Busy, Busy, Busy

From the looks of the date on our last post, you can see we have been busy, busy, busy getting ready for weddings, shows, and other summer time events. I love that school has started again because it gives me a few hours in the day to work on things.

 I love to look at magazines for ideas and I save them to leaf through the pages again and again. This magazine is from March 2012, and there was an article about a farm in Illinois that belongs to Polly Hood. I loved how she decorated and as part of the article she showed us how to make a paper garland. I marked the page thinking it would be fun to make one some day, then added the magazine to my pile to get back to later. 

Well, here we are, later, much later, and I was leafing through it again and reminded of the paper garland I wanted to make. No time like the present.

 You only need some twine, old book pages and some scissors. You can really use any book pages but I have boxes of older ones for various crafts so I dug out a couple that had the pages the patina I wanted.

You have to remove the pages from the binding, which is easy enough, and goes quickly if you are watching a show you are interested in. :)

Next you fold the pages in half (not a hard fold) just enough to be able to cut about a 1 inch slit in the middle of the page. You can cut several pages at one time.

Next, you gently crinkle each page, kind of gently gobble it, but not tightly, and thread it onto your twine, that you have cut to the length of the garland you want plus about an extra foot to make a loop on each end. Loop the first end, string the pages onto the twine and gently guide them to the looped end. Keep going until your twine is filled with pages.

 For a 6 foot garland I used about 500 pages. When you get to the end with about 6 inches of twine left, make the second loop. You will use the loops to secure your garland to wherever you are going to hang it. I wanted mine for the fireplace mantle. We currently live in a rental so we are limited in what we can do. I want to make a bigger mantle, and paint the bricks, but can't so decided to dress it up with this garland, and I love it.

So easy and such fabulous results. If you don't want to make one yourself, I will have a couple for sale at Junk Barn Girls Sale in Stanfield the end of September, and at Shabulous in Cove Oct. 5th. I love getting my craft on!

Second Annual Shabulous Show

Shabulous is back! 

Our second annual fall Shabulous Show is Saturday Oct. 5th, 2013. It's not too late to sign up to be a vendor or to show off your vintage trailer.

See you there!

Pretty Pots

I have been busy catching up on my scrapbooking since the start of the new year.  I am happy to report I completed 2010 and 2011.  I haven't been crafting as much as I'd like, as a result.  I do spend much time on pinterest looking at crafting ideas and I saw this one recently.  I have done this project in the past.  My other sister (Suci) doesn't think she is crafty.  In fact quilting is her speciality and she is awesome at that but she did decoupage on terra cotta pots many years ago.  She used paper napkins. I searched on ebay for some pretty ones and got them in the mail this week.

I painted the inside and the top edge.

Tearing napkins and gluing is the next step.



Layer on the mod podge.

They are all lined up to dry.

Pretty pots!

Happy Valentines Day

I really do love old postcards.  I collect them for all the holidays.  Pinterest is a nice source for seeing a lot of cards all in one place.  Here's a pretty one I found today so I am sharing it with you.

I hope you have all had a lovely day.

Fancy

I had a very nice day sitting down in my Shabby Shack yesterday.  The weather was warm for early February.  I had my Valentine's Day Sale and it went very well.  It was fun setting up and decorating with a new theme for a little change of pace.  I looked through a stack of magazines I hadn't gotten to yet. I watched a couple movies on my kindle.  I listened to some good music.  It was a nice day.

The dress form usually wears aprons but I had a couple old slips so I fancied her up a bit.

They just don't make slips like they used to.

Memory Box

I had time on my hands today so I finally got my memory shelf put back together.  It was fun looking at everything up close again and thinking of each item and where it came from.  I also see I have some holes yet to fill.  Time for some new adventures.

Here's how it's been sitting since November.

I found a casualty in the pile.  One of my favorite things on the shelf.  I suppose I'll have to go to Disneyland to pick me up another one.

Each section up close.  I already added in a few more items.  I have several of these printer drawers.  I've got one for each of the kids and their memories.  Then I have a couple others I want to use for items from the parents and grandparents on both sides of the family.  I should get busy and get them together so I can enjoy them like I do this one.

How many days 'til Christmas?

I just finished my first Christmas craft for next year.  Is that weird?

I started noticing these at sales a few years back and began picking them up.  For some reason the bases looked like a fancy victorian Christmas tree stand.  I had in mind I could figure out a way to make trees.  Last year I tried a couple kinds of ribbon but wasn't happy with how they turned out.

See...tree stand.

I saw an idea on pinterest.  Paper trees. Although I think theirs were on dowels.  I got busy and cut out squares of dictionary pages in 4 sizes.

And here we have the finished product.  Merry Christmas!