Happy New Year!

Reversible phone pouch for Barb

Made this reversible pouch out of screen cleaning fabrics for my friend Barb.  Hope she likes it...

Distillery District

http://torontochristmasmarket.com/index.html

Happy December!

I put up the Christmas tree earlier this week.  Totally cheated, since it hasn't been easy finding the time to put up the tree in previous years.  After the holidays last year, Mat and I bought a large trash bin and used it to store our tree in the basement - fully decorated. 

It sits on top of a side table, which makes it appear much taller.  It's mostly decorated with icicles, golden leaves, old chandelier crystals, glass balls and birds.

Ribbon Scrap Pouch

I like to store good quality soaps in closets and drawers.  It's really nice to open a cupboard and to be surprised by a soft fragrance.  I usually hang the soaps (in drawstring pouches) on hangers, so that they are moved around regularly and encouraged to release their scent.

I bought some more little french milled soaps on the weekend, but didn't have enough pouches on hand to hang them all.  Instead of buying more pouches, I decided to make some out of ribbon scraps.

Here's my first pouch.  It turned out a little larger than expected so I ended up using it for a larger soap that was gifted to me as a souvenir from France.

It's a really simple project, and I had lots of help again.

Monkey Puppet

I put up our little Christmas tree yesterday.  I plugged it into a timer and guessed what time I get home from work pretty well.  Today, the lights on the tree came on as I was taking off my boots when I got in.  It seemed a little magical, even though I was the one that hooked it up.


I'll post a picture of the tree on December 1st.  In the meanwhile, here's a monkey puppet that I made for my friends' munchkin a while back.  The hearts are velcro. 

Day time photo

Winter Decorations

Welcome to my blog!

I've been meaning to make something like this for years, and finally got around to it.  Thought I'd snap some pics along the way in case anyone else wanted to do it.  I'll try to post a better photo of the finished product taken during the day.  It gets dark way too soon!

Cost:  Depends on where you get your supplies

Time:  1-3 hours to make 16 ornaments
I was watching movies in the background, so it's hard to say how much of the time was spent actually working.

Finger pain:  4 out of 10 (10 being amputation)
I'm really guessing here, having never actually lost a finger.

Supplies (for 1 ornament, multiply as needed):
-floral wire x 1 piece
-red beads x 6 
-glitter grapevine globe x 1
-greenery branches x 2
(I found a small xmas tree for $1.25 at the buck store and clipped branches off of that)
-red ribbon x 1 meter
-pliers
-wire snips
-craft paper to protect your area from glitter and greens (optional)

Difficulty:  Pretty easy really.  You may want to be careful about small kiddies doing this, since the floral wire tips are really sharp.


Start by wrapping the tip of a piece of floral wire around a bead:

I had lots of help picking beads:

String two more beads on the wire and twist them to make it look like 3 berries on a branch:

String 3 more beads on the "berry branch."  Leave 2 beads in the middle of the wire and wrap the third in the other tip:

Once that's secured, twist the other two beads into that tip to match the first side:

 

Next, attach two pieces of greens together.  I used fake greens with built in wire, so I twisted them.  If you are using real greens, you can use floral wire to secure them together.  I mismatched the lengths for a more organic feel:

Next, bend your berry wire in half, or a little askew if you'd prefer, and string it through a couple of vines of a globe:

Use that wire to attach the greens to your ornament.  Leave a little loop on top for hanging:

And that's about it!  Use your ribbon to tie your ornament onto whatever you want.  I made them to hang between the posts on my porch.  I skipped every second space so it wouldn't look too busy.