SOME MORE HOLIDAY DECORATIONS

I guess I am not ready to stop crafting Holiday decorations.  When I started looking through the books for one or two ideas, I found more and more things that I wanted to try ... I warn you, it can be addicting!  Today I am trying some crafts from a Better Homes and Gardens publication from last year:

Christmas Ideas 2009 by Better Homes and Gardens.

Better Homes and Gardens  publishes one of these Christmas Special Interest issues each year.  The ideas I tried for this post were from the 2009 issue specifically.  (To place a library hold on a specific year's copy you will need to contact the library because it is listed as part of a series.)


I like these Special Interest series because they have something for a great variety of tastes and styles (this issue claims to provide "256 easy and elegant ideas for your home"). Also, the projects tend to be relatively simple to execute and use many different types of crafting techniques.

I still had all the scrap booking stuff out on my table from  my post about making holiday cards and tags so I tried my hand at the Tree Tag project first of all.  I don't own the stamp they used but the tree was simple to draw out with my markers.

I was inspired by the tags they showed in "Tag Team" so I made a few more tags using some purchased stickers.

I have had a set of clear glass ornaments in my craft stash for years but never set myself to do anything with them so when I saw the "Custom-Color Ornaments" project I decided it was high time to drag them out.  You swirl diluted acrylic paint inside them to coat the interior and then apply punched out snowflakes (or snowflake stickers) on the our surface.  Yay! Another opportunity to use my snowflake punch!!  The craft is simple and the finished project is very effective...my husband really liked these.

I decided to use up the rest of my clear glass ornaments and tried the project I originally purchased them for: marbleizing.  For this project you squirt two colors of diluted acrylic paint inside and swirl it around to coat.  Dry it upside down and you have a "marbleized ornament".  My son really liked these...my photos don't show them off too well though.

Lastly, I made the "Circle of Snow" wreath by randomly piling felt snowflakes of varying sizes on a circular shape.  (The book's project used a foam wreath...I used a sheet of stiffened glittered felt that I already had and which I cut into a donut shaped piece.)  The glitter in the felt doesn't really show up well here unfortunately.

As I am writing this, the Better Homes and Gardens Christmas 2010 issue is being readied for circulation.

It indicates that it has "247 Festive and Easy Ideas for your home" including "39 simple and stylish ornaments."  I'm looking forward to investigating many of those.








Meanwhile, a couple of my colleagues here at the library have been tapping their inner craftiness and have given me permission to share their endeavors.

If you read our ever so fine SciFi blog "The Labyrinth Librarians" then you are familiar with Adam.  While he and I were talking about the crafts I was planning to make this season Adam thought he remembered making pipe cleaner reindeer sometime in his past.  Not one to let any craft opportunity to escape, I challenged him to try making one.  Not one to let any challenge go unanswered, Adam did make one.

I thought that his rise to the challenge was GREAT!!  But, then we decided that the little guy was destined to be Rudolph, so Adam added some bling:

 And there you have it, a blinged out pipe cleaner reindeer by Adam, The Labyrinth Librarian.  We only need a few more, a sleigh and a Santa....Adam, are you able to rise to the challenge again?

Next up in the colleague craft-a-thon is a beautiful display by Mary, one of our Children's Librarians.  During the Fall, Mary created a tree covered with Autumn leaves for our stairwell.  Not yet wanting to see it go, she decked it out for the Winter.  While I was working on my "Quick Felt Holiday Decorations" post, Mary created some felt cardinals to put on the branches of her tree.  She looked through our books for Cardinal pictures to use as a reference and sketched one out.  Once happy with her sketch, she made templates for the individual pieces: body, wing, beak,black thing that goes next to beak..., traced them onto felt and cut them out.

  
She used a blanket stitch to outline the wing and body.

She sewed the rest of the parts on and added a bead for the eye and put them in her snowed capped tree.

I am so pleased with my colleagues' crafting contributions and thank them for allowing me to share them in my blog...you never know what you are going to encounter in this place!  As for me I think I had better start worrying about some gift making ideas pretty darn soon!  Back to our shelves I go, exploring the world of possibilities.  I will keep you posted.  Until then, take a look through the Holiday crafting books at our, or your own library and tap into your inner craftiness!

QUICK FELT HOLIDAY DECORATIONS

When time is of the essence and handmade holiday decorations (or gifts) are needed, crafting with felt can be the solution.  The beauty of working with felt is that it doesn't need to be hemmed...the edges can be left raw.  I love that!  You can work up some lovely pieces, as basic or as elaborate as you like, in practically no time at all.

The library has a new Christmas book that is full of cute holiday decorations, ornaments, and stocking ideas all crafted from felt.  The title and the cover art grabbed my attention:

Fa La La La Felt by Amanda Carestio

The book includes information regarding the various types of felt,  basic needs for working with felt, as well as an overview with diagrams of some very basic embroidery stitches you might use to embellish your pieces.  A brief description of how to use your old wool sweaters to create your own felt is also provided . (If you have shrunk any of your sweaters accidentally then you already know how to create felt and now you will have an idea of how to put them to good use.)

There are 45 projects described in the book. The projects are designed by different people which I like because it usually means that, while they share the standard set out by the author, they are not all the same style, ie. there's a little something for everyone.   To test the instructions I decided to make the Christmas Candy Garland and the Holiday Hoot ornament.  Templates for all the projects are provided in the back of the book.  My first discovery was that the templates are not full-sized, however each one states the percentage you need to enlarge it by so you are not left completely guessing.  It does lead to a little extra copying though and for me anyway, some quality time spent with my copier as I tried to figure out where to place the template on it so it would print the enlarged image fully on my paper... hmmm.

I started with the Holiday Hoot ornament designed by Lisa Jordan, and found it was definitely a quick and easy project.

To start, I cut out the required pieces of felt and applied a small dab of fabric glue on back of each piece to tack it in place.

Sew pieces in place with coordinating colors of embroidery floss using the whipstitch.  Then sew body pieces together using darker brown floss and the blanket stitch. When you reach the center of the head, insert and tack in the hanging loop. Continue sewing until about 1" is left and insert desired amount of stuffing.

Finish sewing to the end and there is your Holiday Hoot ornament all ready for the tree.(It's much cuter in person...)

Next I tried out the Christmas Candy Garland designed by Esther Coar.  I picked it because it looked really pretty in the photograph but seemed really simple to make.  And it turned out to be both of those things, however I can not photograph it nearly as well as the book's photographer did (also, mine is still too short to show much draping as it is still in progress at this time).

The instructions and list of items needed is (purposely) vague since you will be determining how long you want to make it.  None-the-less, you start by cutting strips of red and white felt. (I can see the value of investing in a rotary cutting tool!) You need twice as many red as white, it doesn't explain why - but I determined that I needed to double the red because it is thinner than the white.  Then you stack the strips together with the white on top, with the white staggered forward a little (for a more solid center in the candy).

Roll the strips, keeping the long edges lined up.

Place pins to keep candies from unrolling until you need them.  (The instructions indicate you might want to sew the ends to hold them in place prior to stringing them but I found that the beads held the candy together just fine - I just had to remember to remove all my pins!)

Also, while the instructions didn't say to do this, I trimmed the edges to even them after I pinned them since the layers seemed to "crawl" as I rolled them.  I used waxed dental floss to alternately string the candy pieces with red and white pony beads.  You will want to make sure the needle goes through the stitched (or pinned, as in my case) end of felt and the candy center.

Tie hanging loops on the end and hang.

You'll have to trust that it looks MUCH better in reality.  Sorry I couldn't get a truly effective photo ... maybe once I get it to its finished length so that I can get more "swoops" going I will be able to post a better picture.

Other projects I really like and hope to try are the Stitched Gift Tags, Snowflake Coasters, Sorta Swedish Stockings, and the Merry Little Ornaments.  I haven't worked with felt for years really and I found this to be a fun set of projects.  I encourage you to try your hand at it as well - many of the Holiday books and a number of periodicals feature felt crafts.