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!

Pink, Red, Ribbon, Chocolate!

Happy Valentines Day. Yeah, it's a fairly bogus holiday, but any excuse to make crafts for others is good enough for me. I thought I'd post some additional pictures of these little paper bowls with chocolate and ribbon I made for four special ladies at my office. In th e bottom picture, you can see that I incorporated my newly acquired calligraphy skills to write my Valentines. So fun! And I have so much liquid starch left over from this paper mache experience, I'm sure to be showing off more paper mache projects in the future. So, uh, get ready readers!

And now, as pitchers & catchers report to Spring Training today, my thoughts turn to baseball... At long last, winter is over and the best season is here... So look forward to some baseball crafts coming soon! (I've got my tribute to Big Papi all planned out already. Too bad I'm the only person in Dallas who will appreciate it...)

The Bowls of Valentines Day

Allow me to introduce you to my Valentine's Day project. I tested it on Katie when I went to Mardi Gras last weekend, and she gave it a thumbs up, so... I'm moving forward and making a billion of these for my coworkers on Valentine's Day. And these are super-crafty, too. So they really belong on my blog (unlike a few of my recent posts, which reminds me, I'm thinking of doing something sort-of like DesignSponge does, 'Things I Love,' as a sort of way of showcasing stuff that's not really crafty but is still fun).
So this is a paper mache bowl, filled with chocolates from World Market (think Belgian and German, yum!), and tied together with a red ribbon. Thankfully, my workplace BFF Stepheny taught me some tricks for paper mache (homegirl makes a mean piñata!) so I'll pass those along with the instructions.
To make the bowls extra fine to the touch, I used tissue paper instead of real paper as my base ingredient. Actually, as you can perhaps tell, the tissue paper is from Anthropologie! I bought a set of glass bowls and some drawer pulls and came home with tons and tons of their red-dot tissue paper and decided I just had to do something crafty with it--thus, my inspiration for these little candy-holding cups! I mixed in some red and pink tissue paper I had in my craft cache to provide some interest and to break up the monotony of the red-dots-on-white tissue paper. I ripped up the red and pink paper, but cut up the Anthropology paper. Ripping paper makes for better shapes, but cutting saves time. So, if you are going to do this project, rip up your accent papers but cut the basic one, because you'll save so much time that way. Next, wrap bowls, cups, jars, anything you want in wax paper. And this tip is a bit complicated, so I'll try to use an example: If you want the cup to be about 3 inches tall, wrap the wax paper at least 4 inches tall, because you'll have to cut away the top part of the project as it's not possible for it to come out even all around the cup. Secure the wax paper with manilla tape (you know, craft tape) and buy some liquid starch. I always thought you do paper mache with water and flour, but Piñata Queen Stepheny told me that flour and water will mildew or mold in humid climates after about a week, two at tops. And since the above bowl was bound for Toxic-Gumbo land (New Orleans), I knew I better follow Stepheny's advice and use liquid starch to hold the project together. It's cheap and available in the laundry detergent section of Wal-Mart.
I did my bowls in three rounds, about six layers of tissue per round. You'll need a full day between each round, so this is not a last minute project. And that's why I'm posting this Valentine's Day idea now, before you hit crunch time. I'll post more pictures of my bowls as they become available. I waited for Katie to like this one before proceeding forward and making plenty more. To be honest, these are really easy and pretty cute, if I may say so myself!

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!