'Crystal' Ornament Hangers–Ballard Style

photo from Ballard

I love to spend time each evening browsing for different Christmas ideas. Last night, these cute Holiday Magnetic Crystals on the Ballard site caught my eye. So pretty! But I couldn’t pay $39 for them. That’s just not in our budget.
So I dug out some some old shatterproof ornaments that I bought when my kids were in their Christmas tree destroying phase (not entirely sure that we’ve bypassed that stage yet!), along with some plastic beads, a magnet, spray paint, and the hot glue gun.

A straw and an egg carton from the recycle bin served as a holder for spray painting – look, action shot from the garage. I let the paint dry overnight, and then used my glue gun to attach beads to the top of the ornament. I like the delicate beads in the Ballard ornament, but I had star shaped beads and only a few round ones, so that’s what I used.

I tried using pliers to break a magnet into smaller pieces so that they would fit invisibly on top of the beads, but the magnet shattered. Plan B was a glue dot from my scrapbooking supplies, which worked perfectly.

Here’s the finished ornament. I really love the beads instead of string or ribbon, and can’t wait to make more. Here’s another view:

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Sew Dang Cute -- CWTS Knockoffs

A Mirror for the Mantel

Our fireplace has never been much of a focal point. A couple years ago, my husband busted the glass (ironically, while trying to child proof it), so it’s been covered over and non functioning since then. The mantel has been used more for keeping things out of reach of the kids than for display. But a few days ago, I got a bee in my bonnet to put a mirror on the mantel, which I hoped would reflect more light into the room and generally make it less junky looking.

So I hit the local online classifieds, looking for a great deal. Nothing. After a couple days, I came across this mirror listed at $25. Not a great deal, but not awful for a good-sized piece (37”x31.5”). It was practically across the city, meaning a long drive in rush hour, but I got it for $20, so I was willing to go for it – dust, spider webs, weird gold accent trim and all.

After cleaning the mirror and frame, I taped everything off, excitedly grabbed a can of Oil Rubbed Bronze and was ready to transform this piece from dated to awesome. Hubby nixed the idea, as it was too cold to paint outside or in the garage, and he said the fumes in the house would be smelly all night long.

So, the next day, when the temperature finally climbed to 10C, I hauled the mirror out to the garage and gave it several coats of spray. I figured I was safe to skip primer, since this won’t be getting a lot of handling.

Tada! No more gold! Now I just need to come up with some decent autumn decorations to help my little scarecrows along.

Oh, I forgot to take a photo, but I took a length of ribbon and added snaps to either end of it and wrapped it around the hanging wire on the back of the mirror. It’s tucked behind there now, but when I want to hang a wreath, I can just pull the ribbon over the top of the mirror to the front, and snap it around the wreath. Little things make me happy!

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Monogrammed alphabet tee

My oldest son is in preschool, and is learning to read the alphabet and short words, so I thought this little t-shirt would be fun for him to practice recognizing different letters.

I used my computer to pick my fonts and arrange the letters, with a giant J for Joshua in the centre. Then I cut out the whole thing onto freezer paper to make a stencil (I’ve included some photos below, but if you need specifics, just Google freezer paper stencilling). I thought I was being clever by joining most of the letters, figuring that I would have only piece of freezer paper to iron down, but I completely forgot that I would be painting in the negative space, which actually meant I had to spend a couple minutes figuring out how the parts went back together. Not a big deal, just not what I expected.
Once everything was cut and placed, I ironed it onto our seemingly never-ending supply of preschooler sized plain white tees. LOVE these for crafts! It’s sort of hard to see the white freezer paper on white t-shirt details in the photo below, but if you squint a bit, you can see what I mean.

Next step was to apply fabric paint. I used two colours of dimensional fabric paint from Walmart that happened to be in my stash, but I didn’t want the dimensional look that you get from a squeeze bottle, so I applied the paint with a foam brush from the dollar store. To stop the paint from soaking through the t-shirt, I cut the front off of a cereal box and slipped it inside the shirt, and then used the remaining box frame to keep the fabric from slipping around.

I used two colours to create an informal monogram of my son’s initials. His middle name is after my grampa, who passed away just a month or so before I got pregnant, so he never knew about his first great-grandson to be. We don’t use Josh’s middle name often, so I liked having a chance to highlight his middle initial here.
After the paint has dried for about 10 minutes, CAREFULLY peel off the freezer paper to reveal your artistic genius.

I purposely keep one long fingernail to help with little jobs like peeling paper, but a pair of tweezers or an Exacto blade to help lift corners makes the job a lot faster.   (=
And voila!


Upon further inspection, I realized I forgot to add a W to the mix – rather ironic given that W was the preschool letter of the week – so I’ll have to go back and fix that. Oops! My youngest is two now, but I’m not afraid to claim mommy brain!
UPDATE!! Note the wee W at the bottom  (:

 Happy weekend!

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Airplane growth charts

One of the things on my to-do list when I was pregnant with my youngest son was to make him a growth chart similar to the one hanging on my oldest son's bedroom wall. Fast forward to last week, when my little guy celebrated his 2nd birthday, and still no growth chart. Fast forward again to 1:30 am on Christmas morning, when I was down in my craft room finally finshing his growth chart. He's napping now, so no photo of his, but here is a snap of another I made as a gift for a friend's son.

The photo doesn't do it particular justice (not surprising since I took the pic in the basement, at night), but I'm really happy with how the growth chart turned out. Best yet, while I chose a boyish airplane theme/palette, these charts would be easy to personalize for both boys and girls young and old.

Here are the basics:

I needed to make three growth charts, so I purchased a 12-foot length of white MDF and had it cut into three equal pieces (4 feet each). Using a foam roller and a sample can of blue latex paint from Walmart, I painted the front and edges of each board -- three coats total, with drying time between coats.

Next, I used yellow craft paint to add colour to three sizes of wooden stars. I did up a bunch at once, and let them dry on a piece of paper, while I used a paint marker to colour the name letters (wooden cutouts from Michael's). One coat did for both letters and stars. Craft paint would have been fine for the letters, too, but I had the pen in mind for marking inches along the side of the board, so thought I'd use it on the letters, as well.

Once everything was dry, I placed the letters and stars on the painted board, along with some wallpaper airplane cutouts. I played around with the arrangement, and used E-6000 to glue down the wooden pieces when I was happy with how they looked.

The wallpaper cutouts were easy to use...just soak them in water for a minute to activate the adhesive on the back and then smooth onto the board. I blotted with a paper towel, and used a plastic straight edge tool to squeeze out extra water.

Next up was adding the measurements along one edge of the board. I used a light pencil crayon and a quilting ruler to mark one-inch increments.

For the first two growth charts, I just used the paint marker to go over the pencil crayon lines -- and that worked fine. For the third, I used a piece of painter's tape to help keep the edges even. Better! When the lines were dry, I went back and freehand continued them around the side of the board and added numbers at each foot mark. Since the boards are only 4 feet long, I started my numbers at two, three of four inches from the bottom. When the chart is wall mounted, the bottom will be just a little under two feet above the floor. Did that make sense?

And here's the finished version again. When my son wakes up, I'll get a photo of his now mounted growth chart so you can see how it looks on the wall.

Edited to add new photo:

Finished and mounted at the proper height!

Update!!  This project is my entry to hopefully become a competitor at 

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Sew Can Do

 
(Cost breakdown for THREE growth charts: board -- $12, wallpaper cutouts -- $10.50 (including shipping), paint and paint marker -- $10, stars and letters -- $8. Total: $40.50 or approx $13.50 each.)

Handmade Christmas

For the past several years, I've tried my hardest (between pregnancies and December & January babies!) to make and give handmade Christmas gifts to family and friends. Nothing extravagant, just gifts from the heart. I'm sure some people think it's a little hokey, but I prefer it to mindlessly picking up some commercial item. I can't post everything just yet (don't want to ruin the surprise), but I'll be adding photos here and there.

These are from a Ravelry pattern called Alice's Fingerless Gloves, apparently a nod to Alice from the Twilight Saga. I've not read the books nor seen the movies, but I thought the gloves would make a fun gift for my SIL. Last year, I knitted up some dishcloths and added them to a variety of homemade jams, mustard, & baking mixes as part of a kitchen basket. She apparently thought they were oven mitts (!!!) and kept burning herself, so gave the cloths to her cat. Anyhoo, these will be wrapped along with a little note saying NOT oven mitts!

The pattern is simple, and works up quickly, although I think you need a (free) Ravelry account to access the file.

Please ignore the awkward photos. For those of you who know me, I'm 'blessed' with short arms. No matter how much I stretched, I couldn't get the camera far enough away for a decent shot at any angle beyond this one.

Onward.

This little photo frame was one of the unfinished ones you can pick up at Michael's, painted with craft paint and then stamped to embellish. It didn't turn out quite the way I imagined, but I'm sure it will be fine with an appropriate snowy photo. I intended to give this to a friend, but since it 'didn't turn out', I may be gifting it to myself  (=

I used a VersaMark pad, a foam stamp, and embossing powder to create the tree. It still felt a little empty, so I grabbed the VersaMark pad (sort of a slow-drying glue/ink stuff -- surely that's the technical term) and used it to create an all-over pattern with a larger hearts and swirls pattern stamp. I considered embossing that, too, but I didn't ink my stamp well enough and had to go over the frame a few times. My goof is fairly hidden when the VersaMark ink is left as is, but I think it'd really show up covered in sparkly embossing powder!

Last item is this Little Cook's set I made for one of my playgroup's fundraising auctions: chef hat, oven mitts, felt bacon & eggs. I've made several of these items individually, and they've always been a hit, so I'm hoping someone will buy them as a gift and help out the playgroup.

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Tatertots & Jello Weekend Wrapup