More Holiday Crafting

Well I was going at a healthy clip, making projects that I'd seen on Pinterest and wanted to tackle, but then everything in my life went sideways through no fault of my own, and I ended the month of November really sick which was not surprising considering the way I was run ragged and right into the ground.

But I did manage to get this one completed and I'm really pleased with it.  I got the shadow box at AC Moore.  It had some text on the back that I don't even remember and I covered it with silver glitter paper.  Next, I had to drill the hole for the battery operated LED lights, then pulled them through but left them outside till I finished with the tree scenes.  I used some styrafoam chunks to elevate the trees and then glued the other trees in place.  That took a day or so to dry.  After that I ran the lights around it.  The project that I was using as a guide had the wires showing like this and actually I kind of like the effect.  Once the lights were in place, I stuffed some cotton snow in the bottom, then used gold glitter paint around the edges (hard to see in this pic).  The sad thing is, I have no room for it but I'm going to try and find a place. 

And then I finished experimenting with a bunch of ornament ideas seen on Pinterest, just to check them off my craft bucket list.  I ended up giving all of them to my stepdaughter.  No idea what she's doing with them....but I don't have the room for them so better her than me!  lol

Stuffed with colourful pom poms.

This one was a disaster.  Supposed to be easy....pour in nail polish then swipe around the sides with a Qtip.  Well I used more polish than I should have so it got everywhere.  I had to let it drain in the trash for about 15 minutes before attempt the Qtip part.  I had polish all over my fingers for days.

The project I saw for this just had pearl beads in it but that looked really bad so I used a long strand of pearls I found buried in my ribbons container.

Same thing with this strand of red.

This is kind of pretty....just some fibers and stuff.

This one is stuffed with iridescent fibers.

Another pain in the butt.  I was going to just stuff the whole thing with that snow stuff but thanks to static electricity, it was hard to fill and hard to keep from sticking to my hands, shirt and basically everything in site.  So I threw a bunch of little holiday bits and bobs into it and made a 'spot the item' ball instead.

This is an interesting effect.  It's supposed to be like mercury glass.  You spray some mirror paint inside and swirl it around, hit it with a hair dryer to partially dry it, then put a drop or two of water inside and shake the ball to spatter it on the sides.  

Finally, glow in the dark paint.  I never fully charged it to shoot a pic after it was glowing.  I assume it worked.

Right now my craft table is a hot mess but I'm hoping to get a few more altered art projects done.

Happy Turkey Day!

Gobble till ya wobble!

Ermahgerd!  Mershed perderders!!!!!

Try not to kill each other on Black Friday, eh?  See you in a few days!

A Room with a View

Was visiting someone at the hospital in mid-November and they happened to have an amazing view of Hyannis Harbor and Lewis Bay.  The body of water in front is Lewis Bay.  Egg Island is on the left and in the center is the opening to Nantucket Sound.

One of the high speed ferries pulling into the harbor from Nantucket.  The other ferry is already in port.

It was one of those very bright days so hard to get a good pic.

Trees almost bare now.

 After we left the hospital, we drove down to the water so I could get a couple quick pics from there. I used to be so familiar with Hyannis 'back in the day' but now I don't know how to get anywhere!

I really need to get down there more to take pics. I just have a real bias against going to Hyannis because the traffic is so horrible.  Plus not knowing my way around.  But I will get down there again. After all, I need to beach comb their beaches too!

Holiday Crafts 2015

I had a bunch of balls leftover from last year so I put this together one weekend.

Also been meaning to try melted crayons inside a glass ball.  The tutorial I first looked at said to break the crayons into 1/2" pieces.  Well, those won't melt.  I had to shave and thinly slice the crayons to get them to melt.  And once they start to melt and run all over, they run together extremely quickly.  This was supposed to just be blue, purple and green.  Can't see the purple.

This is another ball in blue, light blue and light green.  I was trying to cover up an alcohol ink failure (I first started out w/ alcohol ink and it looked awful).

Here's another alcohol ink failure ball that I did with purple crayons since the purple ink didn't totally wash out.

This was to be red, pink, orange and yellow and an example of how they all ran together.  

Another one I wanted to try was glass etching cream with see through stars.  I had to punch the stars out of paper and glue them on, which was fine.  The trouble was with the cream.  My first coat wasn't left on long enough and nothing happened.  I had to wash the first layer of it off which now got the star paper all wet.  I covered the ball with more cream, but it didn't etch at all evenly.  And some of the acid went through the paper and frosted the see through parts.  

The only ball that came out good was the one where I used a glass engraver.  The other side says 'peace'.  I used a stencil and then had to free hand it to thicken the letters.  I'm keeping this one but my stepdaughter wants the other 5 and she's welcome to them!

Started this one at the end of October and finished a couple of weeks later.  I saved the white snowflakes for last, thinking they'd go quickly.  They did not.  But it came out pretty good anyway. This one's not for sale.  I just need to find wall space to hang it this season!

Saw this project on Pinterest and checked out the instructions, mostly to get what kind of paint to use and download the free pattern.  You can get them HERE.  Pretty easy to do, you just can't be real heavy handed when spraying the blue paint or else it'll drip and also be opaque.

Looks nice with a candle.  So much easier than drilling holes in bottles!

Pleased to see so many new, plastic shaped ornaments in the craft stores.  This jar is sweet.  Just remove the lid, glue in your scene, put lid back on.  Boom.  I added the puff paint snow on the outside.

Night Sky Shots

There was a fairly large solar storm a couple of weeks ago which meant the Northern Lights were going to be very active and allegedly visible down here.  I have street lights across from me, and they are on the north side of the street, so it's really hard to see the stars from the front yard.  In the back yard, the north sky is obstructed by trees.  I am pleased with this photo, as it shows the trees and stars very well.  

I was following the Aurora Alerts site, HERE, and saw that it was going to be very active around 6:30 pm and reaching almost all the way down here.  So I went down to the beach, pointed the camera north and started shooting, leaving the aperture open for 30-90 seconds.  

It's funny but standing there on the beach it was so dark I had to use a flashlight, but the light pollution you couldn't see with the naked eye lit up the sky anyway.

I didn't see a thing.  When I got back and downloaded this, I noticed the green tint to the sky.  The jury is still out whether or not that's the aurora or light pollution.

Not sure why the boathouse is lit up electric green, or the trim on the house.

Then one early morning...like WAY early morning (for me)...I took the dogs out and couldn't believe the tiny sliver of moon that was showing.  It was about 5:30 and the sky was actually a really pretty shade of blue because the sky was getting light.  But I didn't feel like dragging the tripod outside when I was still half asleep so I had to free hand it.  It's a bit blurry but hey, no glasses, no coffee and sleepy.

Red Oak

There's a large oak tree on the side of my driveway that turns a gorgeous shade of red.

It was a beautiful day; this was the day I went to Town Neck.  I shot these around 8:15 AM.

My neighbour's burning bush.  Love these too.

Down the street

Well at least we got some foliage!