Christmas Cards

As a child, I loved staring at our card display every year and reading the various letters people wrote updating us on their year. Never did I ever expect to be "grown-up" enough to send cards of my own. That was something families and old people did.

Well, last year John and I sent out our very first round of Christmas cards. It was fun to go through a list of people we loved, some we spoke to regularly, some we hadn't spoken to since our wedding. It was a way to tell them we are thinking of you. I greatly appreciate the cards I get from friends and family and I know they do, too.

This year, to further embrace our snowflake Christmas theme, I made homemade cards.  With my newly developed awesome snowflake making skills (seriously, after cutting hundreds for our non-tree Christmas tree and other various decorations, I'm a pro.) I whipped out some teeny snowflakes.  They were adorable and looked simple yet festive glued onto colorful cardstock.

A Snowflake Blizzard

Note: This is the second post in a series of the unveiling of our first ever Christmas Non-Tree.
To see the first post, go here.

I love snowflakes. Real snowflakes, paper snowflakes, glass snowflakes. They are a great way for me to enjoy the snow and winter wonder while staying warm and dry. It's also a great way to bring the winter wonderland into your home.

When I began formulating my plan for our very first Christmas Non-Tree, I knew I wanted to incorporate snowflakes. If I was going to throw tradition (ours and practically everyone's) to the wind, I wanted to embrace the non-tree idea and make it completely different from any of our previous trees. Enter snowflakes. They were my life for the past week. Every spare moment was spent cutting tiny geometric shapes out of folded paper. At one point my thumb was swollen and purple from the scissors and my finger tips bruised from folding. Still, though, I persevered.

Naive me thought about 75-100 snowflakes would be enough. Nope. I ended up cutting 193 snowflakes (yes, I counted).  I think I may be a snowflake aficionado now.

If you've ever wanted to know how to fold a snowflake, here you go!

1. Start with a square:

 

2. Fold in half diagonally:

3. Fold in half diagonally again:

4. You will have a smaller triangle:

5. Take one side of the triangle and bring in to the middle:

6. Bring the other side over so that the outer length lines up wiith the opposite outer length: *

*hint: sometimes you have to play around with steps 5 and 6 to get them to meet perfectly.

7. Cut the top and a bit of the point:

8. Cut random shapes out of one or both sides. Play around and experiment!

9. Unfold and check out your unique paper snowflake:

Stay tuned to see how I used these snowflakes to make our very first Christmas Non-Tree!
Part one - What is a Christmas Non-Tree?

Yellow Blossoms

I love nature. I love nature so much that last month I found a tree branch, spray painted it, and hung it up in my living room. Remember, though, how it was missing something so I whipped up some origami leaves? They were nice for a couple weeks, but then the bold, modernism made me tired so I started looking for other branch-sprucing options.  With my mind focused on flowers, both real and otherwise, this week, I decided to try my hand at paper flowers. We needed something pretty, summery, and colorful to replace the leaves and I think I found them!

I started out with some scrap cardstock and a variety of fun scissors.

Drawing a spiral, I cut it out. I got a little experimental with the scalloped scissors.  I decided I'd try a variety of made up flower techniques to see what I liked and didn't like.

After cutting out the spiral, I took the outer end piece and  started rolling. I tried the inner end piece and that didn't work very well...so stick with the outer end.

I found that if I rolled it tightly and then gently let it go when I finished, the flower blossomed very nicely

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I also took a long strip of paper and cut it into fringe to roll up.

Then I used my pencil to curl the fringe down and make into a flower-like shape.

Falling in love with all the flowers I couldn't pick my favorite style so I did something bold. I decided to use them all. I know, I know. A branch with three different flowers? Let's see how it looks.

I like the yellow against the green and it's nice to bring in some new color to the blue and greens of the living room.

 Much better than those leaves! Don't worry, I saved them and may bring them back out in the fall. I'm liking the simplicity of the small yellow blooms...what do you think?

Upcycling Project: Part 1

So, what do you do when an old styrofoam cooler is about to get thrown out? Use as much of it as possible for some crafty projects, duh!

We were cleaning out our closet and ruthlessly throwing things away when we happened upon this styrofoam cooler that was very nifty but rarely used. Hating to throw styrofoam away, I put it aside with the intentions of using as much as possible in some projects. 

For the first of many projects, I decided to make some letters (more accurately, an H and ampersand).  I printed templates out, taped them down and used a knife to carve them out.

I decided to use some beautiful paper scraps I had (which I have plenty of because I have a problem with throwing away scraps of pretty paper) to decoupage the H.

An easy-peasy, cheap, upcycled project! Stay tuned because there's more styrofoam where that came from...way more.  Perhaps there may be some paper mache-ing involved...and a frame or two...who knows.

Decoupage Collage

Last summer I bought several plastic pots from Target's clearance section. You can't beat $.60 for a pot, right? Fast forward a year and after the harps stopped playing as my irrational head-over-heels love for the cheap pots faded, I realized how ugly they are.  I haven't filled them with anything because I didn't want them in my house.  So, what began as a bargain 60 cents (times four pots) ended up being a waste of 60 cents (times four pots).

Well, I in the midst of a horrible case of DIY ADD (you should read all about the symptoms of this crafty virus to ensure you haven't caught the germ), I decided to do a little makeover.  Mod podge plus pretty paper plus paint equals awesome pot makeover. Really!

Thanks to my insane inability to throw away scraps of beautiful paper, I was able to make a collage of sorts on the pot.

With all the random blank spots, I simply painted on my new favorite color of craft paint (Bird Egg) and voila!

I started these flowers from seeds and now I can't remember what type of flowers they are. Guess we'll be surprised when they bloom!!



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Five Minute Art

It seems as though the theme of the week is quick and easy (and no, not me, my crafts). If I had a television show I'd entitle it, "Five Minute Crafting with Kristen".

We're in the process of re-doing our office gallery wall. Over the past few months we've collected several new pieces of art and wanted to incorporate them. I had painted a frame bright blue and needed something else to tie it in so it wouldn't look so lost and out of place.

Using the same blue I had painted the frame, I decided to paint a small canvas we had on hand. I printed out a LOVE from the internet, cut it out, and placed it on the canvas. Then, carefully, I painted around it, lifted it up, and voila! A pretty blue piece of art....that I traced from the internet.

This has been another episode of "Five Minute Crafting with Kristen."

Five Minute Improvement

I love quick fixes, especially quick fixes that fix a problem that's been plaguing for years.

I've had a stack of these coasters that were given to me for my birthday about five years ago...maybe longer. They were fun in college and grad school when we had many wine-filled gatherings but they stick out like a sore thumb now.  I hated the thought of buying new coasters when we had a stack of great ones but it was time for something new. Enter the five minute improvement.

I had some scraps of paper from my decoupaged pot and decided to finally do something about our coasters.

Before

I traced the coasters onto the paper, glued them down using mod podge and then painted an additional layer of mod podge on top.

After

Simple!

Cheap Art is Better Than Cheap Wine

Believe me, I've tried them both...many times!

When trying to fill my house with art, I have had to think outside the frame box.  As much as John and I love art, our wallets don't permit us from buying every original piece we fall in love with. If we did that, we'd have to trade yummy wine for cheap wine and then we would be too sad to notice the art-filled walls. Instead, I've gotten creative as I've worked to keep our walls and apartment from feeling bare.


Top 10 Way to Fill Your Home with Art:

1.  Local artist shows are a great place to find some beautiful but cheap art. This cost $20 and I love it.

2. Original art.is a wonderful way to showcase your creativity and create something you're proud of for free.  The round mirror was a Goodwill find that I painted and then sketched this cute guy.  The silhouette is one I drew of our family to place in the cardboard frame I made.

3. Use a sheet of pretty paper (you can get this at Michaels for $.13), frame it, and voila!

4. We have lots of beautiful post cards and greeting cards framed in our gallery wall.  The yellow one was sent to me by my great grandmother and the purple one is something I picked up in a bookstore.

5. Get creative - we collect fortunes and decided to take some and display them by gluing them onto a photo mat. You could also frame magazine or book pages.

6. Old calendars are a great place to find cheap art! This was in a 2001 Monet calendar from college.

7. Nature is a perfect place to look for beautiful decorations and art. I have a framed four-leaf clover I found as a kid and sea shells and rocks from the project I wrote about here.

8. Displaying photos is a wonderful way to fill frames and remember great experiences.

9. Love notes. Enough said.

10. Wedding memorabilia is found here and there throughout our home. We paid an arm and a leg for the photographer and the special day so I want to ensure we display our photos!


Does your budget not allow for a gabillion frames? Simple! I've also used cardboard to make a frame (and then you can simply mod podge pretty paper over it) and used cardstock to make my own mats.

Creating and collecting art doesn't have to break the bank. You simply need to look around and get creative. After all, the silhouette of our family is the one of the pieces of art that makes John the most happy...and it was completely handmade, frame included.