One of a Kind Roundup

The One of a Kind Show is one of my favourite events of the Christmas season.  With 800 vendors it's a lot to take in - I highly recommend taking a break half way through (if not more often) for a tea or gelato and a sit down.  We forgot this step last year and were regretting it by the end.

Now that I've done a couple craft shows I had extra respect for the makers who spend 10 long days at the show and tried to remember what it's like to sit with your crafts for sale.  I couldn't talk to everyone of course (I was on a bit of a time budget) but the conversations I did have I tried to make meaningful.  I found it interesting that I was drawn to the artists who work in the same mediums I do - paper and fabric.   In some ways it would make more sense to look at jewelry, glass work and the like - things I have not the talent or desire to do.  But in other ways it makes perfect sense - I love paper and fabric: that's why I work with them, no wonder I love looking at them too!

While every artisan there has special items to offer I'd like to show you a few of my favourties.

I love the aprons from Pi'lo - there's a recipe for bread printed on the bib!

Vintage linens made into bread bags (and other delightful articles) from L'Atelier du Presbytere.

The most destinctive thing (in my opinion) in Honeybea's booth are these bum warmers.  Made from recycled sweaters I think they'd make a great addition to a Canadian winter wardrobe!

I love how the Woodlot brings nature into your house.  This ipod dock is such a nice way to blend nature & technology.

Flakes Paperie had lots of fun ideas like these holiday postal telegrams.  Who wouldn't love to get this in the mail?

Katie McLellan calls herself an eclectic media artist which describes her work perfectly!  I chose to show one of her kite people hangings here but there was so much more in her booth: stained glass ornaments, shoulder bags, mushroom puppets etc.

Krystal Speck is my favourite potter at the show!  The last few years I've made a point of collecting one of her pieces when I go.  It's a nice tradition I hope to continue.

I love this mussel necklace from Filou. Searching through tide pools has to be one of my favourite things and this pendant captures that feeling.

Paint chip placemats!  How fun!  Avril loreti has other paint chip items too, this booth was full of colour.

Stephen Haigh's work is amazing!  All inlaid wood and the attention to detail is incredible!

And my favourite visual artist, Joseph Sampson.  I don't have an example to show you but head over to his webpage and spend some time oogling his art.  Simply amazing!  Maybe it's a good thing I don't have the money to buy one of his pieces - I could never decide which one to take home!

The show is open through to Sunday December 4th and today (December 1st) is late night shopping day (I mean night).  The show will be open till 11 pm for you to go browse all that loveliness!  If you're in the Toronto area I highly recommend you go check it out!  There are also shows in Vancouver and Chicago if you can't make it to Toronto.

Christmas Crafternoon

Last weekend I hosted another Crafternoon - this one with a Christmas theme.

I set up various "stations" around the house - folding wish stars from glitter paper and trees from magazine pages, sewing Christmas trees from felt, and the most popular, Christmas card making!

This is how the table looked before everyone arrived.

Then people came and got creative.

And the table looked like this!

We also enjoyed some festive nibbles...

...to sustain our creative efforts.  I loved introducing non-crafters to the joy of folding, stamping and embossing.  If you've never tried embossing (the kind where you stamp an image, sprinkle on embossing powder & heat it), I highly recommend it! Watching the embossing powder set is like magic & it was so fun to see everyone's reaction to their first embossing experience!

All round it was a great afternoon.  We may need to do this again.  Soon.

Christmas Ornament #2

Finished the second ornament from my Walk in the Woods kit.  I love sewing these ornaments, wool felt is so lovely to work with and it's nice to have the pattern, instructions & supplies all ready and waiting.  The sequin & french knot snowflakes were fun to sew, I'm only disappointed there's only one ornament left!

Christmas Crafting Has Begun!

I know I'm not the only one who has begun Christmas crafts - I've seen them on blogs like A Spoonful of Sugar, According to Kelly and Sew, Mama, Sew!  I'm starting with a felt ornaments.  I bought a kit from Alicia Paulson last year but it arrived when I was in the midst of a plethora of Christmas crafts & I didn't get to sewing it.  So far I've got one ornament, the cottage, done. 

It was lots of fun - beads and felt and lots of different techniques which I like!  Except a slight slip up at the beginning (of course the back and the front need to be mirror images, not identical Laura!) it went along really well.  Now I'm working on the snowy tree which is almost done.  One of my favourite features of this ornament is the bit of wool roving coming out the chimneys. You can almost smell the wood fire that must be going on inside.

Decorating for Christmas

For my last post before Christmas I thought I'd show you my Christmas decorations.  First up, trees!

Normally I love traditional red, green & gold for Christmas but this multicolour tree is awesome too!

Then there are a couple of little trees, the green one has working lights!

More trees march along the top of a closet.  They are made from old magazines and this pattern.

My JOY embroidery and garland from IKEA add a festive touch to a picture display.

When I ran out of room to hang ornaments I stuffed them in bowls.  Rather effective I think!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Embroidery

I don't remember where the inspiration for this Christmas embroidery came from - maybe a card in a store - but I am so happy with how it turned out!  At first I thought I would put loops of ribbon in the top to make them into ornaments but I forgot to on the first one and in the end I like them better this way.  Nice to decorate something other then the tree and easier to keep the letters in order (really, how was I planning to hang letters in a row on a tree?).  After I finished "JOY" I liked it so much I made "NOEL" as well!

 

Would you like to make a set too?  Or maybe put it on your to do list for next year? Here are the patterns I used.  Print on 8 1/2 x 11 it will make letters just under 4 inches tall.

I'm not an embroiderer usually so I think I went about this the wrong way by cutting the letters out of felt first and then embroidering them.  I'm not going to give specific instructions, just some guidelines on what I did which you can follow or not!

• I used white wool felt for the letters, cut two of each letter you are making
• Embroider the leaves and berries on each letter, I just did it on one side but you could do both.
• I used green thread for the lazy daisy/backstitched leaves, red thread for the french knot berries and white thread to whipstitch or blanketstitch the pieces together
• Add a little stuffing to the letters as you go (much easier then trying to get in all those nooks and crannies at the end)

So you can see how I did the embroider I took a picture of the "O" up close.

Happy stitching!

Star Ornament Tutorial

This is one of the projects I came up with to use all the lovely chiyogami paper I got at the Paper Place.  I think it would look great with scrapbooking patterned paper, gift wrap or coloured foil so no worries if you don't have any chiyogami on hand!

What you need:

1. Paper (I'm using chiyogami here but use what you have)
2. Gold thread
3. Seed beads to compliment your paper (these are size 8/0 seed beads)
4. Star punch (or use scissors and cut your own)
5. Glue stick (not pictured, I use UHU)

Step 1:
Cut a piece of gold thread about 14" long.  Fold in half and tie a knot around the 3 1/2" mark.

Step 2: 
Thread 5 beads onto the doubled thread, slide up to the knot and tie another at the other end of the beads.  A little finicky but it doesn't need to be too tight to the beads.  Snip off the excess thread and set aside.

Step 3:
Punch (or cut) 5 stars from your paper and fold them all in half.

Step 4:
Glue the stars, wrong side together, to join them.  Stop before you join the final halves.  Hopefully the pictures makes sense.

Step 5:
Before gluing the last halves together lay the gold thread in the creases of the paper.  The fold in the thread will be the top of the ornament and the beads will be the bottom.  Line the knot up to be at the bottom of the star.  Then glue the last bit together and you're done!

Hang and enjoy!

 

Christmas Garland Again

I got a picture of my wish star garland in it's current home and thought I'd pop in to share it.  If you'd like to make your own take a look at the tutorial over at Folding Trees.

I had a couple days off this week and got shopping, baking, wrapping and card sending checked off the list!  After baking day I was definitely feeling overloaded on butter and sugar (you have to sample as you go... quality control and all that!) but now I'm good to go again.  Good thing too because there are boxes and boxes of treats to eat!  Wish I could share some with you all!  Since I haven't figured out how to send food via the internet I thought I'd share a couple tutorials instead.  Check back later this week!

Paper Christmas Projects

Have you seen the Make a Gift Bow from a Magazine Page tutorial over at How About Orange?  I saw it last year but ran out of time to try it out.  This year I started early and love how they turned out.  Next I'm going to try making some smaller ones for tiny gifts.  They're fun to make and you likely have all the supplies needed.  I highly suggest you try it out! (They make a very good "while watching TV" craft.)

These glitter stars come from the paper I bought back in October.  Dozens of wish stars later I have a garland!  I'm hoping to get a picture of it hanging up for you but it's been difficult to capture the glitter at a distance.  Any tips?

Christmas Cards - Quick Idea

I think this qualifies as a quick idea - mainly because you get 4 cards made at once!  And if I say so myself, they look pretty good!

What you need:

• tissue paper in red and green
• heavy white paper or cardstock
• gold paint pen (this isn't the one I have but very similar)
• watercolour paints and paint brush (optional)

What you do:

• Cut out flower shapes from the red tissue
• Cut out leaf shapes from the green tissue (make it faster by cutting 3 or 4 layers at once!)
• Glue shapes to white paper
• Outline all shapes and add detail (vein on leaf, dots on flowers) with gold paint pen
• Fill in the background with a light watercolour wash (optional)

Then cut your work of art into smaller rectangles to glue on blank cards, outline in gold pen and you're done!

 

I used a light green watercolour wash on these, mainly because I felt like painting, but I think I prefer the crispness of the plain white, unpainted background.  

Christmas Cards

I thought I'd share a couple of my latest card designs.  The one on the left was super simple to make: cut out a section of scrapbooking paper, stick it on a card and add little strips of fabric-ribbon-sticker to the top and bottom.  I'd made the fabric-ribbon-sticker beforehand by sticking a length of double sided tape to the backside of fabric and cutting the width in half with my rotary cutter.  The card on the right was made by cutting a tree shape out of glitter card stock (any guesses where I got my tree design from?) and adding some stick on red rhinestones.  I love using the blank value pack cards from Michael's.  It makes card making a lot more enjoyable (and faster) to have pre-cut cards with envelopes to match!

Design from a Doodle

Remember my Christmas doodles?  Here is something I made based on my doodle designs - a little felt ornament/hanger.  It was pretty quick to make: a little wool felt, some embroidery thread and beads to help put it all together.  I'm not sure if it'll go on a tree (it might be a bit long?), I may hang it on a doorknob or in a window somewhere.

Christmas Doodles

I love having time to sit down and craft but sometimes I find myself beginning an hour or two of crafting and not knowing where to start!  So one day I did some doodling while I was watching TV (and not knitting as is usual when the TV is on).  It was fun to get out the coloured markers without a particular aim in mind.  Some of these doodles have inspired craft projects, come by tomorrow and I'll be showing off the first one!

P.S.  How do you organize your craft time?

Christmas Circles

Before I get going on projects with my new paper I thought I'd show you some of the other paper things I've been working on.  A few weekends ago I started work on Christmas cards.  This year I wanted to get away from my standard stamped-image-on-square-on-coloured-square-on-card style so I started by punching out circles in two sizes.  Most of this paper is scrapbooking paper but there is also some used gift wrap in there.

After doing all the punching I felt I had to organize things.

And then I got down to glueing.  These are some of the designs I came up with.

How about you, are you a start Christmas early person or a wait a minute, Halloween isn't even over yet type?  As you have probably guessed I fall in the first category!