On Reindeer Bells

I'm a little late in starting in on my Christmas crafting this year. This past week I got to work on remedying this and to justify last year's on sale purchase of a pack of 72 bells, made reindeer. 

In case you are wondering, the one is yellow because I was out of brown pipe cleaners and was eager to see if my idea of using bells for the body would work. 

While I was intending for them to be ornaments, I may just be happy with letting them stand about on their own.♥ 

On a Small Scarecrow

I was planning to make some small scarecrows. I made a scarecrow. I'm done small scarecrow making now. 

His name is Hawthorne and, while it didn't quite turn out as I envisioned it (I didn't realize I used up my fake leaves), I feel he looks quite nice in his autumnal bucket.♥ 

On A Little Bit of Spring

A few weeks ago, I made a spring themed garland. 

This originated with the desire to make some flowers with my Knit-Wit, but needing to have something to do with them other than just leave them randomly sitting on the arms of the couch, which is where the extras seem to end up. 

While I was originally intending to slip cord through the center beads to hang them individually, I realized between the yarn holding the bead in place and the pipe cleaner leaves it would be too tight, as well as resulting in them hanging straight down. After a bit of trial and error with trying to wrap the pipe cleaner around the jute cord (a frustrating endeavor), I ended up just tying them to the cord with little pieces of yarn and then slipping a few petals over the pins I used to hand the cord to keep them straight.

 

 

To add to the garland, I bought some flat wood chicks and bunnies at the dollar store (actually writing this post, I'm realizing everything I used in making this with the exception of the pipe cleaners is from there). I painted the chicks bright yellow and used hot glue to attach baker's twine to them and the rabbit in the center so they could dangle. With the two outer edge chicks I made little hooks out of floral wire so they could hang from the jute cord since the placement looked better than hanging them from the push pins. To finish it off, I added a few large beads on the end of the cord giving me a very cheerful spring garland to grace the fireplace. ♥ 

On Making Autumn Decorations!

I was in the mood for some autumn crafting a few weeks ago and am just now getting around to sharing! 

First, we have Grenadine the ladybug's new and tipsy friend, Schnapps the spider! He was a rather quick project involving felt, chenille yarn, and green floral stem wire painted with black nail polish. The nail polish has reached the more gunky point and it ended up giving the legs a little texture in addition to leaving some of the green showing through, which I was not going for, but ended up liking. 

Next was a much bigger undertaking. I've had a roll of gold mesh (the type used to wrap plastic flower pots at Christmas or in the Spring to make them more decorative) sitting around that I've never been entirely sure how to use outside of having the nightmare idea of gluing it to construction paper for a shiny gold texture to make lion valentines a few years ago. 

So I started with some simple bows tied with brown yarn to decorate at work. Then I figured I had so much on the roll why not make bigger bows and went on an artificial flower and plant buying spree. Three hours of hot glue, poking myself on flower wires, and some not exactly "pumpkin" scented pinecones and I ended up with some very pretty hanging decorations to give to a few friends and acquaintances.   

Given that we're only a little into autumn and at the rate I'm coming up with ideas, I imagine there will be at least a part two to this post. Anyone else starting in on autumn crafting?

On Some Christmas Elves!

Last year I went on a reindeer making spree using the pattern from the November 1961 issue of Woman's Day; this year I managed to get a hold of an actual copy of the magazine (someone else had shared the reindeer pattern) and had plans for making the elf on the cover along with Santa. Santa didn't materialize this year, unfortunately, but I did make the elf...sort of. 

While I started following the pattern (shrinking it down to match with the size of Silverbell, the reindeer), somehow I ended up making two girl elves and pretty much ignoring the accessories and clothes. In part, I feel like the beard was a deciding factor for this, and, if I'm to be honest, not making Santa, as I was not going back out to the craft store to find fake fur or something along those lines to make it, I didn't think the white yarn I had looked right, and I had several shades of brown yarn handy.  

Meet Candy!

Cookie and Silverbells are great friends!

The shirt from the original pattern did remain. I just turned it round and have them wearing it as a jacket instead and to break up the stripes I gave them little aprons. The tiny shoes, also from the original pattern, were hand sewn out of felt!

There is supposed to be a third youthful boy elf to go with them, which I was intending to make the vest for, but I never quite decided on what fabric I wanted for the body and clothes, so he's still a little pile of pieces. He might get finished within the week, but we shall see about that dependent on how I'm feeling. Meanwhile, I have these two sweet elves to help me wish you the merriest of Christmas!

 

♥ ♥ ♥

On The Remainder of My Christmas Crafting

Aside from the reindeer and a few Christmas cards, I didn't do all that much in terms of Christmas crafting due to some health issues, but I did want to share what I did get done!

I had pulled out my 1964 copy of Christmas Magic by Margaret Perry at the beginning of the month with the intention of making a few of the projects in it. Many of the projects involve aluminum and copper sheets as the primary material because they are meant to serve as candle holders. However, not actually wanting to make candle holders, I decided to give a few of the projects a go using heavy weight metallic paper instead. While I set out to make a few angels and a couple different animals, I ended up just making a donkey with adjustments made to the saddle piece and was quite pleased to find that the metallic paper worked perfectly. 

As for the next round of crafting...While I was looking for Christmas Magic, I also happened upon a few pages torn out of the October 1990 edition of the magazine Crafts 'n Things, specifically saved for the cute little balsa wood house ornaments and the patterns to make them! 

These were supposed to be really simple with an open back and a piece cut out of the base to slip a tiny twinkle light in to get glowing windows. I (as usual) had some different ideas and ended up using the patterns as a starting point. 

The first one I made as a gingerbread house. This one I shortened all the walls and gave a back piece. For the icing and peppermint I added extra hot glue and painted it. The gumdrops are cut out of glitter paper. 

For the others, I decided to go for a dollhouse look and make them as ornaments! For the bigger house I added a strip in the middle to be a second floor and after much eyeballing of measurements, careful cutting (or rather attempts at it), and having glued myself to tiny furniture and tree pieces multiple times, had a house and cabin ready for some tiny inhabitants to celebrate Christmas in them! 

♥ ♥ ♥

On Oh So Many Pumpkins!: A Photo Post

The past two weeks have involved oh so many pumpkins...

Plastic pumpkins!

Oversized pumpkins!

And a wonky little fabric pumpkin patch that goes with one of my wonky little mice!

♥ ♥️ ♥

On Alice in Wonderland Wall Decorations!: A Photo Post

A few weeks ago I was browsing on Etsy and was delighted to come across an almost a complete set of Dolly Toy Co. pressed cardboard Fairytale Pin-ups for Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Needless to say, I bought them right away and now they're living on my one of my walls! While I doubt I'll be able to track down the missing story placard that goes with them, I did manage to find a picture of one, so I think I might just print that out on card stock and place it next to the lantern.

♥️ ♥️ ♥️

On Some Vintage Christmas Decorating & A Delighful Fold-out Card!

Not too many of my decorations made it out this year, but pretty much all of the ones that did are vintage ones and resulted in a very vintage looking mantle!

Along with the two pop-out cards, which I found at the antique store a few weeks ago, I also came across this wonderful and rather extensive fold-out one. I really love the artwork on it!

♥️ ♥️ ♥️

On the Snowflake Failure that Led to Pretty Hanging Things: A Photo Post

I tried to make a decorative snowflake using a pattern I found on Pinterest. It didn't go so well (as you can kind of see below), but I tried the pattern on a single fold and ended up with some very pretty cutouts that when decorated looked lovely!

 ♥ ♥ ♥

On Alice Day Fun!

Today is the day the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland takes place on and what would have been the 165th birthday of Alice Liddell, the real Alice it was written for.

While I didn't do much to celebrate today aside from wearing this outfit and a button saying it was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Day (center of the above photo), yesterday I did a bit of mad tea party celebrating in making teacup hats with kids at work.

This, of course, involved decorating a wall and wearing a teacup skirt because if you're going to wear a paper teacup hat you might as well go all out. 

Twinkle, twinkle little bat...

I made this skirt, I think, in 2014 shortly after I made this one and I just haven't seemed to be able to get in on the blog to share. Happily it finally made it up today, though!  

♥ 😺 ♥

On Merry Christmas Wishes!

Wishing all my readers a very merry Christmas!

I didn't finish my tutorial in time for this elf, so we'll just consider this a sneak preview for next year.  ;)

 🎄♥🎄

 

On Putz House Making

Being fairly tired I decided it'd be better to do a non-sewing project today, so I made a new Putz style house to add to my collection of houses made off the patterns on Retro Renovation. With the patterns being somewhat large for my liking and storage space, I reduced the size by half to get the perfect mini size. 

This year I made their storybook ranch version, with the addition of a chimney adapted from the Cape Cod pattern (the blue and white one below) and without the dove cote or trim along the front. I also added a fence, made from the conveniently red cracker box I used for the whole thing. The tree is one of the larger bottle brush ones with seedbeads glued on for ornaments.

I really like this version since it actually looks like some of the houses in my neighborhood!

Here are some pictures of a few others I've made from Retro Renovation patterns (plus one that was my grandma's). I'm realizing that for some reason I seem to be missing pictures of at least two of them!

Anyone else doing any Christmas crafting?

♥♥♥