
1. Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring consistently, until it is too thick to stir with a spoon (about the consistency of mashed potatoes)
2. Cool for 15 minutes, or until the dough is cool enough to touch. Knead it for about 5 minutes, or until smooth. Once you have molded it, it will take 1-2 days for the clay to dry. The length of time depends on how thick your craft is: If it is a flat ornament, it may only take 1 day, if it is thick it will take much longer. This clay can be painted with either Tempera or acrylic craft paints.


*Just so you know, the dough was a little sticky after we rolled it out and cut out the shapes with cookie cutters. So we floured the counter top and that seemed to help. And make sure to cut out a hole before they dry so you can hang them.

 I LOVE that we could make Katy's foot print ornament for her first Christmas. We tried to do a hand print of Brandon's but the ornament just fell apart when it dried :( But he liked painting his hand blue for this other one (which is made out of an old CD and covered with scrapbook paper).  

 

 

Christmas Ornaments

Last year we bought some ornaments at Walmart but never ended up putting them on our tree. I pulled them out again this year and just couldn't put them up on our tree. They're so boring! I have an old hymn book that I just couldn't throw away so I tore out all the Christmas songs, cut them into strips, and you guessed it, mod podged it to the ornaments. Then I added some glitter and ribbon and....

They turned out so beautiful. I love them!

Christmas Scripture Embroidery

Thanks again, Pinterest! I found this, printed it and traced it onto some muslin. I love embroidering words because it doesn't take long at all! I did this in one day. I love it!