Happy New Year!

We spent the Eve with some friends from college and had a great time. Lots of my two favorite past-times ~ eating and playing video games (as I'm sure you've learned by now). Unfortunately, there was also a lot of football watching, so I entertained myself with Sudoku on the DS. We came back *way* too early this morning because Justin had another shift at Belk, but luckily this is his last one for the holidays.


Before we left, I had a chance to glance through the Christmas photos and found a few gems.

Justin's parents' dog Truffle *loves* Christmas. He knows he is getting gifts from every one of their 7 children. New squeaky toys and Greenies galore. He also knows which ones are for him, so you can't put them under the tree or else he will hunt them out and open them early. Because he also loves to open the gifts himself (maybe with a little help).



Picasso thinks this behavior is foolish. Just give me my cat treats already.



On Christmas morning, while we were peeking through our stocking stuffers, it actually began to hail! Not for very long, but a big suprise with all of the hot weather we've been having and the nearly record drought. The neices were rushed out on the patio to see, the closest they will get to snow for a long time.

I hope everyone has been enjoying their holidays! And that you've had some time to relax before rushing back to work. Poor Justin is still working the crazy hours at Belk & will only have about 4 days off the entire school break. Never again!

This was a great Christmas for me ~ we went to Justin's parents for Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. With my parents we are always running around from one grandparents house to another, so this was the first time I was able to sit back & not worry about grabbing the right presents & casseroles and being constantly on the go. We cooked, we ate, petted cats, opened presents & played lots of video games. Ahhh.

We wanted to get together with my parents after the holiday, but with Justin's busy schedule & my dad having to make up time at the newspaper, it was pretty hard to plan a time. We finally figured out we were all free on Friday for a few hours. That morning my mom called & said she was worried about the rain on the roads from the night before, that it would be too dangerous, and wanted to reschedule. (This is rain, folks, no where near ice) Luckily I talked her out of it, it would have been at least a week before schedules met up again. So on Friday we got together with my parents for what I dubbed "Second Christmas"!

I have yet to sort through all of the photos. I did fill up all of the space, but who knows if anything will turn out!

As for presents ~ I got these cute silver flats, some houndstooth rainboots, Chibi Robo for the DS, Creature Comforts America, a DVD player for the workroom (finally!), quilling supplies, some gift cards & other random things. I also got a few crafting books, but will wait to talk about those along with a proper review of each. Now I am looking around & trying to figure out where to *put* everything.

Anyone out there wrapping some last minute gifts?
I feel a little silly offering up my printable gift tags after I've seen just about *every* other blog do the same thing this year, but I'd like to try to make a new set every year & share them online.

Here are the circle tags I made for the fabric gifts bags this year, and you can also get last year's set of silver snowflake tags ~


Just print them on cardstock, grab a pair of scissors and a hole punch or tape. You can get the large versions for printing by clicking on 'all sizes' on the Flick page, or get them here and here.




Poor Justin is working crazy hours at Belk during the school break & has decided this is the last year for sure! He won't be back until past midnight tonight, so I am making the most of my alone time by organizing/cleaning my work room, doing laundry, working on ambigrams, and perhaps cleaning up downstairs (we'll see). I think there will also be some pie making.

Meanwhile, the closer we get to Christmas, the more I get in trouble for my gift list this year. I can't help it if nearly everything I want needs to be ordered online! I'm not sure if that means my tastes are ecclectic or just weird? Online shopping is not really an option with my un-internet-savy parents, so the brunt of the responsibility went to Justin and his parents.

Unfortunately, I don't think Justin pointed out to his mom just how obscure the items on my list really are, and she tried to find the items while out shopping in the stores, only to fail again & again. She called to get more ideas from Justin, and then I am in trouble for having a list that is too short. As I racked my brain for anything else I might want, I came up with such useful gems as 'beef jerky??' Mmmm... a merry teriyaki Christmas.

I came up with these cookies last year and think they will be a new Christmas tradition around here!

First make a batch of plain sugar cookies, either slice-and-bake or from scratch ~



Then use your snowflake cutting skills in reverse! Fold your paper into sixths, cut it into a circle shape (slightly larger than the cookies), and then cut out a snowflake stencil ~



Lay your stencil over a cookie and sprinkle with cinnamon. Carefully lift the stencil off of the cookie and turn the cookie over to dump the excess.

Now don't they look fancy? The cinnamon also gives them a great Snickerdoodle flavor. (I've tried it with powder sugar as well, but I kept choking on the powder when I tried to eat it. Would not recommend)



You can use this same stencil technique to create all sorts of fun designs on pies, cakes, all sorts of food!

I am so glad a had a chance to start things early this year, putting up the tree, buying all of the gifts & getting them wrapped & ready. At first I worried that having things done so early would make the wait for Christmas that much harder, but with the mad dash to get all of the orders finished & in the mail on time, I haven't even had a chance to think about the approaching day.

As I mentioned before, my posts are running a bit late right now, but I've made a list & will work harder to get caught up on all the things I've been wanting to post about. But, I might not divulge just how old some of the photos are!


I've been watching lost of cheesy Christmas movies, and when one of them mentioned stringing up popcorn garland I suddenly was hit with the desire to string up some pom-poms instead. I'm not entirely sure where this idea came from, if I had seen it done before, but I knew it would be wonderful.

Justin was not so excited about the idea & was very worried the whole thing would end up looking too tacky. After I strung it up he gave his permission for it to decorate the tree ~ I'm not sure if he decided it looked good after all, or if he just gave in because I was so excited, but I think it's extremely cute! I bought red & white pom-poms in 1/4" & 3/4" sizes & alternated colors, 2 small, one large, repeat.



The poor little tree was also in desparate need of a nice tree-topper, so I decided that an origami star would work nicely. I had a lot of trouble coming up with any good search results until I thought to try 'modular origami star', which just means that it is made up of lots of the same pieces, all hooked together (and is what I had in mind in the first place).

My first trial involved these curler units, which can be used in a variety of numbers to make different spheres (or 'stars'). I planned on making a 12-piece sphere, but it was so awkward to try to stretch it out far enough, so I opted for the 24-piece. Here you can see one unit at the bottom, and two sets of 'triangles', with three units curled together.



The bad thing about modular origami is, while they will often tell you what size paper to start out with, they don't tell you what size the finished piece is. For this ball I divided a normal sheet of paper long-ways into fourths and then made three squares (2.75") out of each strip. Two sheets of paper will give you enough squares for the 24-piece sphere, which ended up being about 2.75" and just lovely.



But not nearly large enough to top the tree (and with no real way to place it there!). It is currently serving as a lovely snowball right now, and will probably end up as an ornament.

The next star I made was this 30-piece 'Arabesque', but without curling the edges at the end. While the directions were pretty easy to follow, there are a lot of steps, and I was sad to see that a lot of the steps were unecessary or overly complex. I could easily elimiate about half (After #20, at the bottom corners, just pop in the middle layer, so now you just have the front & back layer. That one move will take you all the way to step #30. #30-39 are unecessary, you are just making creases for a fold later, which is easier to make without the creases.).



I used some of our silver striped wrapping paper to make the squares. The three rolls of red & silver prints I have this year are very pretty, but so abnormally thick, they actually make wrapping difficult, and the tape barely keeps the package closed (they often pop open). My star pieces would not stay together on their own, so I actually stitched the pieces together with silver thread as I added them.

The squares were 3" & the finished star is 3.75". Still a little smaller than I would have liked, but it will have to do!



And here is our tiny tree in all of it's glory, haha.



I really do like having the small tree though, it's just perfect for us right now & fits all of the ornaments we've accumulated. And underneath the tree (on a lower table) sits the first set of presents, most of which were opened for birthdays. (This is only a small sampling of them)

The bad luck continued last night as I went to buy a temperature control for my soldering iron. They had none at Hobby Lobby, even though I swear I've seen them there before, so it looks like I will have to order one online.

I picked up some canvas stretchers while I was there to build a few screens for screenprinting. I pulled out the organza fabric, scissors, staple gun & duct tape and went to work. And three staples in, I ran out. I assumed the gun had come with an extra pack of staples, but found nothing when I checked my tool box.

Justin asked me what the crafting planet is, and if it is in retrograde.
Today I am hoping to break the curse!


Today I also bring you new pictures of the giftbags, which I took with the lightbox. The results turned out pretty well, even though the reflective surfaces of the background papers were a little bit of a challenge.

All of the backgrounds are wrapping paper I bought on sale last year at Hobby Lobby. The set is just beautiful ~ a red spiral print, red with silver dots, and silver stripes. The red bag was a bit lost against the red paper, so I changed it to a green on the computer.







I was quite pleased that I only had to take one set of pictures for both the CD & DVD sized bag. Most of the shots feature the top of the bag, and I simply re-sized the full view pictures. You can see the pics of the bags open, and with the tags tied on, at my Etsy shop.

I also made some matching gift tags to include with the bags ~

Today has been slowing toppling downhill.

As I was planning out what I needed to get done at work today, I realized I had a tiny bit of sewing work to do (before I needed more information from the customer), I'm just now taking some new orders & can't start those, and I have a few days before any ambigrams were due. I was positively giddy when I realized if I hurried through my emails and the sewing, that I would have the *rest* of the work-day to put towards all of the other projects I've been wanting to start on.

I decided to make some Christmas ambigram ornaments ~ basically the ambigram design, soldered between glass slides, decorated with some beads.



I started by altering the design to add in some color. Unfortunately my pixel size was off by one "0", which meant I was trying to import a file 10 times larger than I needed, and kept causing my program to freeze & shut down. After much frustration, and much wasted time, I finally figured out the problem, and made the file in no time.

I printed the pictures, cut them out, foiled them between the glass,
broke out my new soldering iron, and was ready to go!

And was met with nothing but failure :(

The new iron was way too hot, so it wouldn't hold the solder, and the glass ended up cracking. I bought this 80 watt because my favorite solder on Etsy mentioned using an 80, and all of the stained glass sites to buy at least an 80 or 100 watt iron. And my old one was 25! I do feel like I needed something a little hotter than that, but this is ridiculous.

The only thing I can guess is that some solders require more heat, so the 80 watt can be used *with a temperature control* to do any project. And perhaps the higher power will keep the iron from getting chilled, and keep the temperature more even.

So my options are to buy a temperature control for the 80 watt (depends on the price!), or buy a new 30/35 watt iron. The 25 needs new tips, which would have to be ordered online, and has already moved on to Justin's classroom. Luckily we do have some extra cash, or else I would be really bummed right now!

I raided Justin's mom's photos while we were there and finally have some shots of pumpkins of years past. I think there are still two I never got pictures of, including the first one I ever carved. :( But here is the 2nd, from 2004 ~



Last year I had a hard time coming up with anything I liked. Last minute I carved this version of "Harvey", which was the first ambigram I created, and naturally, his parents's last name. Unfortunately, it looks like the picture was taken a little too late ;)




I also grabbed the photos she took of us carving this year. I am in the green, his sister Chelsea in red. Stacey only seems to have made it into one blurry picture, so she's missing from the action.

Every year we visit Justin's parents' around Halloween for his dad's birthday. And every year his mom asks me to carve a pumpkin. I usually stress out over picking a design, but this year I am prepared!



I decided to draw out my own design, which I had originally planned on just being decorative lettering. But I needed some way to create the holes for the "A"'s, "P"'s and so on, and the design got more & more complex.

I will be carving the pumpkin later today, but meanwhile, you can download the larger version for your own pumpkin here!

For the tiny lines on the spider, web, and skeleton, use a pointed tool to scratch a line into the surface, you don't have to go all the way through. (You can also do this for any details that are too tiny, like the skeleton eyes & nose) I put this together quickly, so the lines are a little rough, but fine for carving ;)

I decided to have fun wrapping (& packaging) a few gifts for Christmas. The first is for my Pop, who knows he is getting film so I made it fancy. The second is a miniature paper model car in a display case for my husband. He wanted a model to put together, but wants something unusual & I want him to be able to pick it out. I got him a gift card that I put in a drawer under the case. (The case is about as long as a dollar bill) The whole thing was then wrapped to look like a regular box-shaped gift. It will be very fun to see him open that one! For more info & larger pics, here is my craftgrrl post ~ http://www.livejournal.com/community/craftgrrl/7575852.html

Justin's class had their school Christmas party on Friday, and every year students bring in tons of chocolates, candies, cookies, and some gifts in for him. Way too much food for the two of us to eat I might add, so we spread around the joy. (it is not just him, it's all the teacher, though he is well loved)

This year the homeroom-room mother called all of the parents and told them to bring in money instead of gifts, because they were going to combine the money. So, in addition to the pile of chocolates we got from kids not in his homeroom, he got this ~

Wow.

Especially since when we counted the money it was over $300.
We are still in shock ~ we haven't really had extra money for fun stuff for so long that it is hard to even think of what we would do with it! So far, Justin has said that he does want to spend some of it on his classroom & is going to get a larger tank & light for his class lizard & maybe another lizard to join him. (They also have something earlier in the year called a "Teacher Shower", which is when he bought the lizard) Other than that, we are going to wait until after Christmas to see what we might want/need to get.

On a crafting note, this was quite a creative (& seasonal) way to give someone money!

I've made up a tutorial for three styles of gift bags here on craftgrrl ~
http://www.livejournal.com/community/craftgrrl/7467016.html
(I think it might be my first tutorial!)



These are quite fun and easy to make. You can make the to specifically fit any size gift and they will last much longer than any paper gift bag! Enjoy ;)



On another note, I'm thinking about using a free image hosting site for my LJ pics ~ any recommendations?
Right now they are stored on my site, and I'm not low on room, but I would just rather have them somewhere else since I want to leave them up long term ~ I really don't know anything about those sites.

Oct. 31 '05 ~ Pumpkin Carved with a Dremel


Side one of four... (click above for more views)

I really wish I had gotten a picture of myself carving this thing because I was covered in pumpkin "sawdust". It was very fun though, and I always love playing around with new techniques and tools. Next year I think I am going to do something with two layers of shading ~ probably this design.

And now I am updated on all of my old entries and ready to post some new stuff!

Sept. 2 '05 ~ 12 Star Knotted Spheres Instructions


I originally posted this link because so many girls were making the tiny folded stars and it seemed similar. It looked pretty cool but I had so many other crafts going on that I had little interest in making one. But after the girl posted the above picture of one she had made, I got hooked and made a handfull of these little balls. (& they do make great ornaments!)

The directions are a little hard to figure out at first, but only because they seem to add a few unnecessary steps to help you know where to fold. If you ignore those you will be fine, and will soon see a pattern developing so that you won't need the directions anymore. My first ball I made from magazine paper strips, and I think it did help to make it larger first. Then I moved onto the curling ribbon. Oh ~ and they are very cute if you make the stars out of one color, and then link them together with another ~ the second color shows through in little accents here and there.