Lost & Found Christmas: Vingtage Holiday Tags

Karen from The Bald Dragonfly here, and I happen to think that nobody describes the iconic holiday image better than Clement Clarke Moore from his poem, The Night Before Christmas. The image portrayed in Lost & Found Christmas is the spitting image of what is written…”…He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf…” It became a great focal point to my hand crafted holiday gift tags and ornament holder. The beautiful textures and patterns from the Lost & Found: Christmas line offer a nice vintage vibe, while the red glittered accents add a touch of sophistication and glam.

To make the tag/ornament holder, I started with an upcycled package from my boys’ toys. After washing and cleaning the inside and out, I carefully measured the Santa paper and cut to fit inside the packaging. After rounding the corners, I simply added a bit of repositional adhesive in strategic locations to secure the image to the clear packaging. I repeated for the back side of the packaging as well with the same sheet of paper. Then I wrapped some jute twine around the outside of the packaging, having secured that with hot glue.

The tags were created from various designs from the Lost & Found: Christmas collection and scrapbooking/cardmaking tools such as corner rounders, label die cuts, twine and fasteners. I found a bit of red, glittery ribbon that had been recycled from my mother-in-laws holiday arrangement from last year that was a perfect match to the red glitter accents! I simply added a strip of the lighter patterned paper to the back of the tags as a place for the address of the gifts.

Once the person that I gift this to has used up all the tags, the decorated box remains as a perfect place to store precious and delicate ornaments. It’s is like two gifts in one! The possibilities are endless for tag-making with this line. Mix and match patterns and shapes to add variety to your tag line-up or let your tags become more vintage by including such things as lace and buttons.

Simple Candy Bar Wrappers

Hey everyone! As we all know, Halloween is just around the corner! And we know that because the stores are already full of Christmas gear! I think Costco had Christmas lights out in July.

But first things first.

At my house, we give out FULL SIZED candy bars. My husband wants to be “that” house, so who am I to say no? Especially when 30 full sized bars is less than $15 at Costco.

Behold the yumminess….

In order to dress the candy bars up a little bit, I went to Jen’s awesome designs at Design House Digital. Specifically the Spooked line. Vintage Findings would work great for this too. Just depending if you want to go traditional or vintage Halloween.

I printed out a couple papers from the Spooked Collection.

I used Microsoft Publisher to do this. I simply created an 8.5×11 document and inserted the digital papers as a jpg. You could use MS Word or any version of Photoshop for this as well. I am not very well versed at digi scrapping, so I tend to choose the easiest way. I printed the documents onto white cardstock.

I cut each 8.5×11 piece in half the long way, which left them just a little bit short of the length of the candy bars. I made a quick template with each candy bar and simply wrapped and secured with adhesive!

Here are some pretty bars wrapped and ready to go home with some new costumed friends!

Have a happy Halloween everyone!

Deena

Halloween decorations part 2… Apothecary style

I’ve never really decorated for Halloween before, so that’s why I’m doing it in phases this year (see part 1 of my Halloween decorations). I’m having to design, make, and acquire everything for the first time, so it takes a lot of creative energy, planning and shopping! The main look I was going for was a more realistic feeling with a muted color palate. I also want to have a lot of small details because I find that those are the most memorable parts of decorating.

I have always loved apothecary jars and I have a small collection of them, so I knew that I wanted to create an apothecary display.  I gathered my existing jars and then purchased a few more at Home Goods (where they are super affordable). to balance out large and small. I also got some tiny jars at a local antique/consignment shop.

I was so excited when I found the antique postal scale and it’s definitely my favorite new piece. Oh and forgive my circus posters in the background… the artwork is phase 3 of decorating so I haven’t quite gotten that far yet!

These two jars sit on the mantle (the sparkly one I use for christmas with those very same sparklies).

The next step was to design my Apothecary labels. I had a lot of fun making these, and I created them with the scale and contents of my jars in mind. And since they coordinate so well with my All Hallow’s Eve digital line, I packaged them up and released them in my digital shop this week:

Once all the labels were designed, I printed them and cut them out.

Then I used my glue runner on the back of each label and stuck them on the jars:

Once all the labels were on, I had to fill up the rest of my jars. I stratigically bought items that I WOULD NOT EAT. Mostly so I won’t eat them and partly so that I can keep them for years to come and can just set up the display really quickly.

These are the fillers I used:

black licorice for the “lizard legs”

chocolate sprinkles for “bat toes”

peppercorns for “eye of newt”

white beans for “tooth of wolf”

black beans for “black locust poison”

gold tinsel glitter for “scale of dragon”

coffee water for “tincture of hemloc”

Not appetizing at all…

So that’s my halloween apothecary collection! Maybe I will add one or two jars every year and eventually have a giant collection! What kind of Halloween decorations do you collect?

The Holiday Planner – How will you use it? *Free Download

I will use my Holiday Planner to keep myself organized this Holiday season. I have big plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanksgiving dinner will be served at our house this year. So I will be including a shopping list and menu. I will also start collecting any recipes I think I might want to use. This way I can find it all in one place and have them available when I am shopping. How will you use your planner?

Here is a Free Downloadable Shopping List + Menu from Jen Allyson for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and general Holiday that you can put in your Holiday Planner.

Click on the images below to download the PDF files.

Before I can get too excited about the menu, here at the Lake house we are starting a new project…. We need a new wall oven. This means we get to pull out the old one, demo some sheet rock and cut a new hole. After 23 years, wall ovens have changed in size. Lucky for me, Jen posted the most wonderful Project Master List and Project Notes for free download.

And when that new oven is installed, here is a fall family favorite recipe my Grandma Norma always made for us kids.

Jewelry Shadowbox with Fabric

Hey everyone! Today I have a fun and easy craft project for you. I’m calling it a Jewelry Shadowbox with Fabric. I’m creative with names like that, yo.

When I was younger, I seriously would wear the SAME jewelry every day. Literally day in and day out, I’d wear small gold hoop earrings, a gold necklace with one charm, and one of my sister’s (stolen borrowed) rings. Once every few years I’d get something special, like a new charm or my high school ring, but pretty much it was the same jewelry all the time. Let me ask you – why on Earth was I limiting myself????

Since then, I have opened myself up to the world of jewelry! This has a lot to do with the fact that both of my bffs are now jewelry reps for home-party companies (though two separate companies). So I’ve had a few parties for them and it has been great fun! However, it has created a need for storing all this new jewelry I’ve acquired.

For Christmas last year, my husband bought me this wonderful large jewelry box that I keep in our master closet. But in the mornings, I’m not always completely awake and that can make picking the necklace I want quite a challenge. So I went to the power of the interwebs and searched around for a solution. Enter the Jewelry Shadowbox with Fabric.

Here’s how I did it:

I started with a plain shadowbox from A.C. Moore. I used a 40% coupon. I got the 11×14 size, because I wanted it to be a little bit on the larger side. I also used Krylon aluminum spray paint (purchased at Walmart). I also sent my husband to Lowe’s to get some of these hooks to screw into the top of the frame. I screwed them in every inch and a half or so. I actually enlisted my husband’s help again, because my hand was starting to hurt after like three hooks (I’m a wimp!).

I took out the guts and the glass of the shadowbox and went to spraying. I am not at all a pro spray painter, but it’s pretty much fool proof.  I did about 3 light coats of paint and just touched up as needed. My grass also got a fancy makeover in the process. Doesn’t that leaf look kinda cool as aluminum??

The hooks obviously got a makeover from gold to matte aluminum in this process as well.

Once the spray paint dries (read the bottle for specifics), time to take it inside to make-over the guts! Here are my supplies:

Spray adhesive, quilt batting, and the Riley Blake Designs Lost & Found by Jen Allyson for My Mind’s Eye Black – Main fabric.

I started by adhering one layer of batting to the shadowbox backing. I felt it wasn’t ‘cushy’ enough, so I spray adhered another layer of batting on top of the first. This is the front of the backing with the first layer of batting cut close.
Then there’s the back. The good part about the back? NO ONE SEES IT!

I used my good pal Scor-Tape to adhere the batting to the back of the backing. I made it tight, but not too tight because I wanted the backing to be able to bend a bit to fit inside the shadowbox snugly.

Then I spray adhered a layer of fabric to the front of the batting and used Scor-Tape again on the back. I tried to use the ‘wrap the corners like a present’ technique. Remember what I said about no one seeing the back???

Here is the finished backing put into the shadowbox! You can see the sides and the bottom were able to bend enough to fit snugly into the frame.

And here it is in it’s new home, holding some of my favorite necklaces.

Now my necklaces are sitting right on my dresser where I can see and grab them easily in the morning. It’s fun to decorate your house with the same things you use to decorate your clothes!

Have a great weekend everyone!