thankful grateful blessed joyful glad

I had a tin of old plain milk caps that my mother-in-law gave me a while back, and thought I'd challenge myself to use up as many of them as I could...Thanksgiving garland! I covered the caps with 5 different patterned papers, punched them, and joined them with jump rings. Then added thankful grateful blessed joyful glad along the length of it, accompanied by some gems and butterflies. I think this is going to become a holiday-by-holiday project! I've already started the Christmas and New Years garlands...

supplies: cardstock> Neenah. patterned paper> Cosmo Cricket, BasicGrey, My Mind's Eye, DCWV, Scarlet Lime. punches> Marvy. font> Typerwriter Serial Xlight. adhesive>Xyron. other stuff> ~65 vintage milk bottle caps. jump rings>Making Memories, Blue Moon. gems> My Mind's Eye. butterflies> Jenni Bowlin.

Jump Start

The wonderful girls at Copy + Paste are having a 12 Days of Handmade Christmas Class, and I've signed on for a little inspiration & clearing of the decks. We get to "shop our own houses" and to play along, here's my questionaire answers. How many days till Christmas?? 1. It would be amazing if my house was a shop like ...Anthropologie meets Goodwill treasures. 2. But at the moment, it's more like...a bookshop meets Lego Store. 3. The best stocked area of my house has to be...the boys Lego dept., the bookshelves, and my craft area. 4. But I'm not sure I would take stock of my...Christmas ornaments. 5. I could actually open my doors and sell off most of my...fabrics & sewing notions {and paper in general, but I never EVER would sell!}...and I'd still have plenty left over. 6. If I could go shopping in someone else's house I'd choose...my mother-in-law! 7. With the money I'd save by shopping at home for my supplies, I could buy...more paper :) 8. During this class I hope to "buy"/revisit/finally use my stock of...paper milk bottle caps. 9. The best thing about shopping at home will be...making space for new stuff! 10. Shopping at home will mean I can get away with wearing ...comfy-est yoga pants with the little bleach spot & bare feet...which I'd never dare go 'real shopping' in!

Autonomous wax

'Tis the season for a new greeting on the front door. I make these hang-signs for holidays, for seasons, for reminding the boys to dump the sand from their shoes. This one has an old drawer pull with distressed paint still on it. I love the handle, the weight of it, the patina of the exposed metal. And I reluctantly added it to my sign, telling myself if I found a better use for it, I'd grant permission to deconstruct it. The sign also has some splattered crayon wax (with rhinstones), and oh how this brings back a memory. One Christmas on Cooper Hill Road, my mom had a whole tray of red votives alight on a coffee table. My brother, being a boy cooped up mid-winter in Connecticut, was under the table, and sort of lifting it with his feet. You see where this is going? So we had red wax on the oriental carpet, and one very angry mom. After attempting to remove the wax by iron-&-brown-paper-bag method, we were left with a stain, and a lesson-learned. Even here on my sign, I am reminded how autonomously hot wax (mis)behaves.

Christmas Quail

Here stands the Christmas Quail. She's supposed to grace my holiday postage, but I'm struggling with the color of her plummage. The good folks over at Zazzle have printers that print a few steps darker, and I have to plan for that...so we'll see. I wish I could say the Christmas cards were this far along! I'm quite tempted to buy a few boxes, pen our names & send them off. But then I recall the exponential satisfaction of handmade...

Re-purposing

I'm playing along with Ali Edwards and her December Daily project. I've yet to upload my photos into the Flickr group, but I was really excited to build this book! I took an old Dunn Edwards paint chip binder, gessoed it, covered it with light-weight kraft, and filled it with a page for everyday in December. A book-maker's take on an Advent calendar, and completely inspired by Ali Edwards. I'll share pages along the way. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving! I'm making that crazy, vivid frozen cranberry sauce with horseradish.

Good Acoustics & a Scare! {the friendly kind}

Yay for paper collage! This little number was requested by a friend for her husband who plays--you guessed it: piano, guitar, & drums. I built the paper collage, then heat-transfered it to the t-shirt. The pick was scanned & digitally added. Good stuff, eh?

And I made a hang-tag for the door with some previous SIStv style phyle pieces. Perfect for Halloween. We're engineering BIG costumes here this year; what's on the docket @ your house?