Pinterest Favorites

I will confess that my blogging has definitely taken a back seat to Pinterest.  Good news though... I will be posting weekly about my favorite finds and pinners starting today.

I am going to start with Pinner Kathy Ward.

Find her boards HERE.

As of this blog post this fabulous lady has 15,365 pins!  And If I was a complete stalker I would repin every single one!

So here are some of my favs from her stuff:)

vintage brooch wreath

Princess Pearl from her Griege board

Lace socks in her It's All About Me Board

Flower Chandelier in her Brown Board

Vintage rings from her True Blue Board

She has a whole board on crowns and I love them all!

I adore these wings in her Angels Board

Ok I could seriously post hundreds of her pins.  Go check them out for yourself and follow me on Pinterest too! http://pinterest.com/aymuller/

Funky Paper Angels

Ok now for a project that does work and that is sooo easy that anyone can do it and would be fun to have people make for themselves at a party even.

I ended up making them for a friend to take to her tree trimming party.  And everyone liked them so much I thought the kids in my family would get a kick out of them, but then they were just so funny I mad one for every family member.  And then they were so easy I made them for all of my friends and passed them out at a party I had this weekend.

Huge Hit!

My cousin and brother Are kind of towards the top and theirs are hysterical cause my cousin looks like he has a mullet and has a weird face and my brothers got his big ole tongue hangin out!

I also like how my grand parent's turned out using old black and white pics!  I might have to redo my other grandparents angels, I have a great picture of my grandfather in the army with a cig in his mouth that would probably turn out pretty funny!

So here is what you do.  I got the pictures and cropped it down to everyone's faces, then in publisher I laid them all out onto a page and tried to make everyone's head size about the same.  Then I just printed it out on a piece of card stock and cut them out.  The goofier the picture the funnier the angel.

Then I took a ton of scraps of scrapbook paper and free hand cut triangles for the body and then I used a contrasting paper for the wings and free hand cut them as well.  Using scrap book glue I glued them all together.

I cut silver tinsel piper cleaners into threes and hot glued them to the backs of the heads and when they were dry I curled the pipe cleaners down into halos.

If I had thought of making these earlier and had some more time I could have decorated them a bit and the possibilities are endless!  I tried to match up paper patterns to fit personalities.  

I plan on using these instead of gift tags to Identify everyone's presents.

Some tips:  It would be great to laminate them before adding the halos or use sturdier paper for the bodies and wings.

Enjoy!

Project Fail!

I love following blogs with great tutorials and learning about other crafters' tricks and seeing what inspires them.  I especially love when people see something they love and try it with their own spin and interpretation.  I think that's what drives the artistic experience and what makes you grow as an individual.

I love it even more when crafters reveal that not every project comes out perfect.  I would love for Martha Stewart to publish a book on how many times it took for her people to get their projects right and a tell all about all the projects that didn't work out.

So I must confess that I too am a very flawed crafter.  There are somethings I do that go off without a hitch but many times I make promises about tutorials for this and that without having really tried the project myself!  So I posted about this http://goodjunque.blogspot.com/2011/12/5-years-of-christmas.html and I planned on showing you a fun tutorial but it was an epic fail.  SO many people in blogland and on Pinterest  are making adorable ornaments with decoupaged  pictures so I thought I would do the same.

I shared with you the pics and I cut out my chipboard but whoa nelly when I started decoupaging the picture smeared like crazy.  So I will have to figure out how to make that happen sans smears and try it again!

But in the mean time I have a fun project to share on the next post:)

Christmas Carol Art

I fell in love with this pic on Pinterest and decided to make an attempt on a smaller scale for my home.

http://pinterest.com/pin/196821446184586110/

And this is how it turned out.  Not too bad, although I like the white on charcoal better, but it was easier to do the black on white to try for the first time.

 I added some gold and silver glitter to accent the letters and give it a twinkling effect.

I have 2 ornaments that I will be sharing with y'all this weekend.  Nothin like some last minute crafting:)

Birdie Goodie Bags

I am making cookies to give out to my coworkers and neighbors and I was trying to figure out what to put them in without spending a fortune on containers.  So I picked up some brown paper bags and figured something would come to me.  I was thinking about using book pages to make birds to glue to the bags and one of the bajillion Pottery Barn catalogs that I got this holiday was sitting on the coffee table so I decided to recycle instead:)

I freehand cut a bird from a page in the catalog and also a wing

Bird

 Wing

 I made a small fold at the top of the wing so that it was 3 dimensional 

I glued the bird to the bag and then the flap on the wing

This is what it looks like

Then I decided to stamp Peace under the birdie

I start with the middle letter so it is centered

Then you stamp the letters out from the center letter

Stamping all done!

Here are a few others

Fold over the bag and cut off some of the excess

I punched 2 holes at the top of the folded bag

Then strung ribbon through the holes and finish with a bow

And here is the final product:)

I did 12 or so in about 30 minutes or so sitting in front of the tv and they cost almost nothing to make!

I will probably print labels to stick to the backs to let them know what cookies are in the bag and who its from.

Tips... I plan on putting the cookies in ziplock bags before putting them in the paper bag so they don't go stale.

Also when cutting out the birds I tried to place the template over prettier pages and traced the shape and then I tried to choose a wing in a contrasting color.  

Deck the Halls!

Here Are My Christmas Decorations this Year!

I wnet with burlap, leopard and Gilver (mix or silver and gold) with some curly twigs,  There are small pops of red too, of course!

I ran out of Extension cords!  I have since fixed this problem but I am sure the mailman gave it funny looks for a couple days:) 

 Please excuse the mess

 This is how I ended up finishing the tree skirt I started in this tutorial HERE

After posting these pics I realized that I haven't taken a full shot of the tree completely decorated...

More to come and Part 2 of the tree skirt tutorial will be posted soon too.

5 years of Christmas

This year will be 5 years that Chris and I have known each other.  We were good friends before we fell in love:) I though I would share some pics at Christmas time over the past four years.

2007 at a Law School Holiday Party

2008 On our porch on Drew St.

2009 at Chris' parents house 

2010 at Chris' Alumni Holiday Party

Next week we will be going to a Holiday party so I can add this year's pic, and I have a great craft that I am doing using these pics too!  I'll have a tutorial for that soon.