A Major Award

Mr. Parker: It's a Major Award!
Swede : Shucks, I wouldn't know that. It looks like a lamp.
Mr. Parker : What is a lamp, you nincompoop? It's a Major Award. I won it!
Swede : Damn, hell, you say won it?
Mr. Parker : Yeah, mind power, Swede; mind power.

On Saturday night we went to a friend's Second Annual Ugly Sweater party. Last year, I helped her host and these were our awesome entries:

This year, a different friend helped host the party and they chose the holiday classic movie "A Christmas Story" as the theme. Watching that movie on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day is one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and I couldn't help think of these funny costumes I ran across at Halloween:

I decided that if I could find a yellow dress or skirt at the thrift store, I'd go as the leg lamp instead of wearing an ugly sweater, as much as I love me a heinous sweater. I got lucky and on one of my regular vintage-Christmas-seeking thrift runs, I found a large mustardy-gold knit skirt. Two coat hangers, two yards of black fringe and a hot glue gun later, and I had this:

I wore black fishnet stockings and black patent pumps, of course! It wasn't an exact match to the other costume, but you definitely got the effect and everyone at the party knew exactly what I was supposed to be! If I'd had more time last week, I would have thrifted a cardigan so that The Mister could have dressed as Ralphie's Old Man and he could have legitimately rubbed his hands up and down my leg all night. :D

I even won a Major Award for Most Creative costume. And in a funny fluke, Quin won a random drawing for the big door prize: an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle and a box of BBs!

It was such a fun party--we had an "Oh, Fuuuuuddddggge" fudge-making contest (my entry was fudge with bacon on top), darts in the basement (the "you'll shoot your eye out" activity) and a game called "I triple-dog dare you" involving sticking your tongue to pieces of frozen metal tubing. I love a theme party, and this one was no exception. I hope I can talk them into hosting it next year too! I think I'll hang onto my lamp costume, just in case. ;)

Weekend Junk Finds: Vintage Christmas

Now, to be honest--I didn't find this stuff this past weekend. Another weekend, yes, but this weekend I was too busy for junking! Saturday night I had some friends come over to craft and enjoy brownie & peppermint ice cream sundaes, which meant that I spent the entire day finally getting the tree and the rest of the house decorated. It took literally hours and started to feel like work rather than pleasure at about Hour 4, but the upside is that my house looks beautiful and at least I got it all done in one day! Usually, I have the mess and Christmas boxes strewn about for half a week while I decide, a little at a time, where everything will go. This year I had a deadline, so it forced me to make quicker decisions and just get it done!

I do love opening up my boxes and reacquainting myself with all of my pretties, and adding each year's thrifted finds to the mix. I've been hitting the thrifts regularly, searching for treasures! Here are a few things I've found this year:

Lots of pretty, bright ornaments in primary colors.

Lovely pale pinks and aquas too, as well as a vintage green swirly plate.

A bagful of random Christmas stuff that turned out to be much better than it looked on first glance! There's a plastic Shiny Brite nativity, a handful of sugared bells, a few spun heads, a tiny Christmas stocking, a hard plastic angel, and a few yards of really neat colored aluminum garland, which is now residing on my Christmas tree!

Handmade jeweled ornaments, the second such set that I've found. The base is satin ball ornaments, and then somebody used straight pins to affix ribbon, sequins, and pieces of broken costume jewelry to the balls. I found a set like this last year as well, so it must have been a common craft. I'm generally in the "more is better" camp when it comes to vintage Christmas, but even these are over the line for me. So thirty minutes later I had this:

 A nice little pile of vintage sequins, pearls and jewels to repurpose in my crafting. It did give me pause to wonder what crafts I've made that will show up in a thrift store in 30 years, that someone might buy and take apart to use for scraps!

Did you do anything fun and festive this weekend?

PS--I'm linking up with Thrift Share Monday over at Apron Thrift Girl!

Red and white striped straw wreath

When I flew to Arizona last month for The Mister's Ironman race, the woman sitting behind me on the airplane was looking at the December Women's Day magazine with this cover, which caught my eye:

And then what I realized that the darling wreath was made of red and white striped straws, I practically snatched it out of her hands to get a closer look! Then I spent the rest of our vacation searching for a copy of the magazine of my own, but didn't find one until we were at the airport for our return flight to Colorado!

On Wednesday, even though the decorations weren't out, I still have loads of gifts to buy and the tree is laying in pieces in the front room, I decided I was making that darn wreath! I already had the straws, purchased by the gross from Orson Gygi this summer. I bought them in-store, but they are definitely the most economical source from whom to buy the straws that I've seen yet. They also carry blue and gray striped straws.

If you don't have the December Women's Day magazine, you can find the instructions for this wreath and 5 other cute wreaths here. I was able to find the 6" flat floral and craft ring at Michael's in the aisle with the other wreath forms and floral wires. I simply used a piece of white computer paper glued it onto the form with a glue stick. From there, I proceeded following the instructions as written.

When I got to the final ring, I very carefully applied just a small amount of glue to each straw before sticking it down. I wanted to make sure that no excess hot glue would squeeze out and show since it was the top layer, but for the previous two rings, I just put the glue down and then placed the straw on top of it.

It really was easy, and I love how cheery it turned out! It took me almost two hours to mark and cut all the straws, then glue them one at a time, but the time went quickly since I was catching up on the final two installments of "Downton Abbey."

And now I have a bowl of leftover straw bits to repurpose--you had better believe I'm not just throwing those away! I have some red beads and white yarn and I think I'll have Maren make a garland with those and the straw pieces.

This was such a fun project! I know those striped paper straws come in all sorts of colors, and you could make a wreath out of any of them--black and orange and gray for Halloween would be neat, pink for a baby or bridal shower, or rainbow colors would be really fun as well! And if you can't find the striped straws, check out this clever paper 'pixie stick' sunburst wreath at Sassy Style Redesign.

Vintage Christmas books by Susan Waggoner

There's the $1 store, and then there's the $100 store. You may know it by another name: Costco. I'll tell you, I cannot seem to get out of that store without dropping one hundred bones on something or other, and it's usually not anything very interesting: diapers, wipes, TP, OJ, string cheese, butter. Knowing how easy it is to part with Benjamins, I usually steer clear of the books and movies section of the store to keep temptation at bay. This last trip, I was not so successful and it took me about 5 seconds to put these three books in my cart.

Each one was $11.99, which is a bit lower than the Amazon price. All three books are by the same author, Susan Waggoner, who has written several books with cute vintage illustrations on the cover. Waggoner has four vintage Christmas books:

Christmas Memories: Gifts, Activities, Fads and Fancies 1920s-1960s
 

It's a Wonderful Christmas: The Best of the Holidays 1940-1965

Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas: Crafts, Decorating Tips and Recipes, 1920s-1960s

Under the Tree: The Toys and Treats That Made Christmas Special, 1930-1970

Costco only had the first three on the list, but I've seen the last one in the stores. I've made it through It's a Wonderful Christmas, and am reading about the 1930s in Christmas Memories. So far there is a little bit of overlap of information between the two books, but not so much that I wish I'd only bought one or the other--I'll update when I finish Christmas Memories. The Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas book is new for this year, and it contains craft instructions in addition to the historical information. I haven't read that one yet either, so I'll come back and add a review when I finish.

In all, they're cute books; easy to read and they have good information about the history of some Christmas traditions we enjoy today (such as decorated store windows, sending Christmas cards, etc.) I'd definitely recommend them if you are a fan of vintage Christmas style!

Nutter Butter Christmas treats

Three cute, easy Christmas treats you can make using Nutter Butter cookies and dipping chocolate:

Chocolate-dipped reindeer with pretzel antlers! From laceyreimann.com, but I can't seem to find the original source post on that website.

http://myprettypurse.blogspot.com/2009/01/snowman-cookies.html

Snowmen sporting M&M buttons and TicTac noses. From My Pretty Purse.

Santas with white chocolate beards and red sugar hats. Love the white chocolate chip used as a pom-pom! From Penguin Stamper, via Brown Paper Packages.

I do believe I'll be putting Nutter Butters on the ol' grocery list this week!

Yardstick Christmas tree

Still no Christmas tree up around here--in fact, the Thanksgiving junk is STILL up! Ack. I brought the bin up from the basement and I started taking things down, but just haven't managed to devote the measly hour it will take to get it all done. The high temperature for today is forecast to be a lovely 10 degrees above zero, so I think it will be an ideal day for staying inside and getting rid of the turkeys and pilgrims once and for all! It's time to get Shiny & Brite all up in here!

In the meantime, I do have one small tree displayed:

I bought this darling yardstick tree at a craft fair from the girls who run this Etsy shop. The truth is, I have enough vintage yardsticks saved up in my garage that I could make a forest of my own trees, but the instant gratification of this one won out over my DIY sensibilities.

The star on the top is made from yardsticks broken in half down the width. I think it would also be cute to make a star out of folding ruler pieces. I have a couple that my kids have broken that would be perfect, in fact.

I love projects made from yardsticks! I bought a cute frame in Arizona made from a blue yardstick that I can't wait to put up in Porter's bedroom, and I bought an awesome $3 table at the thrift store this summer that's just begging for a yardstick makeover (which will have to wait until it's more than 10 degrees out). I even have a whole Pinterest board devoted to things made from yardsticks and rulers.

What's the coolest repurposing craft that you've seen using old rulers and yardsticks?

Vintage Christmas wrapping paper Scrap Packs

I've been collecting vintage Christmas wrapping paper for a few years now, and this year I finally did something with all of it!

I've put together several Scrap Packs that I think would be great for vintage-style Christmas crafting, whether it's card-making or scrapbooking or simply making your own cute gift tags.

 There are all kinds of patterns and prints. Jolly Santas, festive bells,

 dancing couples, snowy villages, glowing candles,

beautiful embossed foils, and more. Most of them are in traditional reds, greens, golds and silvers,

but there is one bundle with pinks and aquas

And one with greens and blues. Each Scrap Pack has 20 pieces of paper, ranging in size from 4" x 6" to 20" x 30" depending on the bundle. Some of the pieces are big enough to wrap a small gift, and some are best suited for cutting up and crafting.

In addition to the Scrap Packs, I have some full-size sheets of paper for sale as well. This grouping has really non-traditional colors of black, gold, orange and red.

This one is gold, green, aqua and purple.

I think this one might be my favorite, though--one sheet decorated with a snowy village, and one sheet decorated with darling little leaping deer!

These and more are all available right now in my Etsy shop!

More Ornament wreaths

May I present vintage ornament wreaths no. 2

and 3:

 I was able to dig into my stash come up with enough pink ornaments to squeeze out a third wreath, though I had to mix them with silver to have enough for the whole thing.

I love them! I think I'll sell at least two of them next year, as I don't really need three pink ornament wreaths in my house (which has NO pink in it other than Maren's bedroom). Now I just need to find a way to keep them safely stored until next year--these things are fragile!

Vintage ornament wreath #1

Confession #1: my Christmas tree is still up and decorated, and about half of my other Christmas decorations are still out. It's now the middle of January.

Confession #2: I don't even care!

I've never before left my Christmas decorations up so late but they're not bugging me, so I've ignored them. Part of the reason I haven't boxed them up is that I'm still doing Christmas crafts, so there are some things that I can't put away because I'm using them! All of my boxes have to fit neatly into a small space so I have to have them all ready to go and put them all in at once to make it work--it's like Christmas box Tetris.

Last night I made my first vintage ornament wreath. I've wanted to make one since, well, since I started collecting vintage ornaments about six years ago. But as with the other crafts I've shown this week, December gets crazy for me (schedule-wise and mentally) so I can't seem to get one done before the holiday. Now I'm early for next year!

I didn't hit the post-Christmas sales at Target this year because 1) I don't need anything and am trying to declutter and 2) I was lazy. :) But I did have to go to Target last week for something else and decided to wander by the Christmas aisle to see if anything was left. It was already 90% off so pickins' were slim, but I did find some colored tinsel wreaths in silver, pink, blue and green. Original price was $2.50, so I figured I couldn't go too wrong for a quarter apiece and bought the silver and the three pinks that were left on the shelf.

I used one of the pink wreaths as my base and glued on the outside ring of larger solid colored ornaments first, then filled in the middle with the fancy stuff. I wondered if maybe I ought to use a different color than my precious pink vintage beauties in case I messed up my first attempt, but luckily it worked out and I couldn't be more pleased with the final product!

I still have two pink wreaths and a silver left, which is a good thing because now I'm addicted! I've already started a pink and turquoise wreath, and I'm trying to decide what color scheme to use on the silver. I bent the remaining pink wreath into a heart shape and I'm going to see if I can't come up with something for Valentine's Day. I'll have used up all of my pink ornaments though, so that one will have to be mostly red and perhaps silver.

I'm giving myself one more week to get the Christmas crafting wrapped up and put away--just in time for all of the Valentine's decorations to come out! Guess I don't have to worry about that whole post-Christmas emptiness in my decor, right?

More Christmas crafting: vintage-style hanging glass bead ornaments

Still working on the post- (or pre-, depending how you look at it) Christmas crafting. This project was easy, I just didn't ever have the time to sit down and actually do it before Christmas!

Earlier this summer I bought this vintage Christmas wreath-thingy (I really don't know what to call it) at an estate sale. It's made of glass beads and the top is shaped into a wreath, with four long dangles hanging down, and each long dangle has a small glass ornament at the bottom.

When I purchased it, two of the green ornaments were broken, but I was sure that I had something in my stash that I could use to replace them. While I was doing the repairs, I realized how simple the construction was and thought maybe I'd try to make one myself.

The supplies were minimal: glass beads in two sizes, feather-tree size ornaments for the dangles, two foil leaves and a piece of ribbon. I didn't have any vintage foil leaves in the right shape, but I did have some very similar silver holly leaves made by a scrapbooking company called Prima. I used Zip Dry glue to adhere a length of thin floral wire to the back of each one.

A word about the mercury glass beads: finding strands of these is one of my top 10, possibly even top 5 thrills while junking. I LOVE them! I've found about a dozen strands over the past few years, but here's the thing--I've never really done anything with them. They don't display well on aluminum Christmas trees, and I plum forgot to put any on my green tree this year. I could put them in a big jar like beautiful glass bead spaghetti, but I just don't have a place for that and they get tangled really easily. When I decided to attempt to make this ornament, that was the push I needed to finally DO something with them. I cut apart the strands, removed all of the broken bits and now I have a jar full of glass beads that I can actually use. Sometimes the thought of using my vintage (and therefore difficult to replace) treasures is scary, but I have never regretted it when I actually do!

The construction of the ornament is simple. I don't have photos of all the steps because it was late at night and I made it up as I went along. The colors of my ornaments were constrained by the fact that I only have a few of the larger size strands of beads needed to make the wreath: red, turquoise and royal blue. My first attempt was the royal blue. Using the green ornament as my size guide, I cut a piece of wire roughly the same size as wreath and strung on blue beads, then twisted the ends to secure.

Next, I made the little bead clusters that sit in front of the leaves. I can make a tutorial for these if anyone is interested--leave a comment and let me know! I didn't have any small blue beads for this part so I improvised and used red. Then I twisted the tails of the clusters and the wires of the leaves together. One thing I wish I'd done differently is make the wreath portion bigger. The blue beads were smaller than the green beads, but the leaves I used were larger than the originals, so I think the proportion is a bit off.

The original dangles were strung on heavy thread or string, so I used three strands of embroidery floss to make mine. I again used the original as a size guide and strung the same number of beads. When I got to the bottom, I looped through the wire of the ornament, then went back through the beads again and out the top to make each dangle. When I had all four completed, I pulled the threads through a large silver bead and tied the threads in a knot. Here again I think the proportion is just a bit off: the silver beads I used were just slightly larger than the originals, and using the same number as the original resulted in longer strands. I used two red balls to bring in the color from the clusters, but I don't know if I like how it looks and I may remove those in favor of more blue.

To put it all together, I tied the threads around the bottom of the wreath (where the wires were twisted), cut the threads close to the knot and applied a drop of glue to keep the knot from coming loose. Next I twisted the wire from the leaves/clusters around the same place. Then I made a small bow, twisted a piece of wire around the middle and attached another glass bead, then twisted the ends around the same place as the leaves. It's not as clean on the back as I'd like, but honestly the original is a bit messy in that area as well.

I liked the next ones I made better, because I figured out my proportion problems so I think they look more balanced. I made the red one with gold dangles because of the gold leaves.

My favorite is definitely the turquoise one! I wish the holly leaves were smaller, but I worked with what I had and I made the bow out of wider ribbon to try to balance them.

I'm not sure what I'll do with these--perhaps they'll end up in my etsy shop next year. I also think it would be interesting to make a smaller version, better sized to be an actual Christmas tree ornament, using some of my really tiny feather tree ornaments at the bottom of the dangles. I'm not sure what I'd use for the leaves, but I have 10 months to figure something out!

Muffin Tin Advent Calendar

This past weekend I spent working on crafty stuff--Christmas crafts, to be precise. Now, you might think that I'm about three weeks late, but I prefer to think of myself as 50 weeks early for next Christmas!

One of the projects that I did was this muffin tin advent calendar. I've wanted to make a cookie sheet advent calendar for years, ever since I first saw Teresa McFayden's fabulous creation years ago. Every year I'd plan to make one, and then every year it would be December 1 before I knew it and too late. 2010 was no exception, but this year Teresa had a new advent calendar in the Christmas issue of Inspired Ideas (the same e-magazine where I got the inspiration to make my glittery cookie cutter ornaments). Teresa's article is on pages 40-44 if you want to go check it out.

I bought my Wilton mini muffin tin at JoAnn's so that I could use a 40% off coupon, but Wilton pans frequently go on sale both there and Michael's as well. I haven't painted it or drilled the holes in the top yet, but that task may have to wait until I pull it out next year--though I ought to just get it done now, right?

I don't have the 2 1/2" or 2 5/8" scalloped circle punch that Teresa suggested, but I do have one that is 2 3/8" from Stampin' Up. It fits, but just barely covers the muffin wells, so I knew that attaching magnets to the back of cardstock circles probably wouldn't work well. I opted for another method: I purchased magnetic sheets at JoAnn's (with a coupon, of course! I'm too cheap to pay full price for anything there) and because they're thin, was able to use my punch to cut out 24 circles. I also punched scalloped circles out of some of my favorite hoarded Daisy D's vintage Christmas scrapbook paper, and ran them through my Xyron to apply adhesive to the backs. Then I simply applied one scrapbook paper circle to the top of each magnetic circle.

The most fun part of the project was definitely picking through all of my little bits o' junk to make all of the numbers. I used stuff from my scrapbooking stash (brads, metal numbers, rub-ons, chipboard, stickers, tags, metal shapes) and vintage junk as well (a domino, a checker, bingo numbers, game card, milk bottle cap, buttons, tickets, price signs). I glued it all together with my favorite Zip Dry craft glue, and I accented some of the numbers with another of my favorite crafting products, Stickles glitter glue.

If I didn't think the candy would go bad (and possibly attract bugs), I'd go ahead and fill the wells now so it would be all ready to go on December 1, 2011 when I pull it out of the box! I'm glad to finally get this project done after literally years of having it on my mind (another one out of my system)!