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."

Two Years

Two years ago today I started my little craft blog. And it's been really fun. If nothing else, this blog has encouraged me to keep doing creative things every day, even if I don't post about them all, or even post regularly.

It's really gratifying to know that friends scattered around the country can keep up with my creative endeavors. I've pondered going pro as of late, and it's something that still might pan out, but whatever my crafting future holds, it's nice to have a record of the last two years of my crafting life.

And because birthdays cause one to ponder and reflect, I'm going to share some of the crafting things that I think everyone should own in order to be able to whip up creative projects in a jiffy:

1) Happy Tape. This is from Japan and it's brightly colored masking tape. How does this help your life? I'll tell you. A million ways. If you wrap a package in newspaper, happy tape makes it look like you put forth effort beyond just wrapping a package with garbage. On an envelope, it looks so fun to just slap a few pieces of tape along the seal. It's like stickers for grown ups. If you bring someone some cookies in a paper towel, it looks like you really went the extra mile with fancy pants tape. I love this stuff.

2) Fishing line. It's invisible, it's uses are infinite and if you buy one roll for less than five bucks, you will do twentyfivethousand projects and you will still feel like you haven't made a dent in the spool. I use it to string garlands, hang wreaths, tie plants to supporting sticks...

3) A standard-sized stack of paper that you think is pretty. I have a stack of 6x6" paper squares from all kinds of places. Some was originally sold as decorative paper, some came from magazines or catalogs, some is used wrapping paper and others are just scraps I've collected along the way. And the reason I think it is important for you to keep the size standard is easy -- it can be stored best this way. If you just keep stacks of randomly sized papers, the stack becomes a mess so quickly, you'll just throw it away. With the standard sizes, you can find a perfect box for them or just some corner where you can let the stack grow. For a quick homemade greeting card, a set of homemade place cards, unique gift wrap for small packages, etc., I just go to my stack and I always find something fun. When I get a catalog in the mail, or am handed a magazine that I know I don't want to keep, I scan the pages quickly for tear out sheets and then slice and dice the pages into squares.

4) Razors. I use these constantly! I have a couple of good holders for straight-edge razors (a comfort grip and a mini-blade holder that I use in tight spaces). You know, if you are dealing with a mess, you can often use a blade to clean it up. Because the blades are disposable, you can add some oil or grease to them to take the remaining parts of a sticker/label/price tag off a piece of glass or plastic. I've even been known to use a razor blade to get a tough stain off a dish if I'm in a rush! And what's better for cleanly taking candle wax drips off wherever they've dropped themselves? Learn how to use a razor and you are on your way to accomplishing your crafting tasks with such greater time efficiency. Also, the manual dexterity you'll learn from wielding your razor well will help with other creative tasks.

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.