A Homemade Christmas

Isn't that the best kind of Christmas, one that comes from the heart, not store bought, but created by your own two hands.  Well, my kids might have other ideas, as is evidenced by their extensive Christmas lists, but I love homemade gifts.  Before I move on to Christmas cards, I want to expound upon our Thanksgiving this year.  I was all for a take-out Thanksgiving dinner.  I know, I know, you're all gasping in horror right now and this statement totally contradicts my earlier statements in this paragraph, but I have been so tired lately that I really just wanted to relax over the Thanksgiving long weekend.  Okay, moving on, my family started in with "...but you are going to make your sweet potatoes, right mom?" and "what are we going to do without all the leftovers?".   So, you can guess what happened...I caved.  I ended up cooking Thanksgiving dinner, complete with all the family favorites and you know what...I realized I wouldn't have it any other way.  The house smelled amazing and the food was fantastic, as was the company.  We played games after dinner and laughed and laughed.  It was a good day, filled with memories.

 I wanted to share with you the centerpiece my son and I created together.  I found the idea in Family Fun magazine.  I had my DS collect pretty fall leaves, and DH halved a few walnuts for me (this was after I tried it on my own with disasterous results).  We glued twigs in the walnut half shells with a glue gun and then threaded a leaf onto the twig, creating a boat.  They sailed happily for a little while and then sadly, my little Thanksgiving boats sank, yes, they sank.  I found that walnut shells become waterlogged after a time.  Don't worry, I found that sealing them first with a matte spray sealer will keep them sea-worthy.

Along with celebrating Thanksgiving, I've been working like crazy on my Christmas Cards this week, which brings us to the title of this post.  I created the card below for the Inspiration Challenge over at Splitcoast.  I always get so excited when I have the opportunity to participate in one of the challenges, as it really gets your creative juices flowing. 

I used Copics to color my snowman image.  Copics are new to me, as my coloring medium of choice is usually watercoloring.  However, I find that I can take my Copics to work with me or to a friend's house much easier than I can my watercolors, so I will be using them more and more I think.  The inspiration site is called The Country Porch, which is just loaded of beautiful country decor.  I was particularly inspired by the quilts.  I used SU DSP and a CM square punch to create "quilt blocks".  I then glued them to a piece of cardstock and die cut this with the Top Note die.  I used a red pen to make stitch marks.  The card is embellished with punched snowflakes, button, ribbon and chunky glitter. I hope you like it.

Here is a list of materials used:
Stamps:  Flourishes
Paper:  Walmart cardstock, SU DSP
Misc:  SU ribbon, Top Note die, button, pen, chunky glitter (unknown brand).
Ink:  SU black, Tempting Turquoise.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wendy

IT'S A BASEBALL KIND OF BIRTHDAY

Hello Friends,

I hope you're enjoying the autumn weather as much as I am.  It's always my favorite season.  Today I have a couple easy projects that I made for my DH's birthday.  Now, DH doesn't frequent my blog very often.  He specifically asked me not to EVER feature him on my blog, but since the Giant's won the World Series this year and this is a baseball post, I don't think he'll mind to much being a participant in my little blog entry.

I don't know if you have this problem, but I deplore having rolls and rolls of wrapping paper around, only to discover nothing fits the occasion I need.  Well, I found a new (well probably just new to me) way to decorate a package to suit the individual you're celebrating.  A few years ago, I invested in (huge) rolls of butcher paper.  I ordered them online through a paper company.  I have both white and kraft.  Let me tell you, these rolls will last me a lifetime of wrapping and the total was about $50 for both.  I originally ordered them to stamp decorate, which is wonderful, but I thought of something different for my DH's birthday gift.  I went on-line and printed out vintage baseball adds, cut them out and used Craft Bond (new fave adhesive) to adhere the adds to the butcher paper.  This took me all of about ten minutes and just look how great this turned out.
THE GIFT

This idea is not only good for wrapping paper; you can also coordinate your card with your gift by using this simple technique.
THE CARD

I wanted to keep the card fairly simple, so I tore the printed adds and adhered them, again using Craft Bond to the card stock.  I added the white and black diamonds to use as a backdrop for my title and used my Cricut to create the title.  I found this quote at thequotegarden.com site, which pretty much sums up how much DH likes baseball.  I printed it out on regular copy paper and cut into a banner.  I added a button and some black and white checked ribbon, and there you have it. 

Hope you enjoyed this post. 

Til Next Time,  Wendy