Mittens

Some great women hosted a Ladies Ornament Exchange evening at our church. I thought that sounded like a fun evening. . .but I REALLY wanted to make an ornament! My original idea was a stocking, but then one day I just started doodling and changed my mind to making matching country mittens. So. . .here they are:

There is my pattern--a free hand mitten and long heart. Add a button and coloured embroidery floss. . .

Then stitch like crazy!

And I got them done on time! I loved how they turned out!

After that, I made a few more in blue with brown buttons and looped the hanging string just on one side. (No pictures. . .what was I thinking???) Most of those disappeared to my co-workers and prayer partner at school.

I love crafting during the holidays!

Christmas in July. . .a little late!

I just realized I still have this post in my file. . .and it has never surfaced into the blogosphere!

So. . .ignore the title, and here was my "Christmas in August" ideas.

Yes, you read that right. I have learned from the past. There is no time to create Christmas cards prior to the Christmas season, and I had a wave of creativity one lovely day in August, so this is what I did: I made Christmas cards.

Maybe you can guess. . .it was a Pinterest idea. Well, I should say it was based on a pinterest idea. I saw cards made out of paint chips (similar to the ones at the bottom of this post) and decided I should search the web for some tree ideas. I found a gift tag (blog here) that looked similar to the tree I made, but decided to make mine as a whole card, thinking I could put a family photo on the back. Which never happened.

But here it is:

Here are the cards--done on the right, works in progress on the left.

(Stamps from Michael's clearance, ink was Staz-On, ribbon from my left-overs stash, paper from Activity Village website and my stash)

 

And below are some other cards I tried to make.

They are very, very pink. Cute, but VERY pink. Sparkle too, but VERY pink!

(stamps from Stampin Up)

(stamps from Michael's clearance bin)

 

Thank you to my many trips to Home Depot, where I was {seriously} considering painting the guest room one of various shades of green, but never did, and then considered painting a hallway pink, but never did--and didn't want to waste the chips so I crafted instead. (Am I justified in this?!?!)

Star of Wonder. . .

This past week we had a snow day, which would have been perfect, except that my princess also decided to come down with a nasty flu bug that same day! Lucky for us, it was only one of those 24 hour things and so far no one else has caught it. Not a pleasant way to start a blog entry, I know, but I needed to give you background for this one. The day I stayed home with her was supposed to be a Christmas craft day with my students. The snow day was supposed to be a day that we would do some art for a Christmas Pageant Chapel my primary cuties were doing. So, suddenly I had two days of art activities that I had to cram into a day that I wasn't able to be there!

The sub plans were all there--crazy art explanations and all--but of course, there were those projects that I knew just could not happen! I've been on the TOC list before so I know what a TOC needs to put up with, and I just wanted to be kind to her--and I wanted a star ornament that would be all that I envisioned it to be! So I ditched the old idea and came up with something new.

And then, not even knowing if it would work for little kids or not, the princess (and her partner in crime) and I gave it a try at home. If you say the words art or craft, the princess perks up pretty quickly!

So. . .first we made a Star of David out of Popsicle sticks. You can Google how to do it, or you can glue together two triangles and then place those on top of each other with more glue.

Once that was dry, we painted. (Unfortunately for the Royal Sick-o, all my glitter was at school, so hers was straight paint--maybe we will add some sparkles soon). Her little follower thought black was a pretty cool star colour. I tried, but how do you argue with someone who says, "Shh-shh. Mommy, I do good" ? You don't--you let the star be black. Maybe we need to add some glitter to his too!

While that dried, we traced a 5 point star pattern on scrapbooking paper (mine here came from the ActivityVillage website). The other side has musical notes on it that the princess and Mr. Black-star traced in yellow and orange for star colours.

Then a hole-punch, some raffia ribbon and a loop to hang it on the tree.

Easy enough?

The finished star craft

So, here it is: hanging alongside out mudded walls--not my best photo op. Oh well.

The cute creators

And here are my cute little sick kids, proudly showing off their creativity!

 

The good news: when I went back to school on Christmas Chapel day, the stars were already hung behind our stage for ALL the moms, dads, grandparents, family, and friends to see. . .

and they looked great!

Hooray for easy, last-minute crafts!