A Grown up Christmas

We are planning our first ever grown up Christmas. Our kids are older, and even our youngest, who is 12, wants more of a themed Christmas this year. So the kids and I pulled down out of the attic all of the Christmas decorations from the attic and started going through them. A lot of them have now gone to charity, and hopefully they will help someone who cannot afford decorations make the holidays more festive for their families. Of those we kept, we chose to do a color themed tree in shades of golds and reds. At first we thought we would have to spend an amount of money on new ornaments and such, but to our surprise we had amassed a large amount of decorations and ornaments that would match our intended theme. So much so that we did not have to buy a single ornament! We did make some ornaments and decorations, and made bows with ribbon I had on hand from Christmases past, and voila! we had a beautiful tree and very nice decorations with not a penny spent!

The ornaments and decor we made we will go over later in this blog, and they are simple, fun, and elegant. You can do this with any color scheme and with just a few supplies you can make a gorgeous Christmas for next to nothing! Of the supplies you do have to buy, I will get what I can from dollar stores in order to keep your expenses down. Most of us have budgets, some much tighter than others, and there is no need to spend a lot of money on your decor. Keep your theme in mind, and work to add to it every year as needed. An additional tip - keep your eyes open after the holidays - you can pick up some great clearance bargains for next year if you look at less than half the cost.

Christmas Candelabra

With the weather turning colder and grayer, I started doing a few things. The first is making Christmas decorations for the house, making Christmas gifts, and cooking. Not just cooking, baking as well. With the weather being cooler it is the perfect time to fire up the oven and stove and put them to really good use. It is also a good time to start getting ready for the holidays and making Christmas decorations and gifts.

This candelabra was quick and easy to make, and was done with a used pine spray with three candle holders in it. I simply took off all the old, outdated decor, washed off the grime, and after it dried I used hot glue to attach votive holders to it. There is actually a 50 light strand of clear lights I integrated into the greenery to add a bit of sparkle even when the candles are not lit. The rest is simply a few holiday picks and a couple of flowers I cut off of a bunch bought at the local craft store. The colors I chose match the colors of the decorations we chose for the Christmas tree this year. I am using some of the same flowers I used in the candelabra on the tree to pull them together.

I made my first batch of sugar cookies, which freeze nicely, as well as some loaves of pumpkin bread. I also made some Key Lime Bars for dessert tonight, so today has been a very productive day. I only hope I can keep up the momentum!

Warm Glass Dichroic Pendants

This weekend my husband and I decided to play with our little microwave kiln and make some new fused and dichroic glass pendants and such for the upcoming craft season and to restock our Etsy store. These are the fused, but unfinished jewelry pieces that we did this weekend. Some needed some minor retooling (due to being dropped by our daughter), but they all turned out very well. Now we just need to get to work on the wire wrapping and possibly the silver clay that we are going to finish them with. I will also be making another series of dichroic and wire serving pieces to sell during the holidays - our stock of those has completely sold out! They make absolutely wonderful gifts!Sarilyn will be carrying supplies for glass fusing, including microwave kilns such as we used to produce our pendants pictured above. Keep checking back if you are interested or contact us via email and we can quote you a price for the microwave kilns. Ours are larger than most you can find in the craft stores but still easily used in most microwaves. You will find our prices are quite similar despite the larger size.

Sophisticated Halloween Treat Bag

This treat bag is made with adults, not children in mind. It has a touch of spooky sophistication and will be appreciated by all who receive one of these from you.

Materials:

• Halloween or Autumn style scrapbook paper
• Pumpkin colored cardstock
• Halloween Stamps
• Treat bags (I found these at Target)
• Treats to fill it with
• Champagne Versamark Pad
• Memento black ink pad
• Cheetah 2" adhesive dispenser
• Distressing Tool

Cut your pumpkin cardstock to 4¾" x 2½". Using Champagne Versamark pad, stamp background image onto cardstock. Then stamp your Happy Halloween Sentiment and main image onto the cardstock using Memento Black ink. Distress edges of cardstock until you are happy with the results.

Cut your piece of Halloween scrapbook paper to 5x6". Fold so piece is 5x3". Using Cheetah adhesive, apply to back or cardstock and adhere to front of folded scrapbook paper (fold facing up). This is your bag topper.

Fill treat bag with any treats you wish. Close treat bag and staple.

Open folded bag topper and lay face down. Using Cheetah adhesive runner, put adhesive on both sides of fold on back of paper. Place over the top of your treat bag and, using gentle pressure, push bag topper onto bag to adhere thoroughly.

Give treat bags to all of your favorite witches and warlocks!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Social Network Marketing

We just finished listening to a webinar on Social Network Marketing with Tim Adam. It was a wonderfully informative class and we took several pages of notes! His blog, Handmadeology.com, is filled with so much information it will take me literally weeks to get through it all!

He talked about Facebook, Blogging, and Twitter specifically, and in short, the importance of using them all together in order to grow your clientele. If you are looking to do some easy and successful marketing of your handmade items and art, go and take a look at his blog - you will not be disappointed.

Quick and Easy Halloween Cards

Halloween is coming soon and it’s time to start preparing for this popular holiday. Halloween cards are slowly gaining popularity. Postcards were very popular for Halloween in the early 1900’s but fell out of favor and the holiday has not been much of a postal coup since. Now, we are starting to send holiday greetings for All Hallow’s Eve again. People love getting cards and letters in the mail, especially when they are completely unexpected.

Halloween cards can be as simple as you like and still have a very spooky look to them. I have completed three cards for this article, and while they are all done differently, they are all quick and extremely easy. I will start with the quickest one first, which only took about 5 minutes from start to finish.

This first card requires only a background stamp, a few Halloween stamps, and two brads, or other small embellishment, a black dye ink pad, and a Versamark pad. These can be found at Sarilyn Crafts. Take your orange 8.5” x 11” cardstock and cut it in half so that you have two 5.5” x 8.5” pieces. Fold one piece of the orange cardstock and fold in half so that you have a 4.25” x 5.5” card. Place this with the open side facing you.

Take your background stamp and thoroughly ink it up with the Versamark Pad and stamp it onto your card. Stamp your other images in black ink onto your card directly over your stamped background. Take your embellishments and set on either side of your stamped sentiment. On the inside write any greeting you choose. Your card is done and ready to be signed.

This second card is a bit more difficult than the first, but still within the quick and easy category. It is simply stamped and heat embossed in three different colors. All supplies can be found at Sarilyn Crafts. Total time taken is about 10 minutes start to finish.

Cut and fold your olive green cardstock to the sizes stated for the first card above. Lay your card with the crease to the left side. First stamp your background stamp using your Versamark Pad. This time you either need to let it dry completely or use your heat gun to dry it or your embossing powders will stick to it.

Next, take your Barbed Wire stamp and ink it with rust pigment ink and stamp it on the very left side of the card. Cover the stamped image with Rust embossing powder. Shake off excess and heat. Skull stamp and ink it thoroughly with white pigment ink. Stamp on top of background stamp towards the top of the card. Cover with white embossing powder. Shake off excess and heat.

Lastly, take your Happy Halloween stamp and ink thoroughly with dark green pigment ink. Cover with dark green embossing powder, shake off excess, and heat. Write a greeting of your choice inside and you are done.

This last card is a bit more time consuming, but not much, and again all materials can be found at Sarilyn Crafts. You will need a premade blank black card and three pieces of cardstock, green, orange, and purple. You will also need Clearsnap Design Adhesives in Eeeks! Design, glitter in opaque green, opaque orange, opaque white, and opaque purple, eyes, barbed wire stamp, sentiment stamp, Versamark pad, and silver embossing powder.

First take your Design Adhesives and put the cat on the green cardstock and liberally apply purple glitter. Shake off excess. Take your Ghost Design Adhesive and place it on Purple cardstock. Apply Opaque white glitter and shake off excess. Take your orange cardstock and apply the pumpkin Design Adhesive, Apply green glitter and shake off excess. Set these aside.

Next, take your sentiment stamp and ink up thoroughly using Versamark Pad. Stamp on Purple Cardstock using Orange Pigment Ink and apply Judikins Sticky Stuff Embossing Powder and heat until melted but not dry. Apply orange glitter and shake off excess. Heat thoroughly from bottom side of cardstock (this prevents any glitter from being blown off your design by the heat gun.). Take your tape runner and outline the sentiment. Add glitter to tape and shake off excess.

Now take your Design Adhesive images and adhere them to the left side of card, with the ghost in the center of the pumpkin and cat.

Next, ink up your barbed wire stamp with silver metallic pigment ink and stamp image vertically onto center of black area of the card. Apply silver embossing powder to barbed wire image and heat.

Lastly, adhere the sentiment to center of barbed wire image. Add greeting or note to the inside of the card.

Sarilyn Crafts

Soap / Lotion Dispenser

Picture of a soap or lotion dispenser I made using mixed media and sealed for use. I love the finished product but hate the waiting I have to do while the pieces are drying in between steps. Piece to be sold at sarilyn.etsy.com.

Thinking of You...

This is the card I made for the Cuttlebug Spot's Embossing Challenge. I used the Distress Stripes Cuttlebug Embossing Folder for the card, Spellbinders for the leaves which were colored with shimmer chalks, and background shape, which was cut from chipboard (ok, really it was a cracker box), covered with Fantasy Film, dipped in UTEE and stamped. The sentiment was stamped on vellum with Champagne VersaMark and disted with Perfect Pearls. The back of the vellum was then covered in an olive green chalk ink and aprayed with Terra Cotta Walnut Ink. Very textural card which was great fun to make.