Handmade Ornaments

 A Little Christmas Nostalgia

So, doesn't everybody want a little nostalgia at Christmas time.  I love looking at the the ornaments that either people have made or bought for me.  But the best ones of all are the ornaments that I have that I had from when I was a kid.  The one above was made out of a Jet Dry dishwasher detergent cup from the early 70's.  This just goes to show you that you can make an ornament out of just about anything.  All my brother had me do is wrap it in aluminum foil and put some metallic snowflake stickers on it.  Another one has a picture from an old Christmas card in it.

Sorry for the blur

So, this is another ornament that I made with my kids when they were smaller and it's a great way to keep them busy.  You could have them give them away to grandparents or aunts and uncles or maybe even have them decorate their own small tree.

All you need is some pipe cleaners...White usually works the best but you can use whatever color
you want.  You also need some of these beads...they are called "tri-beads"  I use the transparent ones..I think they looks nicer and they nest together...All you do is have them thread them onto a pipe cleaner and then shape it into whatever shape you want.  Either a wreath or candy cane or whatever.

Be Creative and have fun!!  :-)

Felt Coasters

This idea actually started because of people leaving their McDonald's cups and other glasses on my dinning room table and I had marks all over because of the condensation  coming off the cup and puddling up on my table....Not Good!!!

So, I decided to give my daughter a task of making some coasters.  

(as you can see she is not quite finished with all of them yet...)

Years ago my oldest daughter had made some trivets using felt and layering them...(circles).  I decided to pick up where she left off and try to make coasters the same way.

I told my daughter the shape I wanted her to use and we picked out the color pallet that we were going to go with....my idea was "oceany" kind of colors.

She made a pattern out of cardstock.  They are 5", 4", 3" &  2" squares.

And then choosing what colors she wanted to go together and cutting the sizes accordingly.

Start by sewing the 4" square to the 5" and then keep stacking them.  

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(Below is our dog....)

They were sewn together using a large running stitch around them.  If you wanted to use a matching color to each piece of felt, you could do that, so that your stitches wouldn't be seen.

As you'll notice they are all the same colors, but not put in the same order.

A little designs was put in the middle of each one.  

These were done free hand.

She sewed the little details on, but I think you could also glue them on 

with Aileen's tacky glue

(I was also trying to figure out how to put a piece of cork on the bottom just to give some extra "insurance" that it wouldn't get water on the table.but I'm hopeful that all the layers of felt with stop the drips.)

So I thank my Amy girl for doing these for me and hopefully I won't have white water marks on my table anymore.  :-)

Lunch Bag Scrapbook

 This is a fun craft to do with your kids and they really have a good time doing it.  Some other options for boys could be pictures of bugs that they think are interesting or their favorite sports players.

Do an album for a friend of pictures of them or leave bland spots for them to insert their own pics.

What's your hobby?  Make an album of that.  Whatever it ends up being....Have fun!