Christmas Craft Bucket List

I've been coping with some horrible stress by doing Christmas crafts like a crazed maniac.  Which is a good way to spend my time, glitter-spillage and craft room upheaval not withstanding.

So I dipped into my 'Crafts to Make: Holiday' Pinterest board and browsed around.  There was a gorgeous birdbath done with multicolour large glass balls.  My birdbath is really small, so I got one large ball & a couple packages of smaller silver balls at The Christmas Tree Shop, snipped off some greens from the yard and put this together.  I had the metal sleigh already.

I keep seeing these gorgeous, elegant bottle brush trees on Pinterest and try as I might, I just can't get them to come out looking very elegant.  Oh well.  They are still pretty.  The left one has lots of coloured glass pearls and beads.  The right one has small metal roses.

No box is safe from my altered art endeavors.

This was actually an Altoids tin Pinterest project that I followed almost to the letter. I couldn't find a super decorative top, or something to put on the bottom as a display stand.  It took forever to find that Currier & Ives picture.  There was a time when this image was used on Christmas cards, but not anymore.  

I went a little nutty with the jar crafts.  I had to sacrifice an unopened bottle of pickles too (they are in a baggie in the fridge!).  The two center ones are plastic jar ornaments I got at AC Moore, and the far right is a smaller jar I had in my stash.

I really like how this one came out, despite the giant and not-to-scale cardinal

Jar ornament.

Recreating the vintage look with the plastic tree and old pixie. I have since added a tiny wrapped package to the elf so it looks like he's holding it.

Battery operated lantern.

Won't do these again....just did them to get them off my list.  I shouldn't have used one sided pattern ribbon on the tree on the left.  The tied ribbon is also a pain and won't stay horizontal without glue and doublestick tape.  My heart wasn't in these.

I still had a couple small wine bottles left over so I put some foam snowflake stickers on it before spraying.  I got a little too much paint on the front and some of it leaked into the front snowflake.  

This one was kind of a pain.  The bottle was very thick and hard to drill.  Then I only had a strand of 50 multicoloured lights which were hard to stuff into the narrow bottle.  It looks good though.

This was another one I saw on Pinterest.  Doing a scene in a large vase with white lights under glitter snow.  I've since tweaked this to add more snow and try to stabilize the elements so they don't tip over so easily.

Not that this is a craft, but I wanted to try out a cranberry cake recipe.  I had my doubts since I've never seen a baking recipe that didn't include baking powder and/or soda, and salt.  This came out so good that it was hard to resist eating it nonstop.  I sent a huge piece over to my inlaws just to keep it out of my house!  

Last one and I was running out of steam and inspiration so I wasn't really happy with it.  The frame was a bitch to spray paint.  I had to put those large rhinestones on to cover up some errors.  The postcards didn't fit the openings so I had to back them with paper and I didn't do a good job lining them up.

Taking a quick break but will be back to cross stitching and stuff soon.  Too busy baking for Christmas Day now!

Crafties & Cake

My mom gave me a bunch of little jars she'd saved.  I wrapped one in this cool coloured thread/floss I found buried in my 'Needlework' box, and then decorated the lid.

I also tried my hand at homemade coloured sand.  Due to my hesitance to believe this would work well, I only experimented with making red and blue.  I'm not terribly crazy about it.

But it ended up looking cool with plain sand as patriotic sand-art.

My friend Marsha pinned what we are calling a 'toe sling' on Pinterest.  I told her I could easily make one for her and here it is.  The large loop goes around the ankle and the bottom one goes around the second toe.  It looks like a sandal without the sole.  The large blue bead sits at the front of the ankle.

I had all these cool sparkly rhinestone things and nothing to do with them.  So I grabbed a dark blue piece of cardstock, splattered it with white paint, then glued the jewels on, using the biggest ones to make a spiral galaxy. 

A few years ago, I bought 6' of this decorative beaded and sequined ribbon, but I forgot all about it till the other day, so I made a large amulet bag with some of it.  It's about 3" wide. This is the back.

And the front.  I added the beaded edging, bottom loops and strap.

Closeup of the beaded edge.

This was also in the same little box with the blue ribbon.  It's 2.5" wide.  

And my award from Abracadebra Designs arrived too!  I began reading it on the deck one gorgeous day and my brain is already thinking about how I can incorporate knotting into the crafts I do.  

Funfetti cake I made for Mother's Day over at Sharon's house.  It was nummy.