Christmas 2014 Craft Projects

Well...here they are, the crafts for Christmas 2014. We actually finished the cards before Halloween and had to store them somewhere until it was a better time to mail them.

Hubby suggests getting that Spellbinders All-in-One tool to help with the die cutting. We didn't get one until after he cut out all the trees. And while the imaginince i-rock jewel setter is nice for a few heat set jewels, I might get a better jewel setter later for bigger projects. It went through quite a few batteries heat setting all those jewels. Everything else went together as normal.

The neighborhood gifts were Mint Muddy Buddies in a stylish canning jar with the flower punched lids, colored paper under them and pretty ribbon glued around it. I made the label in Silhouette Studio, and hubby came up with the saying.  Isn't he clever?

Halloween House 2014

So here it is, what the house looked like for Halloween this year. Hubby changed the route to the front door, and directed the trick-or-treaters through the middle of the yard so they can be closer to the spiders.

Then we have my usual big spiders and I added the white one this year.

My favorite part is the pumpkins and spiders corner with my purple LED jeweled spider tree.

We have some trick-or-treaters that stopped by for a picture and some of us in costume.

Even Catnip dressed up as a pumpkin. Surprisingly he wore it all night.

Six Years of Christmas Cards

Hubby and I have been making Christmas cards for a while since we were married. Ok, so the first year we didn't make a Christmas card. We just got married and were paying off a wedding, and I don't know what the cards were that year anyway, probably store bought. So we're going to start with Christmas number two.

This was hubby's idea, to make a computer art card by putting the cats on it. That's why we're still careful about what we put on our Christmas tree. Here's the inside...

Christmas #3, He doesn't want to cut ribbon ever again.

Christmas #4, I don't want to color in little ornaments and wear my colored pencils down to stumps. Bro-in-law helped color these too.

Christmas #5 No tree, but it still had an ornament.

Christmas #6 We used everything for this one. I was afraid I was going to wear out my punches.

Christmas #7 Last year's card. The cat was covered in green glitter.

Not sure I have a particular card making style, but I do have a theme to my Christmas cards. This year's card is going to be just as pretty.

Crocheted Crocodile Stitch Rainbow Baby Blanket

I think it's safe to post this now. Yes, it's for another baby in the family. This time the blanket is for hubby's sister and her second baby, not born yet. Her firstborn really loves the blanket I made her and takes it everywhere. Sorry, no pics of that blanket.

I wanted to try my hand at the crocodile stitch that's been buzzing around Pintrest and looks like crocheted scales. The free pattern I found used only one color, but I wanted it rainbow colored.

The pattern is from Bonita Patterns Blog and her crocodile stitch baby blanket. She used a solid mint green, but I like the rainbow overlapping scales effect. So, when you get to the end of a completed scale row, go ahead and clip it to add another color. There are 12 Caron Simply Soft colors in mine. One dark and one light in the rainbow. I did have to go to a couple craft stores to get the colors I was looking for. They didn't carry all the same colors. So I went to Michael's Crafts and Walmart to fill in the color gaps that the other store didn't have. Or you can order from Caron directly.

You will want to weave in your ends before you add the border, or it'll look bulky and messy. The blanket is about 35 inches square. Not very big, but thick and squishy. So it should be warm and tactile for little fingers to play with.

Careful on the border instructions. I think Bonita is missing some corner repeat stitches in her instructions on border rows 2 and 3. You'll want to repeat the corner stitches 2 more times to finish turning the corner. On my blanket, I only went up to border row 4 . Adding the last row, I thought, would make it look too wide, and use more yarn than I had left. You can also add ribbon to the border holes if you like. I didn't have any that looked good, so I didn't. Bonita has instructions for that with the pattern.

So I finished the blanket and it went down to sis-in-law's house. I'll wait to hear if she likes it, and if big sister approves. 

8/14/14 Yup, sis-in-law loves it. And there is a new baby boy too.

Kusudama Paper Flower Centerpieces

Ok, since finishing the quilt, I've been busy folding paper. These centerpieces are for the Harmonaires annual potluck performance. I added a third color this year; red, white and black.

Yes, I made 15 of them, again. So each cardboard box (from Hobby Lobby) holds 12 paper flowers. Each paper flower has 5 folded pieces of paper. So that would mean hubby and I folded 900 pieces of paper! Yikes!

Since this event is always music themed, we'd need some music flowers. Don't worry, I didn't cut up important music. We used some old Children's hymn books that we cut the pages into 6" squares. Gotta love that the old books were $1.00 each at Deseret Industries. The black and red flowers are real origami paper that I ordered online in bulk. Good luck finding one color packs of usable paper, (which I got from Mulberry Paper).

The flowers are assembled with 1/8" inch Sookwang tape, except for the last piece. You need to leave the last side open to get your wire or pipe cleaner stem in the middle. Then hot glue the stem in and a flat backed jewel in the middle. Hot glue a slice of the green floral foam in the middle of the box and hide it with half a sheet of black tissue paper. Also cut up a piece of red tissue paper into quarters and use 2 per box. The stems will easily poke through the paper into the foam while arranging. As you get to the sides of the arrangement, I just folded the stems in half to get that domed look.

Here's an example of one on a 60" round table with our usual red mesh squares and glass gems holding the edges down. It still curls up 3 years later.

It doesn't look half bad at the party. I tried to get a picture of the room before guests showed up. They were quick right after we just finished getting the tables set.

Bonus project! Remember the Easter candy boxes I made this year? We did it again with smaller pillow boxes and a music notes embossing folder. This time the embossing folder is from Spellbinders.

Oh, and the candy is delicious Chocolate Dutch Mints from Jelly Belly. Yes, you can get them in plain white instead of the pastel colors.

We did give away the centerpieces to the Harmonaires choir members as a present. There is no way I had room to store 15 bulky centerpieces without crunching the paper flowers. Our guests were excited to take them home. 

Batik Log Cabin Quilt

Finally! It's finished! A very, very, very late Christmas present for my Dad.

It's made from 5 colors of batiks and solid black fabric. It's mesmerizing that way, isn't it? I used a 6 inch log cabin block pattern from All About Quilts. And then arranged them in the traditional "Barn Raising" pattern.

Here's a closer look at the quilting thread pattern.

My hubby picked the thread color, a silvery grey and helped me map out the lines. I originally wanted to do feathers on the black stripes, but ran out of time and will-power, let alone lack of that skill at the moment.

I don't care how precise you cut all the tiny pieces, but they never seem to line up like you want them to. How many of you ended up stretching your fabric a little to meet the edge of the other piece? It's supposed to be a 60 inch square quilt, I have no idea if it did meet that measurement at the end.

If you're looking for the 5th batik, it's in the binding.

Easter Treat Boxes

These were our neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt treats for this year. The candy is from Jelly Belly, Sour Bunnies and Sunkist Fruit Gems. It helps if you can get them in bulk on a wholesale account. The acrylic pillow boxes are from Clear Bags, the food safe kind. And, the Easter Egg embossing folder is from Darice. Yes, you can put acrylic boxes in your embossing folders without damage. I just used my Big Shot multipurpose platform with no tabs on my machine. Just to get rid of some random pieces of ribbon, we used just about every ribbon scrap I had, and then some I didn't like. It helps keep the boxes closed.

Succulent Spring Wreath

I was asked to post a picture of this wreath when I finished it. It's a wreath kit from S.E.I. that I bought at the ScrapbookUSA show last month. I liked the colors in the kit and that it used some foam flower shapes with the double sided paper flowers.

It has almost everything you need to make it. The kit says that hot glue is recommended. I say it's required, or all those pinned flowers in the foam will pop off really fast. I added the lavender grosgrain ribbon as a hanging loop. I don't know how they hung that one up. It's kinda soft styrofoam you're building on.

I'm sure you can take all your personal flower punches and dies to make lots of layered flowers out of your own designer paper to create your own wreath. This particular kit has tons of leftover flower pieces that you can use for other projects. I had enough leftover that I could probably make a second wreath.

Color Block Quilt

Hey! It's a new blanket for a baby shower...again. This time it's a co-worker.

This was a fast one. While finishing the crocheted blanket below, hubby cut all the fabric for me. Then we finished putting it together in two days. Let's not do that again.

This one is flannel backed with a stripe of color down the middle. Mostly because the fabric wasn't wide enough. If you must count, there are 12 different colors plus the backing. Had 6 of them and got the rest at K&H Quilt Shoppe. Oh, and the co-workers loved it.