the christmas season begins!

A couple of cards I made this weekend. I have another really cute idea too. Hopefully I will be able to finish it up and post it by Friday. Let's just say thread and the heat embossing tool I have do NOT get along!

After seeing the pumpkins I made for Fall several friends brought these trees to my attention. The tutorial can be found here. My original plan was to paint the trees gold, however I am currently obsessing over reused paper and rainbow so for now they are going to be left as is.... well with the addition of LOTS of glitter of course!

drink your whisky like a man!

I think glass etching is my new favorite craft! I made these rocks glasses for our Thanksgiving celebration. Personally, I can not take even a single sip of scotch with out wrinkling up my nose. Which I am pretty sure led to me offending a guy helping us at Binny's the other day. What can I say I'm more of a white wine girl! But I still think these rocks glasses are great fun. Scroll down to see my lovely models demonstrating the proper way to drink scotch.

I created the images using Illustrator, Sure Cuts A Lot software, and a die-cutting machine. A helpful tip: place the "inside" of the stencil on whatever you are etching first. This gives you a good idea of scale and placement. You will be able to determine if you need to re-cut the stencil before actually etching the glass. In the picture below you will see how I used this technique before I placed the stencil on the other side of the rocks glass.

Your stencil will probably have a couple of wrinkles to accommodate the curve of the glass. Just make sure to burnish any edges the etching creme will contact.

The finished product

My models demonstrating how to drink scotch like man! ;)

joy

I used the technique described in this video- NOT as easy as it seems! I have had a lot of trouble getting the bottles to break cleanly, but it is getting better. This was the very first bottle that I was able to cut perfectly. I decided to use the green bottles for a Christmas decoration. After cutting the glass I used an etching cream with vinyl stencils I cut on a die-cutting machine.

YAY for Christmas decorations! I can't wait for the day after Thanksgiving- an ENTIRE day of decorating and hot chocolate! :)

before & after: bookshelf

I was inspired by a friend of mine. She always has her books organized by color. It creates a really fun rainbow effect. I felt I needed a little pop of color today. Plus my bookshelf was in need of a serious dusting- as pointed out by an anonymous artist (picture below). HOW does my house get SO dusty???

To the person who illustrated

this little bit of love for me,

thanks for not adding a date! :)

This is the bookshelf before:

After:

I really just rearranged the books I already had. Borrowing a few, less than ten, from other places in the house. Who would have guess from the before I had so many colorful books? A fun little project when you need something cheerful.

fall pumpkins

I absolutely L-O-V-E to decorate for holidays. I made these pumpkins this weekend.

I found this tutorial at Craftberry Bush, she has very detailed instruction.

I did make one change. My first attempt I took the cover all the way off, pulling most of the paper off of the spine of the book. When I hot glued the book around the stick for the stem it melted the book binding glue and all of the pages fell apart....sad! So I just cut off the cover with a craft knife leaving the paper on the spine. I hope the picture above helps to illustrate what I am attempting to explain.

I did not have any book I wanted to sacrifice for this project. I picked these up at a thrift store- 5 books for $1. I felt a little bad about cutting up a book, but they are SO cute now!

Little Pumpkin Family

I had to take a picture with the cemetery in the background SPOOKY!

before & after

Before:

After!

The gloss paint worked out great! I was a little worried before beginning the project after reading so many horror stories of high gloss paint. I did sand each piece very, VERY well before painting as well as in between coats. I used two grits of paper, the finest being 320, between each coat of paint. That might have been overkill. Honestly, I just kind of took a guess selecting the sandpaper. It did work out well. I know people also have really good results with spray paint for a high gloss finish. I wanted a very specific color and there is always the problem of finding spray paint in the city of Chicago... very difficult.

Centsational Girl has a ton of tips & tutorials for using spray paint- check it out.

I am on to my new search. The perfect desk to complete the room!