I know, enough with the Christmas already....

And I promise to do that very soon. But I couldn't resist showing this sock monkey Santa Claus I made out of my forever gingerbread dough.

I think I mentioned this earlier, but naturally am too lazy to check, but the dough is 500% more pliable, smell-goodier, smoother and easier to work with when it's been heated in the microwave. Nuke the stuff for half a minute and you're really cooking with gas. Notice Santa's lovely complexion and smooth skin. Quite nice for a monkey man.

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.

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.)

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."

And One For All You Mack Brown Fans

Hey, a gal can have more than one loyalty. At least my loyalties are split between a pro baseball team and a college football team. Right? So the two teams are based quite far apart. I think the premise of the movie "Road Trip" was about some duffuses who confuse "Boston" with "Austin" and drive across the state of Kentucky (as well as many other, less entertaining states) for no reason at all. Why am I explaining my different tastes in sports teams to you anyway? I'm pretty sure you don't care. Of course I have to have some content here.

And hey, look at those Longhorns and their precious Colt McCoy winningist quarterback ever! And champs of the Big 12 and headed to Pasadena for a little Rosebowl championship ! Having never attended the University of Texas, I feel a little like a poser saying things like "Hook 'em!" ... but I will always find the voice to sing,

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

All the live long day.

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

You cannot get away.

Do not think you can escape them,

Rise so early in the morn.

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

Til Gabriel blows his horn...

Texas Fight! Texas Fight!

And it's goodbye to A&M!

Texas Fight, Texas Fight!

And we'll pull over one more win!

Texas Fight, Texas Fight,

For it's Texas that we love best!

Give 'em hell! Give 'em hell! Go horns go!

And it's goodbye to all the rest.

Yay orange! Yay white! Yay Longhorns!

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Well, there's more of that one, but I'm kinda tired of typing. Now if I could just divide the Camp Mystic dining hall into two parts, one side yells, "Texas" and the other "Fight" and we're going all afternoon.

What Could Be More Hilary?

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).

But to get away as soon as possible from all things New York Yankees, let's focus on my little lovely pair of, what Sox ownership calls "dangling Sox." I'm so proud! I reinterpreted a Martha Stewart craft suggestion (she had me making birds before I thought of something I'd like better) and came up with my own template to cut the Red Sox logo out of the cinnamon/apple sauce/white glue dough, I baked it, let it dry out completely and then decorated it with the glitter. Let me tell you, that's a thin line of white glitter there my friends...

All things considered, I'm in love with my little Sox logo Christmas ornament. Wistfully, I sign off on my first Christmas post of the year... it seems like just yesterday I was working on Christmas 2008 (probably because I drag these things out; I recall writing about Christmas at least through February). Below check out the red lights on my very first ever living tree.

Super Green Garden

I'm rather proud of this artsy kind of shot. It's from above and it shows a collection of glass bottles, chopped off and finished with a crusty rim of gold paint. Together with some glass marbles and stones, potting soil and a plant, it's a little garden. The glass echoes terrarium but it's also like a planter. I spend time and anxiety worrying about the variety of glass colors, heights, thicknesses just to make sure that the bottles are all slightly different; that each brings its own piece to the overall puzzle. I'm liking how this collection is going. (I have my own little garden of bottles on my window sill.)

And here's me holding the smallest of jars. It's tiny. I'm hard-pressed finding a plant that will fit inside this little guy, but I'm working on it! And in the background you can see the plastic container of marbles, stones, and sea glass pieces that I've collected to be the water-draining portion of the planter. Oh and you can see the mixing bowl that has been repurposed to house plants as they await their final planting in a jar. And, for kicks, you can see that this whole operation is currently going down atop my stove. Like I said a week ago, there are little projects everywhere! As long as I stay sane, I'm happy to let the crafts take over. It's not like I could put the plants under a cabinet or anything anyway.

Finally, the plants in all their glory, with some glitteratti frogs chillin' in the open space. I don't know exactly why I decided that I needed to glitterize a set of plastic frogs, but I enjoy them living among the plants.

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.

The Eggcellent Easter (Or the End of Egg Posts)

A little late perhaps to be debuting my Spring Easter decorations, but I'm such a lagger when it comes to blogging. I sure hope you'll forgive me. Above (and in a few shots below) is the arrangement I did (with all flowers grown by my mommy) and the Easter Egg wreath I made for our family's Easter lunch. We decided to do things super laid-back and casual. We grilled hamburgers (in the rain, as the weather didn't cooperate with our plans), baked french fries and had an All-American chocolate cake instead of typical Henry-family over-the-top feasts of fancy-pants foods.
I don't know why we decided to go super laid back, but it worked out really well for everyone. Did I mention the Bloody Mary's? With spicy Cajun salt on the rim? Oh my goodness. It was a great holiday.
And I got to do the centerpiece! I showed you a week ago my technique for draining the eggs shown here. I dyed them all with kiddie egg dye and high-end paint supplies. Then I thought they weren't quite showy enough so I rolled them in rubber cement and added super-fine glitter. Awesome. It made such a mess but it was great! You know how when you play with rubber cement it gets on your hands and rubs into those little balls of rubber cement? Well, add in tons of glitter and you have a genuine mess on your hands. Thankfully my nose didn't itch or anything like that and the mess was completely containable. I took a cardboard box and cut out a 9" circle and then inside of that I cut a 7" circle and used the 2" ring as the starting point for my wreath. Then I took a piece of fancy tissue paper (made by Papyrus and purchased at Central Market, which is generally way to fancy for me for craft supplies, but with tissue paper, you can see the quality) and cut it into strips, wrapping the strips around the cardboard ring and then letting the extra stick out of the ring like grass. When the wreath was completely covered, I glued the glittery eggs in a haphazard way to look casual and springy.
The arrangement was simple enough -- I took what mom had grown and picked and put it in a mint julep silver cup.

Below is a much better picture to get a straightforward view of the whole project.


And below this is the cake I made. Dyed the vanilla icing green and covered it with coconut flakes and some little Easter peanut M&Ms.

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.

First Carved From Stone, Then Painted On

So my friends, this is a t-shirt with an Easter Island head painted on it in glittery silver paint. So that doesn't need an explanation, right? Pretty simple?

Well, it goes something like this. My coworker was in quite a tizzy. It seems schools these days won't just let their kiddos dress in costumes for Halloween. (Yes, this is the first of several extremely belated Halloween posts. Sorry about that folks, I got a little teensy weensy bit behind.) Her middle school daughter had to dress in a costume that reflected her geography research project, which happened to be the mystery of the Easter Island heads. And as my coworker had neither the budget (hey, she blew the costume money assembling a kick-booty Hermoine Grainger outfit for Halloween night) nor the time to find a true Easter Island head costume, she decided to go for a different tack -- she decided to play up the fact one silly explanation for the statues is that aliens from outer space came down in their shiny silver UFOs and built the statues and lined them up facing the East. So she made a lovely foil headpiece and got up extra early to paint her daughter's face silver. All she needed was a t-shirt to tie the alien bit to the Easter Island thing.

And that's where I come in. She was lamenting this ridiculous story to me and asked if I had any iron-on transfers so she could print something off the Internet. I volunteered to undertake the project because its just the kind of ridiculousness that makes me love public schools in America. Off to target went my coworker for a cheap t-shirt -- got this one off the clearance rack -- and I brainstormed to make the Easter Island thing as alien-y as possible. Silver paint and some extraterrestrial stars do the trick as far as I'm concerned.

I sketched the guy on paper until he looked just right, put the paper beneath the t, used a sharpie to outline the design on the shirt and then filled in the rest with a home-mixed paint that used silver craft paint with some high-end pigment dust from Azel Art Supply. I used real silver flakes to up the luster and voila!

Little Miss Julia looked awesome, so I'm told, and she was really excited about her shirt. Too bad the silver flakes can't weather the washing machine. It's kind of a one time use only project. It was fun. Let me know next time you need something this ridiculous.