Cousinly Giving, Part Two

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.

Poor guy. He's always been the lone dude in a family full to the brim with girls. I decided it would be wrong to give him a girlie sock monkey and wrong for me to make him an OU logo (no way!) so I thought I'd make him something that he'd like, a guitar. If you don't know him, you should know this -- he's a big music guy. Plays all kinds of instruments and knows an intimidating truckload of info about musicians and the local music scene.

I think he liked it, as much as a twentysomething guy can like a Christmas ornament.

Look a Gift Necklace in the Face

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.

And finally, here's Cousin Meg's donkey necklace up close. Hee haw.

Cousinly Giving, Part One

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.

And what, pray tell, is that fabulous item she is holding or that lovely piece of jewelry that adorns her neck? Well, friends, those are homemade craft Christmas presents! My fam and I hosted my aunt, uncle and two cousins on Christmas Eve for a full out feast--Greenburg Turkey, flank steak skewers (prepared by me, never mind that the skewers caught fire), two sugarfree desserts and a rum cake for the sugar eaters--and a gift exchange. To cap off a perfect evening, there was snow! Right here in Dallas, Texas. And I tell you what, I had to see it to believe it. It seems every year we'd here about rumors of a White Christmas in Dallas, but every cotton-picking year we were scammed or cheated or just plain deceived by our weathermen as Christmas Day would roll around at a balmy 78 degrees or some other equally ridiculous temperature. But this year we got our White Christmas! Not that we're owed or anything, just grateful.

Of course I've very much digressed from the crafts at hand. So perhaps you've noted that I'm a little hot on "forever gingerbread," which looks like a regular gingerbread but you can keep it from year to year with no mold worries. It is made from a dough of apple sauce, cinnamon and white glue (yum!) and I used a few templates to make ornaments but I also broke out with some of my own drawings and designs, like, por ejemplo, this sock monkey gal. Making the dough is the most perfect Christmas craft activity because you can blast the carols and fill your house with no-calorie yet delicious smells. Sock gal is holding a gift and wearing a bow in her hair. I trolled google images of "sock monkey" to get the right look (keep in mind that long, long limbs are easy to snap off; she needed to be kinda bulky to have lasting power). I cut her out, baked her and coated her in different microglitter colors so she'd look just right.

And the necklace -- it's my Obamania necklace. Well, it's just three donkeys on a chain, but it's just write for my favorite Obamaniac, Cousin MegPeg. The gals just nuts about all things progressive politics and it seemed like just the right fit for her -- it's whimsical and completely silly but at the same time its colorful and fun and appropriate for lib parties. I don't really know if she actually attends liberal parties or if she's just a member of the liberal party, but either way, I hope she enjoys sporting her politics on a chain, given to her by, I dare say, her most conservative cousin.

(As a note, if you are lucky enough to tune in to Cool Kids Crafting with great frequency, you *might* be lucky enough to see a better picture of the donkey necklace oh, say, tomorrow.)

It's A Wrap (2009 Edition)

So this is another in the never-ending collection of holiday posts. Presenting, this year's homemade package wrap -- sewn bags! Here's the background. A few months ago my mother and I were in the clearance section of a fabric warehouse in the seedy, seedy Harry Hines fabric warehouse district or whatever you want to call that particularly unsavory sector of Dallas, and I saw this fabric on closeout special for $0.50 a yard. I bought six yards for -- no calculators needed -- $3 and planned to use it to wrap every small to medium sized Christmas gift. I did use it for every gift I gave this year with a couple of big box items as the exception. And I still have fabric left over. What really amazed me was how easy it was to sew them all. I didn't spend a lot of time ironing hems or pinning things, I pretty much just freehand sewed little pouches for every gift. I sealed them all with safety pins and then attached ribbons. Pretty simple, eh? My favorite part is the green factor... During the year, you can use the bags to store breakable Christmas ornaments and during the holidays, you can reuse them to give new gifts away. My dad has already decreed that from here on out, the ones I gave to him and my mom will only stay in the nuclear family so they can get maximum usage out of them. Considering that I didn't bother with pinning or ironing, I'm serious when I say I think I got a run for my money in terms of time. A couple of bags in, I'm pretty sure I was sewing cloth baggies as fast as I could wrap a paper package.

If you are in the mood to make your Christmas a little more green or sustainable or you would rather hoard wrapping paper for more fun uses than just as package covers, give this option a try. I'm not one who puts too much stock in carbon footprints (or carbon pawprints as far as my cat is concerned), but perhaps I was able to balance out live tree with the cloth wrap? The point for me was to do something that was unique and fun, to try out a new idea and to make something worth keeping.

Also, there's no coincidence vis a vis the Longhorn package topper (above) and today's date. One last plug... Texas Fight!

Finally, don't judge the sparkley red leopard print tree skirt. I bought that fabric to use for Beta/Theta toga party (feel free to judge on that) but I never got around to wearing it as a toga. I've dutifully kept the fabric for years and it fit perfectly as a makeshift tree skirt. So exotic and classy...

Get Your Horns Ready...

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.

To celebrate their awesomeness (and the extreme adorableness of QB Colt McCoy), I made each of my Longhorn relatives a forever gingerbread Longhorn for Christmas. I've shown you earlier how mine looked when finished. I thought I'd show how the collection looked on the baking sheet. So there you've got Cousins Meg, Laura and Mary with Uncle Trey and one for my mom. I guess I needed to make a couple more, since I didn't make one for Cousin Em or my Aunt Beth... Whoops.

And in the event that you thought I owned a cookie cutter, you're wrong. Each of those horns was hand cut with a sculptors knife from a printed out pattern of the logo. Hard work but someone's got to do it, right?

And below I'm going to let you in on a sad secret that would warm the heart of every dreaded Aggie, one horn did actually get sawed off. (Around Texas you'll see UT haters with logos on their cars that say "Saw 'em off" and have a picture of a hornless Longhorn.) I patched it back up and then added a little wire so that it would be stronger where it had been broken.* Good as new and no one ever needed to know about it... I covered it with glitter.

Hook 'em Horns! Go Texas!

* 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:

"The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places."

Gobble Gobble Jewlery

My coworker Mattdawg (that's what I call her, her real name is Mattie) has the most amazing collection of holiday themed earrings. She has a dozen Halloween ones and enough Christmas earrings to last from Thanksgiving to New Year's without repeating a pair.

Last year it bothered me that she had no Thanksgiving gems. So I promised her a pair. Perhaps some cornucopias or a pilgrim and Indian combo. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find anything Thanksgiving last year. This year, however, I found these turkey buttons. I chopped off the button part and drilled holes and attached earring hooks.

And bless her heart, Mattdawg wore them all November long! Gobble Gobble Gobble! (and if you click on that link, sorry for the bad language and then the German version, I really just love when she's on the phone with her sister.)

Out of Town Crafting

Do you remember me writing about how busy I was because I had this fair, and all these things to do to get ready for the fair and that a trip to Chicago was thrown in for good measure? Well, perhaps you don't remember me being stressed out about lots and lots of to-do's on the to-do list or the fact that I made a trip to the Windy City, but I did. And, being of the craft minded, I couldn't resist volunteering (perhaps commandeering is a better verb choice for the situation) to do a craft for a friend, the lovely Jo, for a VIP event. And yes, I call the sweatpants and fanny pack pub crawl a VIP event. After all, it takes a lot of class to look as good as we did for hours upon hours of ridiculousness. I believe I'm digressing here, but I wanted to set the scene well. Jo wanted to go "Jon of Jon and Kate Plus Eight" level of classy by wearing an Ed Hardy shirt and Juicy Couture sweatpants. Of course, why buy when you can make?

Luckily, Emily, Joanna and Steph (my adorable hosts for the weekend) live just down the street from a hardware store (the kind of mom and pop place that advertises mace in a comic sans sign out front). So in Jo and I went to buy some electrical tape for this improvised project. One rerun episode of Sex & the City and it was done. Just one roll of electrical tape and a pair of scissors... voila!

I decided not to show you the Juicy Couture pants because, well, I got the sizing off a bit. Actually, a lot off. From the back, it just said UIC, which, by the by, is a university in chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago. There are actually people out there with UIC on their butts on purpose. Jo is not one of them. It was supposed to say JUICY, but the J and Y were on her hips.

Not to brag on myself, but I was a little sad that not everyone could tell that it was homemade. Some people thought it was a legit shirt. You kinda had to look up close to see that it was in fact electrical tape. My favorite letter was the "E" of Ed. The "a" and "r" proved really tricky for no reason that I can determine.

Do I Spy A Wren?

I've never tried my hand at bird watching, so I really don't know. What is that bird? Some kind of wren or sparrow? It's too colorful to be a finch, or so I think and I think its head is too big. Like I said, I don't know what kind of bird this is, but I do know that I like this one a lot. Our dear feathered friend is applied to an old wooden nickel, sealed and on a chain. And for added flair, I attached a piece of old jewelry from my bag of tricks. I'm not sure where I picked up that little cloisonne collection, but it has been given a new life here.

Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!

Here's where the fun begins folks. Presenting the finished projects, the stuff that's for sale. What I've been working on all summer long. The deal with these two (well three because I'm keeping one for myself) necklaces is that I've already sold them. I guess that means I can now say I'm a professional jewelry maker -- because, hey, I've been paid for my creations. I made these necklaces and sold them to my coworkers out of vintage buttons. I don't have too terribly much to say about all these necklaces I've been making. And if I did write a full profile of each, I'd have a lot of writing to do. You're going to see a lot. Like a lot a lot.

P.S. Muchas gracias to my neck models (a.k.a., the purchasers). All the rest of the necks (unless otherwise noted) are, well, my own neck. You'll get used to freckles soon!

Little Stacks Everywhere

All around my apartment are little arrangements. Preparing for this craft show or, more accurately, my booth at a shopping market, has turned my little crafting life upsidedown. And I'm not kidding when I say there are little collections of projects sitting out everywhere. Above you see a collection of Mexican bingo tiles with fresh coats of a kind of plastic lacquer that will make them hard enough to stand alone on necklaces. More details on that to come.

And here are some vintage/random buttons gathered together. Also awaiting their turn at the chopping block, or so to speak, when they'll be turned into projects. All of them have polished, flat backsides so they are ready for use. Sanding a hundred buttons is like a dream come true. (I've never gotten into sanding; if it could be skipped, it would be.)

And, yep, some more future projects. It's amazing to think that I've made any progress at all, since looking at these pictures reminds me that all I've done is set up more work for myself to do later. Yikes. Two weeks and a trip to Chicago thrown in... I better get busy!

And finally, here's a completed project. Woohoo! But like all the others, perhaps a bit difficult to explain. I'm just happy that there's one thing that I'm done with. I guess I do still have to worry about the packaging... I doubt this post has shed much light on my current bevy of projects, but it should let you know ... colorful, found objects...

Waaaay Old, But It's New To You

I tell you what, this one was hard to photograph. That's why you get half the project above and a super faded out pic below. I apologize my dears. I'm prepared to blame a lot of it on my summer's worth of computer issues.

This was my Father's Day gift this year. Yep, another thing I did in June and am posting about in September. Like I said, there's lots of baseball games to watch. I suppose you're lucky to be reading about this before November.

I've always thought of myself as the baby bear of our Goldy Locks family. I've got a Papa Bear and a Mama Bear and I'm the baby, the onliest one. So when in McKinney I spied this torn out page from a children's story book, I knew that I needed to buy it and craft it into something for my bear-obsessed father. He had a bear experience once in Estes Park, Colorado and has been inspired for life to devote time and energy to bears. And not in the Stephen Colbert blame all the evils of the world on bears vein. More like, love them, respect them, realize how fascinating they are.

And I wanted the frame to be extra special. And for the better part of a decade, my dad has dutifully kept the caps to his beers (when they aren't bent beyond possible use) and gave them to me whenever he remembered to so that I could use them for craft purposes. It all sprang from a project I did in college... I wonder whatever happened to that beer-cap table top? Oh well. So I've got a vase of beer caps and I thought that this would go together well for my father's sort of mountain lodge themed man cave. (Note that most Sam Adams' caps come from Red Sox watching experiences. You gotta go with the Boston lager if you're going to watch the BoSox!)

Synergized: A Lemon Yellow Necklace

Click on the picture above and you should be able to be magically transported to another blog of wonder in which you will see the exact same picture but on an ever-so-slightly larger scale.

I bet you thought I just plum fell off the face of the Earth seeing as I haven't posted anything new in many many moons. Well, there, my reader, you are wrong. I am here. I am vibrant. I am going to have a booth at a market and well its going to be full of crafts and, dagnabbit, I'm busy making crafts. Like the above necklace. I made that. Yay!

As you must have gleaned from previous prior posts, I'm a little too in love with my Dremel. And inheriting a small collection of antique buttons from my mother and finding a warehouse full of similarly interesting buttons and realizing how easy it really is to buy a length of chain -- it was inevitable that I'd decide to make my own necklaces.

I'm calling this line the "Mother May I" line because of the prim and proper lady on the buttons. She's so cute, with her hat and her hair. I just love her, enough to saw a hole in her portrait, sandpaper her backside and varnish the buttons to finish. As Led Zeppelin would say "A Whole Lotta Love."

I'm not going to make any wild promises that I'll post more soon, but if I have the opportunity, I sure will. I have so many things to show you and so little will power to photo, photoshop, upload and write.

Well Versed In 1 John

You know what? I'm still in Europe (just like I was the last time a post was published) but I've written this in advance so you can get your Hilary fix even when I'm far away.

And it's another one of my church/calligraphy projects! Yay! About a month ago I had the privilege of doing three repetitive calligraphy projects in a row. It's fine. There's nothing like having a Red Sox game to keep me and my nibs company (especially when their offense is so impressive and deep). Lest I digress into my favorite topic of all, I'll get back to the point. One project was for money (no pictures taken because I forgot), one was because church ladies asked and the final was a gift. I already showed you the project that I was asked to do (the rose tags) and this is the project I did as a gift.

I loved the way it turned out. And so did the 30 women for whom the verse cards were made. A few Christmases ago, I sent out cards with glittered Holy Cards of St. Nicholas on the front. Perhaps you recall. Well, the company that I bought that cardstock from was having a buy one get one free sale so in addition to the red paper that I bought for those Christmas cards, I got a stack of pale green paper that had a shimmery look to it. It's nice and thick, too. I always figured I'd think of a purpose for it, but two years of looking at it and I'm no closer to having a use for it than I was when I got it for free. I thought it would be the perfect cardstock to use for these Bible verse cards. So I cut the folding cards into two flat cards each (which, by the way, means I only made a dent into the huge stack of green cardstock I've still got) so that I had 30 flat cards. Then I took some thick vellum paper and cut it to fit using my mini paper cutter. I cut 30 little snippets of ribbon, each sized to hang off the edges a bit of the cardstock. Next, because I like to make things difficult, I jumped into my mom's hand-me-down button collection and found 30 buttons that I thought would match the ribbon and paper colors (trying to keep a Spring pallet in mind). And then, I used my favorite craft tool ever, my drimmel with its diamond-edge drill bit, to cut the "button" part off of these buttons so they'd glue on flat.

And to the sounds (and sights thanks to MLB online) of Red Sox baseball -- an afternoon game I believe -- I wrote the same verse 30 times in a row. Without stopping. As the scripting went along (and the innings breezed past), I noticed that a few styles of scripting seemed to emerge. I tried to capture some of them here. The top picture features a script that is airy than the next picture, which seems dense. And some versions were more cursive than others. As a note, the first "r" of this verse comes in the 20th word, which is odd. I thought I'd throw that out there because I always antagonize over the letter "r" and I was pleasantly surprised to get so many words without having to write that one.

Of course, I can't mention the letter "r" without thinking of my mom's favorite riddle: Railroad crossing, watch out for cars, can you spell that without any r's?

Wallpaper, Drawer Liner, Greeting Card

Howdy folks.
When you are reading this, I'm somewhere in Continental Europe, living it up, seeing the great sites, buying the good stuff, eating the delicacies. Yep, all in all, you should be very jealous of me. Or so I say now as I type this. I think most of you can remember the last time I said something about "you should be jealous because I'm going to Italy." Hint, few people are jealous of that life experience. Knock on wood, that won't happen again. Anyhoo, while I'm out of town, I didn't want to leave you without some crafts so I'm showing you crazy kiddos three things I've been up to of late.
I made a greeting card, as shown above, to accompany a wedding present, also shown above. I bought a stack of blue, turquoise, cerulean, and seafoam cardstock and I have found that it comes in handy all the time. How did I live without a standing stack of cardstock to dip into? I don't know. Also, I think I've blogged about this before -- I bought myself a miniature paper cutter, like the kind that teachers used to have in the teacher's workroom, with a big old blade, capable of cutting off a finger or worse. Mine is a mini version but it is great for cutting straight edges on things. This way I can size the cardstock exactly as needed.
What's special about this project is neither the cardstock nor the paper cutting techniques. No, my friends... What is special about this card is that vintage floral paper. I'm really proud of that. I love that paper. It is actually a little hard for me to part with even a few scraps. It is vintage wallpaper from the 1960s. And its been in the family since it was brand new. After a career as wallpaper, it was reused as drawer liner. And during its career as drawer liner, it was snuck out of its drawer and came home with me to be used for crafting purposes. It was smuggled out of the family farmhouse, up in Collin County. I only have a few scraps of this wallpaper and I generally don't pillage the family's property. After all, the family farmhouse is shared by a lot of people; I wouldn't want to be accused of overstepping the boundaries and taking advantage of communal property, now would I? That's so inconsiderate. All the same though, when I spotted this retro paper (so en vogue right now!), I figured it would be ok to take home one or two drawer's worth of paper squares.

Ahoy! Welcome Prince

I'm just plain kicking myself for not taking better (or more) pictures of this craft project. What was I thinking? Just two decent pictures to show and only four pictures taken in all. And I'm so proud of this project. Today and, well, sometime soon I'm showing pictures of some crafts I created for a baby shower for a lovely lady from my church. Today I'm showing off the nautical theme flags. I see these sorts of stringed pennant flags in Pottery Barn kids catalogues (seriously, buy something from them once and you're on the list for years) and in Martha Stewart magazines and I was dieing to give them a try myself. Most of the flags you'll see are sewn. And I have a bit of a phobia about dusting off the sewing machine so I tried to think of how I could do pennants without using a sewing machine. And here's the recipe I came up with.
I'm a huge fan of liquid starch. It's uses are limitless. I completely saturated the fabric (approximately 2 yards) with the sticky stuff and hung the fabric over my shower bar to dry overnight. And when dry, the seersucker was like paper. I was able to cut it with scissors for paper and paint on it with poster paints. I cut an isosceles triangle out of a box of Ritz Crackers, leaving two little inch long tabs along the top of the triangle to use to attach the flags to the rope. And here's a true essential for something like this -- I created a template for where and how large to place the letters so that the lettering was consistent from "W" to "O" and each letter in between. I used the same box of crackers to cut out a box for the letter and I made sure that each letter touched the top, bottom and sides of the box when it was placed over each flag.
I used scrapbooking brads (cheap from the craft store) to attach the flags to the rope.
This is something worth doing for a party because it provides some great craft bang for your buck. I should also mention that a trio of Command Adhesive hooks anchored the project to its walls and came off with no problems. This project cost around $13 in total:

• Fabric -- $5 from the Harry Hines fabric outlets
• Brads -- $3 for 80
• Rope -- $2 from the hardware store
• Liquid Starch -- $3 from any old grocery store, near the fabric softeners and detergents.

And from that I have plenty of starch and brads left. The compliments came pouring in as the guests arrived for the party.

Two More Loves

Here are two more of the thoroughly freeing and completely enjoyable Valentines that I made from available (household) materials. These two feature some snippets from a recent Anthropolgie catalogue. I guess there's not too much artistic merit to these other than the fact that I really enjoyed just making things, third grade style. In fact, I've always been a huge fan of the collage. I usually try to come up with really elaborate plots and fancy materials, but just sitting down with a box of markers, a pad of paper, a few catalogues and some glitter -- ultimate crafting enjoyment!
The one at the top was pretty abstract. It involved finger painting and buttons! And glitter and hearts that I made by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out a heart, just like elementary school students do! In keeping with yesterday's theme of using cliche love sentiments, this one's inside said, "Valentine, you're as cute as a button."
And the bottom one, that's for my mom. When I was a little girl, she used to sing me a song with those lyrics. I thought it was fitting for the heart with a little heart missing.
Oh and sorry that the pictures were fuzzy. I'm starting to think that I might need a new camera...

My Funny Valentine

Well, a holiday can't breeze past this crafter. You know I have to do something to mark these occasions. And this year I wanted to make Valentines completely out of things I already owned. No spending! Not one dime, which reminds me I've added a new label to my label arsenal "Recession? Not Bad For Crafters" because these tight times can be a boon for the creative types. Now if only "homemade" had sounded less shoddy during the era of excess. Skinny wallets mean creative stretching must go on and I'm such a fan! Not to jump atop a fav soap box, but I've always said more credit should go to the creative spender than to the overspender...
And since I used my own paper, glitter and googley eyes, I wasn't going to spoil the "no shopping" spree by purchasing some custom-sized envelopes. I had to make my own out of packing tape and pottery barn catalogues. I even owned the stamps I used to mail these puppies. I'm really proud of this one. It's a joke. And here's the punchline, on the inside it says, "Valentine, you're one hot mama."
Where, you must be asking, did I find such a cartoon character? Well, that's easy. You know those annoying weekly inserts that you get in the mail? Well, I'm zoned with some Mexican meat market whose mascot is that dude. Every week his jocular smile beckons me to buy pound after pound of meats with which I am not familiar. The pictures of cow brains and pigs feet are usually the first postal item to get File 13'ed. Well, not last week. Last week Señior Sausage was cold-cut right out of his advertisement and used as the star of my star Valentine.
Also, if any of my readers are in need of their own Mexican meat merchant men, drop me a line. I can collect one a week from the circular. I'll even throw in a pair of googley eyes... Aww, I'm so sweet.

It's A Wrap

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 really enjoyed adding buttons and bows and various other doodads to each present. The pallet of green and off-white was really easy to work with. Red added such a pop and buttons dressed the packages up and made them very snazzy. And yet, a simple (and heavily hot glued) pine cone kept the paper feeling very natural.
Lots of design magazines and blogs really pushed for a homemade Christmas. And while I didn't have time to home make gifts for everyone on my shopping list, I was pretty excited to have homemade paper. I'm definitely going to be doing something like this again next year. I already have some ideas (and I'm 99% sure I will have forgotten them by next year, but just in case I wrote them on stickies and put them at the top of my Christmas decorations box on the top shelf of my closet). I hate to forget a good crafty idea.

Gingerbread Man of My Dreams

And now for the Theta Christmas tree topper.
First I'll tell you the supplies and then I'll tell you the process... This is an
old school crafting post, one that actually offers advice on making the above
pictured tree topper.

• brown foam
• six green and red buttons
• two packages of white brick-a-brack trim, medium thickness
• scissors
• craft glue
• a hot glue gun with glue sticks
• brown thread
• a sewing machine or the will power to sew quite a lot by hand
• lots and lots of straight pins
• cheap cotton cloth, appropriately ginger colored
• several examples of other gingerbread men, to use for inspiration
• something to use as eyeballs, four of 'em
• a brown crayon
• red paint, to use as a mouth.

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.

And finally... here we see the backside of the tree. My craft on display at the Dallas Country Club -- what a proud moment for this crafter!

Baked Cuteness

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...

• Use paper that's got a waxy sheen to it. Using a matted paper is really leaving yourself open to unsightly greasy spots. No one likes those. It just reminds you that cookies are fattening and when indulging in a cookie, it's nice to also indulge in the fantasy that it's calorie-free.
• Use spray glue from the spray-paint-style can to attach the paper to the cardboard. It looks so much flatter and prettier that way.
• Recognize that because you used shiny, slippery paper, the cookies are going to move around on the plate when you drive or walk to deliver the cookie plate. So plan on doing some gentle nudging of the cookies between your arrival time at your friend's house and the actual doorbell ringing moment.

And as that last tip went far beyond the realm of common sense, I'll stop there! I'm sharing a few more pictures of the baking process, mostly because I'm really thrilled that I got to wear my awesome apron that I bought in Los Angeles a month ago.

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.

And, finally, I will mention a few notes of praise for the apron. I read the city guide for LA on the best design blog ever, Design Sponge, and attempted to lead myself on a walking tour of LA's hottest shops for design and all things cute. Well, apparently no one in LA walks anywhere. People stared at me as though I was from Mars, walking the streets of LA. It was a Saturday morning and apparently the cool LA design shops are intermixed with lots of Jewish Temples, so I wasn't alone in walking the streets, I was just the only person not wearing a yarmulke. Anyways, after walking all over, I found a heavenly store for Francophiles... It's called Maison Midi, and it's a section of the larger American Rag Company, on South La Brea Avenue. I wish I'd bought everything I saw, because it was all so wonderful. They even have a french cafe inside the boutique. Well, the one thing I did get was this apron, which is made out of an "antique" French tablecloth. I instantly feel the old world charm when I tie it on!