Here's Cousin Will, looking almost Sweeney Todd esque? I don't know but the coloring of the picture combined with his Dickenesque scarf has me thinking of a Tim Burton flick. He's demonstrating how to play the miniature guitar I made for him out of my fav forever gingerbread recipe. 
Take a look kiddos, these are my three craft necklace Christmas presents. I noticed at my craft sale that the hottest necklaces were ones that were done in neutral colors, everyday colors, you know, your brown/grey/navy/black/white color families. Ones that work at the office as a subtle piece. And while I'm all about the boldest colors and the most outrageous shapes, I recognized that beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or the buyer) so I did a collection of five black, white and gold necklaces, each one with numbers as the theme for their center wooden coin. Both of these feature prints of bingo cards.
So someone (obviously me) was having some fun with the color toning on this picture... I was kinda going for a retro fade on the coloring of the picture, something like mid 1970s to match the beautiful Cousin Meg's shirt. 
So a really special team is playing in the Rose Bowl tomorrow. It is, in fact, my favorite college team (Washington and Lee would technically be in first place there but you never see them on TV and, really, few people see them live in Lexington). The Texas Longhorns are going to beat the Alabama Elephants or whatever their Roll Tide symbol is beyond just a really big A.
* This sentence is meant to recall an Ernest Hemingway quote from A Farewell To Arms that was shared with me by my old journalism professor Ham Smith when I broke my legs: 
Seriously? What could be more Hilary? There's glitter! There's Christmas! There's baseball! It's made of cheap, biodegradable materials! It's just the best craft ever. And if you play your cards right (aka, you ask me for one), I'll make one for you. And, because I'm the always benevolent crafter, I'll even make an ornament for a team you support, assuming it's made of colors I own and isn't brain surgery difficult to render (Good example: the Ole Miss Rebel, he's too detailed for me to make a glitter ornament of, but the big Ole Miss "M" I can handle. And cringe-worthy second example, I can't do the patriotic hat on a baseball bat Yanks logo, but if you begged me and I was feeling particularly nice, I could make you that evil NY symbol). 
There you have it! Fifteen pretty little packages wrapped in my homemade wrapping paper. Perhaps you can spot one that you received -- I know that a few of my readers (Katie, Dj Jazzy, Lucy) each have a little-green-tree-festooned box in that picture. I can't tell you how delightful the reactions I got to the paper were. I truly didn't expect it to get any reviews at all. I thought I would make it, use it and feel good on the inside that I did my part to conserve resources and be creative. I didn't dream that the gift recipients would get such a kick out it, too. Lots of people saved the paper. No joke! Uncle Jim, Mrs. Sue Woodward, my dad ... and those are the ones I know about. How touching! To think that my wrapping paper was good enough to save! I watched several of my readers who had the chance to open one of the above boxes try to guess what part of the two phrases they had received. If you recall, the options were, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end."
I drew this snowman out of text. I'm digging the idea. I'm not going to claim that I came up with the idea, but I really got a kick out of creating this snow man and plan to mix this concept with some calligraphy skills and do something really spectacular for next year's Christmas card. Too bad I didn't come up with something like this a few months ago or I could have used it for this year. It's not that exciting of a craft, but I wanted to show it to my lovely readers, anyway.
And now for the Theta Christmas tree topper.Take yer brown crayon and your brown foam, draw a gingerbread man. Cut out the gingerbread man from foam. I used two pieces of foam and cut them both out so that I could give, as a coworker called it, the poor final product a Christmas-tree enema. I took a picture to explain what I'm talking about. So next you take your fabric and lay it out on a flat surface folded in half so that it is two pieces of fabric thick and place the gingerbread man cutout on top. Trace around the man, leaving about an inch and a half border. Cut out the fabric so that you have two pieces of gingerbread man looking fabric. Now it's time to put the foam bit on the inside of the fabric pieces and pin all around him. Sew him up, leaving a space between his legs so that you can take out the foam and eventually install him on top of a Christmas tree (thus the enema comment). Turn the sewn product inside out so that the hem is on the inside, replace the foam inside to give him a taut look and feel. Real cookies are never wrinkled. Not to get naughty here, but you'll need to glue the fabric from between his legs to the foam, so that he is complete, all around. Next you'll add the brick brack using craft glue (or hot glue depending on your personal preferences). I left about a quarter inch on the outside of the brick brack, but again, it's up to you. Add your buttons for his tummy and your sparkly eyes and then paint on a mouth. I added a gross grain ribbon sash around his neck to make him extra pretty. My guy was double sided for a tree to be displayed in the round, so I had to do the last several steps twice. Stick a tree up his bum and you're done!
I've uploaded lots of pictures to show off the project (and my somewhat messy process).
So here's the guy all covered in pins. And you get a good idea of the supplies I used to create the man. Note the shoe in the top left of the photo and the trash on the floor. I was so messy the night I made this dude!
So I needed brown thread. I bought some when I bought the fabric only to come home and find almost an identical color thread in my sewing box. Think of all the gingerbread men I could sew with these two spools.
This is my dude when I'd sewn him up. Notice how snug his cover his to the foam underneath. Also notice that I cut my finger while doing this craft. Whoops. Suffer for the love of the craft.
And here I've added brick brack but have yet to add the face. I really liked the way it looked at this stage in the process.
I think I told you last week that I was planning to reuse the scrolls from my office Halloween. You remember, the ones that said, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end." Added together, the scrolls measured 16' long, which will wrap plenty-o-Christmas presents. So I took my kitchen sponge, drew a tree on it, cut out the tree, and stamped little trees all over the scrolls in various greens and silver craft paint. What's great is that I was reusing the paper and I bought the paint when I was a sophomore in high school for a project for Mr. Jensen's English class. It was something artsy that had to do with A Tale Of Two Cities. And here I am a decade later using the same jars of paint for a Christmas project. A little ridiculous. But I'm giving myself a "Conservationist Queen" award for reusing and recycling and being environmentally conscious. Oh and you can't beat a project price of nil. And as long as I'm being super smug. Three cheers for me thinking about Christmas wrap before Christmas is hitting me over the head and is less than a week away. This year I've been getting so far behind in craft projects, I'm proud that I'm done with something Christmasy in November. I've even purchased three presents. Join me in praising myself on so many accounts... Haha. I took a picture of the supplies I needed to do the project. I think its pretty obvious that they are household supplies. Nothing fancy. I loved mixing the green colors across the sponge to produce trippy little striped trees. And they mixed in with the plain jane trees to make quite the forest. I can't wait to wrap presents with it! I love doing projects that require a lot of time, thought, planning, smarts, know how, expensive supplies and all that, but let me just tell you, it is truly liberating to do something as simple as sponge painting. This project required the motor skills of a third grader. Every once in a while, I do a project and think, you know, I could do this again and again. Sponge painting fits that bill. If you are ever in a crafty mood but don't want to have to work very hard to do something satisfying, try something like this. I already have plans for another type of wrapping paper for Christmas. I'm thinking that the next needs to be red and gold to counterbalance this green and silver one. Right?
Hello my dears --
Around my rockin' pad, it's another Stick-Tree Christmas. Meaning, I didn't shell out for a real, live, chopped-down tree. I opted instead for a glass vase full of lights and painted twigs to serve as my Christmas tree. I'm sort of a proponent of stick trees or other uses of twigs in design, because they have such a lovely texture, make interesting shapes and are completely organic and natural.
So last night found me on my big baking blitz of the holly jolly season. And it was much more tame than in years past... Only three cookie types, just two dirty bowls, one messy counter and a 30-minute cleanup session make this a record for small-scale baking blitzes, but that's OK with me. I did get to spend lots of time making sure that the presentation of the cookies was dazzling. This year, the baking part was just to get me to the cookie-plate making part. Above you'll see the finished project. Actually, you see an artsy-design-bloggish view of the cookie platter. I'm kinda proud of the platter part of the deal -- I took a piece of cardboard, wrapped it in fancy paper from my FAVORITE paper store in Dallas, Paper and Chocolate. Then I artfully arranged the cookies, wrapped the whole bundle in shrink-wrap paper and tied a green and red bow to the whole thing, with a nice little happy santa face ornament tucked in for flare. I've done this flat cardboard cookie tray thing before and here are my little tips in case anyone actually reads this wanting to know about crafts...
There's a shot of one of my peanut butter kisses cookies. Truth be told on this cookie -- it is messed up because it sadly took a tumble to the kitchen floor. It was thrown away and the night's only cookie casualty. I took the picture because I'm trying to learn how to take good close up shots of my little items. It's harder than it looks for me. For my years of working at newspapers around professional photographers (Andy Molloy comes to mind here), I didn't realize how hard it was to take good, interesting still life photos. Alas, this blog is giving me even more respect for how hard those photogs work! 
I am thrilled anytime I get to dive into my bin full of baking supplies. The most popular cookie that I make, according to my cookie eaters, is one of the easiest cookies in the world to make. You can see it in this entry's top picture, the raspberry sugar cookie. Here's what you do... make sugar cookie mix or even use a tube of sugar cookie dough. Roll it out all flat on a counter or surface with a light dusting of flour on both sides of the cookie. Use a biscuit ring (a round cookie cutter) to make a bunch of circles -- make sure you do this in pairs. For every pair of rings, one should be a plain ring, and the other needs a cutout. I use hearts, stars, Christmas trees and angels as my cutouts of choice. Bake them according to instructions and as soon as they come out of the oven, spread jam over the flat cookies. Then put the cutout cookie on top, and people will rave about them tasting good, being pretty -- all that jazz, which is music to a cook/crafter's ears. 
OK, so I started my blog yesterday. And I feel tremendous pressure to take stock of all the creative things I've got going on and present them in an organized way. To borrow a fav copy editing verb, I'll be mulling things over for a bit. (Mull is a wonderful headline verb, since it basically means "think" or "ponder" but takes up half the space of those. That's a little lesson in headline writing from someone who quit that industry after a measily two years. Note, however, that one's coworkers on the copy desk will make fun of each and every use of the word "mull" because it's so lame/lazy.)