BOO to you

The best thing about October, aside from the hot chocolate weather, is Halloween. It is the best gift to kids you can give. Think about it - they get to dress up and get free candy. It is a nice way to start the holiday season, give them something fun before all the more formal family get-togethers.

I couldn't resist making a fun door decoration to celebrate. These cute little characters were designed in craft felt and stuffed lightly to give them some dimension. They are stitched to a piece of doubled organza ribbon and accented with orange and black 1/4" ribbon.

I probably should have taken the time to stitch the facial features and letters, but I was really trying to keep it simple. (I've been sick for over a week and dealing with a couple of migraines, so some slack should be given.)

To keep it simple, I used puffy paint. This was probably not the best idea. the cat's smile is a little lopsided, and so is the bat's fangs, and my letters are less than perfect. But to be honest, that doesn't bother me. I like the flawed, handmade look. I don't make things to be picture perfect or look like they belong in a magazine. The imperfections make them special and mine, and so I always encourage new and novice crafters to embrace the imperfections and learn from them, but don't stress about them!

A Welcoming Thought (Or a Wreath Alternative)

 This is the time of year that we are supposed to be taking stock of our blessings, thinking about warmth, family and harvest. At least that's how I feel. The holidays are fast approaching and with family stopping by more often, I wanted to start decorating for the season.

There are tons of wreath tutorials and some really beautiful designs out there for this time of year. Don't believe, go look at pinterest. Personally, I'm not a big fan of wreaths and with my screen, they are hard to see. Plus, I don't have that much room to store them. So I decided on an alternative.

I started with this free template from BHG.com for a pillow. I loved the look of it but wanted to personalize it a little. Rather than enlarging as directed, I printed it out on a single piece of paper and cut the pieces out of craft felt. There was the main orange background, a yellow-orange body and the brown stem.

With a pencil, I free handed some lettering and the swirly-curlies and then hand stitched the beads down. For a little extra touch I outlined the stem in the same gold beads as the swirly-curlies and used a pale green ribbon to hang it. There is no stuffing or stiffener to this at all, just basically two layers of felt.

It looked a little plain on my 70's-tastic front door, so I added the fall leaf wreath from yesterday's post to it. My DH gave it his stamp of approval, so it will be up for a bit, until I get my Halloween door project finished...

Glittery Ornaments - Part One

My husband has a large family and every year I like to make something for those who are local as a nice little gift. One year it was a plate of baked goods; one year was small jars of homemade jellies with little muffins. It's has usually been a food item that I could mass produce and package in some cute way. 

Well, baked goods won't really keep with my goal of a stress-less holiday season. I needed to come up with something I could do now and set aside. I found a good tutorial on making glitter ornaments here. Searching my stash I found a couple boxes of clear glass ornaments and figured this would be a good place to start.

The tutorial writer used Martha Stewart glitter. I didn't really want to spend the money on that, so I got a couple containers of regular glitter in red and green. It is not as fine a glitter as the Martha Stewart, but worked out just fine I think. The only negative to this larger glitter is if you hold the ornament up to the light, you can see the glass is not completely coated. This to me is not an issue because they look fine otherwise and I doubt the family will be searching for flaws.

I pretty much just followed the guidelines of the tutorial - this is not a difficult craft to do. One thing I will say is that I waited about an hour before I put the silver cap back on the ornament. I wanted to make sure the glitter dried and wouldn't flake off when it was finished. I showed them to my hubby and he said they looked store bought.

As much as I like these ornaments, they seem a little plain for a Christmas gift. Which is why this will be a two-part post. I'm not 100% sure when the next part will be posted, but I need to find some way to embellish these ornaments - to make them stand out. I have a couple ideas, I just need to get them done!