Stripey Christmas tree.

I've been playing with scraps and thought I'd share my Christmas card prototype.



I cut a whole bunch of strips of Basic Grey Christmas paper. The nice thing about most of BG's Christmas collections is that you can mix and match from year to year. And I have years and years' worth, believe me. I varied the width of the strips from 1/4" to 3/4" and every size in between. (It helps to make lots of strips of each size...that way if one strip doesn't reach the whole way across the paper, you can find another one the same width to put next to it.)

Then I ran a piece of cardstock through my Xyron machine to apply a solid coat of adhesive on one side. And I started laying strips down on the adhesive, scooching them up nice and tight against each other. I used 8.5x11" cardstock and ran the strips across the short side.

From this new sheet of striped paper, I cut a bunch of triangles that measured 2.5" at the base, and 3.5" tall. Then I cut each triangle in half lengthwise. When you have an assortment of triangles cut, put two halves together that are cut from different sections of the paper--so that they don't match up.

I rubbed distress ink on the edges of each half (Frayed Burlap) and mounted on a patterned paper background. Then I added a trunk (snipped from a brown scrap of Basic Grey paper so there's a subtle pattern) and a star and a stamped sentiment. Now I just need to make a few dozen of them!

Just a note.

I'm home today working on laundry, so when I found this fun collage challenge over at Green Paper, I sat down and played along in between loads. Here's my creation:


And what a fun blog Green Paper is! I found it through another blog, The Feathered Nest, which is also a lot of fun. It's great to find new sources for vintage clip art and creative ideas.

Sign.

Here's a little project I did last week. I bought this sign at a yard sale or thrift store a few years ago--it's a little more '80's country than I usually like, but for some reason I liked the shape of it and thought maybe I'd do something with it.

The whole thing is done in that country blue color, which doesn't really go with anything I own, either. I liked the sentiment, though.

So I just changed it a bit:

I painted the outside edge a nice green color, and then lined the inside with a vintage-styled patterned paper. Then I used one of my old scrapbooking lettering templates to make the letters, and cut 'em out of black cardstock.

It seemed like it needed something else, so I stuck a vintage button at each end.

The old sign sat on top of our coat hanger shelf at the foot of the stairs, so I put the new one right back in the same spot. But I think now it needs to be hung on the wall and raised up some so it's more visible.

Love those super-fast projects that make you feel like you accomplished something big, even though you really didn't!

In a Hallo-weenie mood.

I have done ZERO crafting since Christmas, but like clockwork, our heat and humidity blew away on September 1, and like clockwork, my brain gears turned toward "making stuff!"

So I'm throwing a line out to see if anyone would like to do a vintage Halloween Artist Trading Card swap. Artist Trading Cards are little pieces of cardstock measuring 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches (or if you have a brain fart like I did last time I participated in one, 2x3 inches...oops) that you make art on. Then you sign the back with your name, the date, and your e-mail/blog address if you wish.

I would like to have at least five people in the swap...so if you're interested, let me know. What you'll do is make an identical card for each person (actually, I don't even think they need to be identical, but sometimes it's easier that way) and then mail them to me with a SASE enclosed. Then I'll divide them up and you'll get one of yours back, plus one from every person in the swap.

You can use absolutely any technique or combination of techniques you like on your ATCs: scrapbook supplies, stamps, markers, paints, colored pencils, inks, textures, vintage pictures, you name it. The only rule is that they have to look "old" in some way and they have to be Halloween-themed. The deadline for getting these in the mail to me would be October 15, that way I would have time to send them on and get them to everyone by Halloween.

Here are some ATCs from a swap I participated in a year or two ago, for those who aren't sure what they look like. You can see that anything goes, and that these are all completely, wonderfully different from each other:


And here are a couple I made just for fun a while back:

ATCs are quick creative fun because they're small and manageable. The canvas you have to fill up is so small that before you know it, you're done!

Drop me an e-mail (jscrappy(at)cox.net) if you're interested, with your full name and address. If I don't hear from at least four other people by this Wednesday, I'll scratch the idea and find something else to make!

Saturday night giveaway.

Out of chaos comes creation, right?

My desk is a terrific mess right now. The other day a couple pieces of mess ended up sitting next to each other, kind of like that "you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter" commercial from my childhood, and I thought they might look neat on a project.

The tea packets I got in a tea swap at least a year ago, and saved in the kitchen drawer because I thought they were so pretty, the black ribbon came tied around a notepad that somebody gave me, and was also hanging out in the kitchen drawer, the ticket is from the parking lot at the Newport News Fall Festival and has been in, you guessed it, the kitchen drawer since then. (I cleaned out the kitchen drawers last week, can you tell?) And the green ribbon was part of a decoration on a packet of little cards I got from an Etsy shop a few weeks ago. Amazingly, it never had to live in the kitchen drawer but settled in directly on my desk.

One-and-a-half "How I Met Your Mother" episodes later (Todd's watching them downstairs)--voila!

It's got a little pocket in the back cover, too, for a bookmark or a packet of tea:

The book is an unlined Moleskine journal, they're super nice to write in.

So I would like to give this to somebody who would enjoy it, because I just needed to do something creative for my soul tonight. Plus, it cleared four tiny things off the chaos of my desk!

Leave a comment and tell me what your favorite kind of tea is. Or if you don't like tea, then tell me what you DO like to drink. I'll pull a name Wednesday morning.

Saturday doings.

Yesterday I sat down and made my Valentine's Day cards for the nephews and nieces. I found these great papers at the scrapbook store--it's a line called Splendid by Fancy Pants.

The one paper in the set has 12 small valentine images on it that you can cut out and either use for school exchanges or glitter up and put on a bigger card. I did the latter.

I just think they are SO CUTE.

We went down to Portsmouth today and had lunch, and stopped in at The Queen Bee, which is a small but wonderful antique store right across the street from the Biergarten, our favorite purveyor of knockwurst and German potato salad. The woman who runs The Queen Bee seems to have the exact same taste as me, because her store is loaded with old china, vintage hankies and pins, old kitchen doodads, etc. And her prices are very fair. Some things are expensive, but it's because they're rare and in perfect condition. And the things that aren't so rare or perfect are nicely affordable. I can live with that. What annoys me is when I see a dealer trying to sell some chipped, cracked dirty piece for way more than its worth. But The Queen Bee doesn't seem to do that.

I got this, which I don't think is vintage, it just looks that way:

And this, which is definitely vintage:

The owner told me it was a pattern that Jewel Tea sold in the mid-20th century, made by Hall China. I guess their famous pattern is Autumn Leaf, and I can't for the life of me remember what she said this pattern is. I like to collect china made in southeastern Ohio, and this dish is stamped "Cambridge" which is about an hour from where I went to college.

A cursory Google search reveals that this topic is far more complicated than I have time for at the moment. I may have to call the store and find out exactly what this pattern is called. But anyway, I've been thinking about getting a small casserole dish, since our two-person meals don't always require big dishes, and this should fit the bill.

I am extremely disillusioned with my Pfaltzgraff dinnerware and I decided I'd like to replace it with something American-made, but the options are very, very limited. So now I'm thinking about leaping into estate-sale season with a goal, when it starts up here in the next couple months: a new (old) set of dishes. I'm kicking myself for selling the like-new set I picked up at an auction two years ago for five bucks, but at the time I didn't have a place to store it. Now I wish I'd kept it, now that the Pfaltzgraff is cracking and crazing and making me mad.

All right, I'm off to pry up and paint some bathroom trim. Yippee!

Thank you, thank you for the sweet comments below. When I started writing that last post, I certainly wasn't thinking it would turn into what the girls at Two Peas call a PVM (please validate me) post, but it kind of did! So thanks for the validation. Sometimes you just need a pat on the back, I guess.

We are having a big pile of lousy weather here--no snow, but lots of rain and wind, both of which are currently slamming against my study windows. It was about 60 degrees this morning, so I opened some of the downstairs windows to let the fresh air blow around a little. But the window screens smell funky, so the air that blew through them ended up smelling funky, too. Is there some homemaker rule about regularly scrubbing down window screens that I missed out on, along with all the other homemaker rules I missed out on? Is this a job for Febreze?

I saw on somebody's blog the other day where she wrapped a store-bought candle with fancy paper, so I grabbed a scrap of paper and an old sticker that were on top of a pile of supplies sitting on the floor, and covered a Glade candle.

You could really get fancy with such a project, but I was in a slap-it-on mood. It's a strawberries-and-cream scent, and it smells so good. On a gloomy day like today, you want a nice summery scent, something that reminds you of sunshine. But now I want some strawberry ice cream.

I'm feeling very scratchy and impatient with myself today. I don't seem to be able to get into the zone on anything I've attempted, all day long. Everything I touch seems to break or stop working. Urgh.

Hope the sun comes out tomorrow, that would be quite nice!

More stuff.

Just a few more of the Christmas cards I made last week. I moved to a blue/brown color scheme for most of these.



Now I think I'm done. I made 72 Christmas cards and had a really fun time with it. Now it's time to move on to some of my other holiday tasks!

I may end up keeping a few of my favorites...here's what I did with some of them:

Birdhouses.

I was at Michael's yesterday and found these little papier-mache birdhouse ornaments on the clearance rack.

Last night I sat down while Todd snoozed in front of the fireplace and I covered then with Basic Grey Wassail papers. Then I added some Melissa Frances stickers, a few notions and a liberal dose of Martha Stewart mica glitter, and of course, Stickles glitter glue.

I can't decide whether to attach ribbon loops to the top or just leave them as is, but here's where they sit until I decide...


I put some fresh pyracantha berries and leaves in my little pitcher, and added some rosemary and lavender sprigs. Smells good.

Over and out.

More cards.

These are some more cards I made earlier this week. I was browsing through all my supplies and found some tags I decided to play with. The first card is my favorite--I may have to keep it for myself! All the sentiments are ancient rub-ons from a Deja Views set, and the little faux postage stickers are from Artchix Studio. Gotta use up those leftovers! I looooove the faux postage images, they are so sweet.




These are really so much prettier in real life...I guess I need to set up a good place to photograph stuff so you can see the details better, like all the pros at Two Peas do. (Yeah, I'll get right on that.) These are all Stickled up, so they're much more glittery than they look here. I am loving the Stickles--all the prettiness of glitter without the dreadful mess.

And this one is a total departure!

I had a little stack of lime green cards to use up, and this pretty sheet of old Chatterbox paper that went with them, plus some very old Bazzill Christmas stickers, so I did six cards in this style. Todd asked if I'd make cards for the engineers at work, so I figure I'll give 'em these. Engineers aren't very big on aesthetics. Not when it comes to paper crafts, anyway.

We had a really great weather day here today. It was cold and windy and the sun kept popping in and out of these huge grey clouds that whizzed across the sky. Well, I enjoyed it, anyway. It's unusually cold for this time of year here. It's actually cold enough that I could pull out my beloved brown wool jacket, and I could tell exactly the last time it was cold enough to wear it: the last weekend of January. Because there were two ticket stubs in the pocket--one for "Sweeney Todd," which I saw with Todd, and one for "27 Dresses," which I saw with my friend Beverly.

I get a kick out of finding things in jacket pockets when I get them out for a new season. Usually it's ticket stubs or fortune cookie slips, but one wonderful time I found a 20-dollar bill in the pocket of my pink spring jacket. That doesn't happen too often!

What I've been doing.

I went to a crop Friday night and got started making Christmas cards. When I came home, I just decided to spread everything out on the kitchen table and keep playing.


I haven't done any stamping to speak of for a long time, because I'm doing my paper crafting on the floor now, and stamping on the floor is not an easy thing to do.

I bought a few Christmas stamps at a stamp show last month, and combining them with some of the stamps I already had, plus some Christmas paper scraps and Tim Holtz distress ink, yielded some combinations I was really pleased with! Oh, and lots of Stickles glitter glue, but that didn't photograph very well. It looks great in real life, though, very sparkly.




I got thirty cards done. And had a really relaxing time doing it!

I still have tons of scraps and pre-folded cards left, so maybe I'll do another crazy stamping extravaganza before the holidays, but if I don't, I at least have a nice set of cards to send out to various people. That is if I can bear to part with them!