Tuesday, December 20, 2011

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
vintage brooch wreath

Pinned Image

Princess Pearl from her Griege board

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Lace socks in her It's All About Me Board

Um WOW.
Flower Chandelier in her Brown Board

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Vintage rings from her True Blue Board

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

Ginger's wings fabulous!
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:)

Friday, December 16, 2011

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.

Pinned Image

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.  

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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.

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