12 Months of Christmas Project - January



I love making things for Christmas.  I don't love making everything in a three week panic mode, so I was motivated to join in on the project dreamed up by Aileen of Aileen's Musings.   She has put out a challenge to make something for Christmas every month and share our creations at the project site.

January's color suggestion is white - perfect for the project I had in mind - a white torn fabric wreath.

I started with a sad little thrifted wreath.  Since it was so puny I wrapped some batting around it to fatten it up.  The white batting also ensured that any gaps in the fabric won't be obvious.  If your wreath is not white and you don't need to fatten it up, I'd suggest spray-painting it white so the wreath color won't be obvious.

I used a bottom-weight white fabric remnant (about half a yard)  as I wanted some substance to the strips.  Tear the fabric in strips about an inch wide.  I made mine about 8 inches long, but yours may need to be longer or shorter depending on how fat your wreath is.  Better to start with longer strips and then cut them smaller if you need to. 

This couldn't be simpler - take on strip and tie in on the wreath.  I double knotted the strips and kept alternating where the knot fell on the wreath - some towards the inside, some near the outer edge to make it fuller.  If you like a more organized look, place all the knots lined up, but that kind of control makes me nervous!

Make sure your fabric strips are are close together as possible so there aren't any gaps.  Once all the strips are tied on , trim so the ends are fairly even, but embrace the chaos  - no measuring!

Since this is a Christmas wreath, a little glitter is in order.  I randomly brushed a bit of glue and sprinkled on some silver glitter.



Tie on a strip of fabric to make a hanging loop and you're finished. 

One Christmas project done - I feel so noble!

Another Pottery Barn Knock-Off

I love these numbered jars from Pottery Barn.  It dawned on me that I already HAD jars so making these would be easy and {gasp} require no new supplies!

Here's what I used:

Black acrylic paint, cosmetic sponge, stencil, tape and glue to secure stencil to glass.  Really simple project - decide where you want the numbers, tape on the stencil and sponge on black paint.  I tried some repositionable glue to help keep the stencil flat, but it didn't stick very well.  Taping kept the stencil secure and I just held down any areas that wouldn't stay flat.

The paint on the PB ones looks a bit scrubbed up.  My stencils didn't have  smooth lines and the cosmetic brush left a nice texture, so I didn't do any additional distressing.  If your stencil had really clean edges and your painting isn't textured, you could dab off some paint with a paper towel and scratch it up a bit with something sharp. 

Here are my knock-offs:

The jars are Burken jars from Ikea.  They  come in many sizes and have silicone inside the lids so there is a pretty decent seal. I use them for all kinds of storage.

Isn't the little guy  - "1/2" cute?  I smile every time I see it!  Love my new PB-inspired jar upgrade.

A Little Decorating Magic

I like our flat screen TV but not how it dominates the living room.  Here it is shortly after moving in with too much TV and too much blank wall. 

I moved the ladder shelf out to make room for the Christmas tree and decided to start all over on the TV wall once the tree (sadly!) was gone. 

For starters, the big leather chair went into the corner.  Then added in a printer tray I had filled with shells and a frame with photos.  This frame idea is all over Pinterest and is so easy - staple some wire to the back of a picture frame and pin on photos. I used tiny clothespins to secure the pictures to the wire.

 

The corner looks so much more inviting now:

 

Now to the problem of what to do around the TV .   For starters The Captain helped hang a thrifted $3.00 shelf over the TV.  A few vintage and beachy items on the shelf magically shifted the focus from the big black box.

I made ATCs a couple of years ago for an alphabet challenge on Next Generation Stampers  that have  have been sitting in a box ever since.  They found a  new home in a 7 Gypsies display box, and one of my vintage drawer knobs made the perfect hook.  Has anyone decorated one of these boxes? Making the ATCs was the easy part - gluing them in was a bear!  I tried most of my stash of various adhesives without success.  Finally used some tacky glue - painted on both the box and the ATC with better luck, but still some edges going wild and free - grr!  Anyway, hung that to the right of the TV.

Now the TV is no longer king of the living room and pictures and artwork have found fun new homes.

Cleaning out the Inbox and the Mailbox

" You can't invent things like time, Violet said.  You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers.  You can invent things like steam-powered window washers.  But you can't invent more time."

-- Lemony Snicket

A New Year means being hit by the organization bug.   I decided I needed some strategies for taming the volume of stuff that just wastes time.

First huge time-drain - junk emails.   I get emails on three devices (cray-cray, I know) and while I've synched two to eliminate duplicates, I still spend  waste too much time deleting emails I never even open.   Since the first rule of organizing clutter, even e-clutter, is to stem the influx,  I attacked my email and ruthlessly hit that "unsubscribe me" option! 

Next on the chopping block was the updates from some of my online art groups - the ones on which I like to "lurk" but not participate.  I know how to access these  groups if I want to check on something, but I don't need daily updates.

(Here)

Then, on to snail  mail. We must be on the master-list for catalog mailings!  It takes a few minutes, but I tracked down customer service on several and unsubscribed from the paper catalogs.  Check out this site:  https://www.catalogchoice.org/  to unsubscribe from catalogs, junk mail, and be-still-my-heart, PHONE BOOKS.  We get several huge phone books a year and believe me, I have enough phone book pages for altered art to last a life-time!  Who even uses a phone book anymore??  I love that Tech Zombies lists phone books as "a technology that doesn't know it's dead".  Then there  are the these frightening numbers: 615 MILLION phone books printed last year, accounting for up to 30% of trash.  Can't you just see archeologists several hundred years from now wondering what those strange yellow layers  found in their dig  represent?  Another "unsubscribe me, please".

( Jim Krasinski has nothing to do with this post, but he's just so cute!)

Finally, cleaning up Facebook.  Confession - I've unsubscribed from nearly every application so I only get real news from my FB friends- no game updates, no info about sites visited, no nothing but actual status updates and pictures. 

So what am I doing with all my extra time now?  Pinning things on Pinterest, of course!

Thrifted Finds

I'm seeing that word all over blog land - "thrifted".  I'm not usually a fan of made-up words or turning adjectives/nouns into verbs, but it's grown on me as it's much easier to say "thrifted finds" than  "things I found at the thrift store". ( This may be the slippery slope into total language decay, but I digress).

Don't you just love finding treasures at thrift stores?  Here are some of my recent scores.

Two pairs of new Gap pants and a new Liz Claiborne sweater : $15.00

Four sweet little cache pots from Williams Sonoma.  These will be replacing my plastic yogurt cups for mixing paints.  I like using less plastic, even the recycled kind.  Plus these are so much prettier.

Sweet tea set!  I really wanted if for the cups that will fit under my espresso maker, but the teapot is a nice extra.

And this week's super-find - drum roll, please:

Thirty-six pieces of Roger Williams silver in pristine condition: $6.00!  Check out the sweet butter knives!

Have you found any treasures lately?

Altered Backgrounds

I've been playing around with making backgrounds lately.  I love the complex backgrounds that make pieces so much more interesting, but I'm a bit afraid of them myself.   All that color, print, design and writing make me nervous!

There was an article in Somerset Studio recently about altering scrapbook paper by painting over it with a wash of gesso.   I have lots that I never use -  some "duds" that were included in a package of paper, some  too loud,  too bright,or just too-too for my taste.   I took out some of those papers and decided to focus my 2012 calendars on making more creative backgrounds.

Here's a piece of artist paper from SS that started out too busy for me.  I didn't take a totally "before" picture, but here it is with just a swipe of watered-down gesso and the circles over-stamped with more gesso.

Just painting over patterned paper with gesso may be all you need for some of your stash.  I love how it mutes colors, unifies designs and adds some depth and texture.  You can stamp-off into the gesso - no ink, just stamp to remove some of the gesso and create great patterns.  Use fun things like bubble wrap, shelf liner in addition to real stamps.

 

Here's the finished calendar page I made with this gesso-improved paper:

I added some white-gel pen details around some of the printed design, then a text page painted with more gesso and stamped.  The letters were swiped with some yellow pigment ink from one of those wheels of little wedge-shaped pads - some of the neighboring green and orange pads leaked on it - I like the mixture- and then clear embossed to finish them.

Here's another :

You can see the blue marbled pattern - really pretty, but busy!  Again, a wash of gesso (I don't really measure - just add some water to dilute the gesso but not so much that it's watery.).  The gesso allows the background to peek through but not take over.  Some gesso stamped stars, post cancellations and a bit of over-stamped ephemera - and a real sea star - give this page an ocean vibe.

This page was a real challenge.  It started out as a dark red toile print on an ecru background.   I painted on some dark red paint around the edges and then a wash of gesso  that transformed the print into something from a bad day at the crime lab!  It took 2 layers of diluted gesso to tone it down.  Then I over stamped the text with gesso, stamped some yellow dots with a rolled up piece of shelf liner and added some pencil-eraser gesso dots.

This was a fun exercise for me - stretching outside what's comfortable.  Bring on those wildly decorated papers - you don't scare me anymore!

Dismantling Christmas

By now, most normal people have stashed all their Christmas decorations.  Not me.  I like to extend the season as long as possible.  Sadly, the tree has to go this weekend.  It's just not possible to exhale in the same room without inducing a shower of pine needles.

I put decorations away in stages.  That might be like slowly ripping off a bandaid - just prolonging the pain!  A week or so after Christmas I pack away all the overtly Christmas-y things like Santas and card displays. 

Then I'm down to what I consider "winter decorations"- still festive, but not in the category of needing an intervention. Candles, red garlands and twinkly lights meet my definition of "winter decorations" that justifies  keeping them around longer. There's a house I drive by that has what I call the "pile it on" approach to seasonal decorations.  They just keep adding stuff for the next holiday season to the existing scheme, so the fall scarecrow sits near the snowman who's now holding a big Valentine heart!  Thankfully I have daughters who would step in if I start to go down that road.

Twinkly little white lights and window candles - that's another story. They are not going anywhere until it stops getting dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. 

Paper Inspiration

{here}

I love  the  Cake Wrecks blog.  Most days they feature just that - cake decorating gone horribly wrong.  But on Sunday they showcase the most professionally decorated cakes with details that knock your socks off.   Case in point - the cake above,  done by Brooklyn Cakes .  Check out the with beautiful blue background, light branches and perfect little cardinals.

I knew this looked familiar.  Look what's hanging in my studio - the paper that inspired this cake from Snow & Graham Letterpress!

Snow and Graham has other beautiful papers, like this:

 and this:

 and more little birdies!  ( I think I must be in a bird phase).

There are lots of other paper goodies - cards, calendars and other drool-worthy items. 

And no, I'm not on their payroll !

Happy New Year!

This page I made for my (late!)  2012 calendars is my  New Year's resolution.  Fits the bill quite nicely, don't you think? 

  Happy New Year to you and may it be filled with doing what makes you happy.