Inspiration struck this weekend and so there's more than a wee bit of Halloween crafting going on around here!
I love seeing all my pretties in one place. It was such fun to go through my stash and pull out trinkets and treasures to match. This is when being a pack rat comes in handy. :)

It feels good to be creative again after being away and being too busy. I love when my head is swimming with ideas and images and I wake up in the morning with fresh ideas. Although I've dabbled in many craft mediums, paper, scissors and glue will always be my first and best loves.

Hooray for Autumn!

Another (soldering) iron in the fire

For Christmas 2007 I hoped for and received a soldering iron and supplies. I've wanted to learn to solder for a while, ever since I first became acquainted with the work of the fabulous Miss Sally Jean. Despite my eagerness to learn, I wasn't brave enough to break out my supplies until just a few weeks ago. Given my propensity for klutziness, I was afraid I'd somehow singe my hair off or burn a hole in my carpet with the extremely hot soldering iron. I finally screwed up my courage, plugged in my cute pink iron and went to work.

What I found out is that soldering is hard. Really hard! My first piece was so bad that I didn't even take a picture, although I will keep it because someday when I finally get good at this, I can look back at where I started.

For Lucy or anyone else who wants to try their hand at soldering, the hardest thing is to resist the temptation to overwork the solder. Every time I'd think I'd just 'touch up' one little area, I ended up making it worse and then having to fix everything. I know that like everything, getting good at this is just a matter of practice, but darn it--I want to be good now, on the first try! Hmmph!

And because I'm shameless, here's a photo of my my third charm. After I took this photo I used my tiny file to smooth the bumps and rubbed some solder polish on it and though it does look better, I've a long way to go! Sally Jean need not worry about competition from me anytime soon.

Get a Job! (Jar)

I seem to have developed a problem getting things done around here. Shocking, no? I'm guessing it has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the 130+ blogs in my Bloglines. Nope, nothing at all.

Ahem. So I saw this idea for a Job Jar somewhere and I've decided to give it a try and see if it improves my productivity on the housework front. I started out by making a list of household chores that take about 15 minutes. These are things that I don't need to be doing every day (like loading the dishwasher or laundry), but rather things that I tend to let pile up and never get around to until I freak out about how dirty my house is and then feel all overwhelmed and just go read more blogs. I'm talking ironing, cleaning the baseboards, dusting, cleaning window blinds, weeding, etc. Stuff that needs to get done but doesn't have to be done every single day. My list ended up at about 25 items.

Next, I made a cute label for my jar. Naturally, I used a 1950s housewife image (this is Vacuuming in High Heels and Pearls, after all) and used a retro-style font. I made the label to fit on the side of this neat vintage jar I picked up at a yard sale earlier this summer. The jar was lidless anyway so I tied some fun cherry-print ribbon around the top and added a darling cherry charm because who says chores can't be cute?

For the jobs, I went through my patterned paper stash and picked out a bunch of red scraps. I cut them into rectangles roughly 1" by 3" though I didn't actually measure, just eyeballed it. I am a pack rat and paper hoarder so I had plenty of cute scraps to choose from. I wrote each chore on a slip of paper and then used a pair of scissors to curl the paper as you would curling ribbon. If that sounds like a good way to cut your fingers off, you can just roll them around a pencil or marker. Drop them in the jar, and that's it! I like that it's easy for me to add or subtract jobs as I see fit or as the seasons change. Maybe I need to include jobs like "Go eat a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich" or "go check Two Peas NSBR to see the latest drama." Those will get done for sure!

My plan is that during the day when I get sucked in by the internets (which is often, I shamefully admit) that I can tear myself away and go be productive for at least 15 minutes at a time, which will hopefully motivate me to do even more. This way things will get done but I don't have to feel like all I ever do around here is clean. I'll let you know how it works. And now, I do believe it's time to go pick a job out of the jar!

A few weeks ago I blogged about a sweet friend who lent me her absolutely darling curtains to hang in my kitchen. Rachel is a dear person and I wanted to make her a little something fun to thank her. I had just read about these charming rickrack dahlias and since Rachel and I share an obsessive love for rickrack, I tried my hand at making a few.

Rachel loves pink, black and white so I chose those colors from my considerable stash of rickrack. I put pin backs on them so she can pin them to her bag or whatever.

I also made her a little stationery set:


I used a PSX template to make the little folder--I've loved that template and have used it over and over. Before I folded it, I sprayed the cardstock with spray adhesive and lightly pressed a vintage pattern piece to it, intentionally keeping the folds and ripples. The button and hook/eye cards were from my stash, but the spool of thread and the ruler on the side are from a great little K & Company packet I picked up at Michael's. And it's hard to see in the photo, but for the tie I used some cute twill ribbon printed to look like a measuring tape.

Inside are a set of cards made from the images on vintage patterns:

Easy stuff, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Hope she likes it!

A "Banner" day

When I saw the banner project featured in last year's July Country Living magazine, it took me about five seconds before I ran for my purse and jumped in the car to head to the craft store for supplies--I loved it THAT much! And since I knew I would be visiting my mom over the Fourth of July, we decided to have a fun little joint crafting session and make these adorable crepe paper rosette banners.Well. When's the last time you made a craft that elicited swear words? I can answer accurately: last July. What we had was a fun joint crafting session all right, however it turned out to be not-so-little. The editors at Country Living need to employ the services of a technical writer or at the very least check out one of the myriad paper-crafting magazines in the market and learn how to write coherent, specific, step-by-step instructions that don't leave your readers confused and foul-mouthed after trying to guess at what they're supposed to be doing.


Though we worked on them for several days, neither of us actually finished our banner. I know I was so frustrated when I got home that I stuffed the pieces in a box and figured I'd just deal with them next year. Well, next year arrived a few weeks ago when I dug out my box of patriotic decorations and found my rosettes waiting patiently. A year away from them definitely gave me fresh inspiration and a willingness to tackle them again. The last hurdle to getting them done was figuring out a way to hang the rosettes, a subject about which the magazine article was again maddeningly vague. I finally figured out something that would work and although it wasn't perfect (colored crepe paper+liquid glue=not a good idea, something I clearly repressed from last July) for this project my mantra has become "DONE is better than Perfect!" I got the banner finished and hung in no time, so now I can share it with you!

The original article called for hanging the rosettes from a chain made of sparkly pipe-cleaners. I have far better things to do with my time, and I had a much better option: this cute Americana tissue-paper garland by Bethany Lowe. Much easier and much cuter, in my opinion. I hung up the whole thing with push pins (no one is tall enough to see the holes I left in the wall) and to cover up the visible pins on the ends, I sewed up a few little rosettes using some red/white/blue striped crepe paper streamers.

I quite like the banner now and I'm glad I made it, even though it was a headache-and-a-half! Mostly I'm just glad it's DONE! (as always, you can click on all pictures to enlarge them.)

If your name is Angie S. you should probably skip this post

You may recall that about a month ago, I hosted a Pink baby shower here at my home. One of the decorations I made for the shower were these fun pink glittery rosettes that we poked in the top of the cupcakes. I used pink crepe paper, silver glitter on the edges, silver glittered chipboard letters and pretty pink scrapbook paper to make them and then glued skewers onto the backs.

Well, I couldn't let them go to waste, as cute as they turned out! I used a pair of wire cutters and broke off the skewers. I did have to sand one down a smidge so it would be hidden but then I turned them into this:

This is a little giftie for the friend for whom we gave the shower. Her sweet baby's room is done in pink & brown so I used some fun patterned paper in those colors from my stash. I decorated the pennants with beautiful German pink foil dresden borders from here, and pink tissue fringe from here. I cut some pom-poms off of some pink pom-pom fringe that I think I received in a swap and hot glued those to the points. I used hot glue to attach the rosettes to the pennants and tied it all together with pretty satin ribbon that I received in another swap.

It was such fun to make, and really quite easy! The hardest part was the the rosettes, and those were already finished and out of the way. I used some scrap chipboard and just guessed on the size of triangle to make for the pennants. I've wanted to make a banner like this ever since I saw some at Silver Bella last November but there has always been another project in the way. I do hope the recipient likes it! Here are some closeups--click the photos to enlarge them.
One other little crafty project before I go:


These were little treats for the ladies I visit teach. I have been collecting the blue glass bottles--I am physically unable to pass them up, it seems--but I realized that I really do have too many right now. I found a recipe for "Seaside Brownie Mix" in one of my Gooseberry Patch cookbooks and just layered it in the jars. I printed the instructions on sand-colored paper and cut them out with my giant scalloped circle punch, then tied them to the bottles with some twill tape. I wish I'd had a few sea shells to tie around the necks of the bottles but I was trying to use what I had. Hope the brownies are yummy!

And now, I have to go. I am leaving at some point today to drive 4 hours to visit my grandparents and I still haven't packed. And it's oh, almost 1 p.m. I've just had too much that I needed to get done today, plus for some stupid reason I am exhausted and have no energy so I'm finding it difficult to get motivated. But really--I need to GET MOVING! I will post the Cupcake Giveaway winner from the road but otherwise, I'll be back on Monday!

Weekend craftiness

I had occasion this weekend to sit and listen to the TV for four 2-hour periods, and it's times like those that I wish I knew how to knit or crochet. I just don't do very well with sitting still and not working--it drives me nuts! I went looking for a few projects I could work on while still listening and found this, my last unfinished project left over from Silver Bella in November. It only needed a little bit of work and now it is finished and I can finally wear it!


This was the Bella's Bracelet class I took from Teresa McFayden. It was a class I was so excited to take but when the day came, I was all thumbs and could barely manage to thread my needle, let alone sew gorgeous creamy vintage velvet ribbon into a flower. Sewing the lace to the brown ribbon was ridiculously difficult for me, and sewing that fiddly ball chain on with a loop between each ball? Beyond impossible. I stuffed it all away and although I did make a few more ribbon flowers in December, mostly it has sat in its bag on my desk since I unpacked in November. But it's done and it was fun and easy this time around, and I think I might even make a few more while I'm in the mindset. I had to go to two separate craft stores yesterday to find fabric glue and more ribbon clamps for the ends, so I might as well make my search worth it.

The other project I worked on this weekend was another smock for Maren. I have had this cute thrifted fabric and the matching thrifted bias tape for months and months now and since I made the George Curious smock last weekend I figured I might as well get to it. I think what was keeping me from getting to it sooner was my dread at working with narrow-width bias tape. Bias tape is my sewing nemesis to begin with, but the narrow stuff is like my arch enemy! LOL On the very first smock I made for Maren I used narrow bias tape and it nearly did me in. I couldn't get the fabric caught securely in the fold of the narrow tape, especially around the rounded corners so it's in pretty sad shape right now. I was more careful this time and really tried to pay attention and go slowly, but I will readily admit that I said some naughty words while fighting with the stuff.


The lady at the cutting counter in JoAnn's once said that she tells everyone that if they can drive a car, they can sew. That analogy certainly doesn't ring true for me, unless you say that it's like driving a car where the wheels fall off and the hood flies up in your face every time you're trying to make your way down the road. My sewing skills are limited at best, and then I kept having my needle come unthreaded or the tape get caught and not advance in the beginning, causing the needle to sew the same place over and over and get all snarled in the thread. Add that to Maren who was changing the settings on my machine when I wasn't looking and trying to "help" while I was dealing with very sharp scissors, pins, and the machine needle, and well--I think you can see why the swear words just slipped out.



I do believe this will be the last smock I make for a while until I forget how much I hate to sew and drag it all out again. I predict that will be right before the start of pillowcase dress season. Those require bias tape sewn around the armholes, ack. Let's hope the memory loss happens quickly.

Green, Eggs & a Ham

Okay, I'll be honest. I really can't get too excited about St. Patrick's Day as a holiday. I'm not Irish, I'm not Catholic, I don't drink, and I don't live in a place with a lot of Irish heritage. At least when we lived in Savannah the latter was true so I could have fun with the parade and other peripheral madness. Here in Denver, I'm just not feeling it. I'm not even wearing any green today. Even so, I never pass up an opportunity to use one of my cute Dover clipart images!

This weekend was the fourth weekend in a row that either DH or I have been out of town. He had to work on Saturday & Sunday so I packed up Maren and we drove 4 hours south to visit my grandparents for a few days. It was wonderful to see them and just hang out. And there was thrifting! I'll share photos later this week when I get it all unpacked.

I did promise to show photos of the glass glitter eggs I made last week.

Here's how I have them displayed; the silver bowl is thrifted and they are sitting in a nest of Spanish Moss. I'm not sure that I love it though--I think it's just a bit too monochromatic for my taste. I used the moss because I wanted something more rough and organic to offset the glittery eggs, but it's all just a little boring to look at. I may have to dig through the cupboards to see if I can find a different bowl with some color to it. Here's a close-up of the eggs so you can sort of see how sparkly they really are.

Here's a tip for working with glass glitter that I've found useful: I try to keep the glitter contained when I'm using it but inevitably some ends up on my work surface. Normally I'd just swipe it off with my hand but when I'm using glass glitter (especially the very coarse grade, like on these eggs) the last thing I want to do is to embed tiny shards of glass into the fleshy part of my hand. I've been using one of those sticky lint roller things (the kind with the tear-off sheets) to run over my desk and pick up all the stray glitter. It works like a charm! I've also used this same tool when I've dropped a light bulb, Christmas ornament or anything else where tiny slivers of glass are involved.

All right, we've covered the Green, the Eggs and now for the Ham!

This is Maren's "Fake Smile". It totally cracks me up every time! You try telling a three-year-old to smile naturally! This photo was taken when we were in SLC and Maren dyed eggs with my mom, who incidentally, she also calls "Ham." If you click to enlarge the photo you can also see Maren's blue-dye mustache. Love it.

03-07-08

Thank you all for your great suggestions for what I should do with my shelf. It always helps to have a fresh pair (or a dozen! LOL) of eyes, doesn't it? I'll keep playing with it and rearranging and I'll let you know what I finally come up with.

Today I have a few crafty things to share. I chose not to participate in any Easter swaps this year. I did too much for Valentine's Day and ended up a bit burnt out, so it has been nice to be able to craft without a deadline. When I was home last week my mom and I made our customary pilgrimage to my most favorite store in the whole world. Even though I didn't actually buy anything, just looking at the beautiful, unusual displays was inspiring. I did see a few interesting things that I knew I could recreate at home.


This is a papier mache letter that my mom got at Paper Source, and I know there are other stores who sell similar large letters and shapes. I simply squirted tacky glue all over, smoothed it out with a sponge brush, then dumped silver glass glitter all over the letter. The key is that I used very coarse glitter--it looks like little shards of silver. I ordered it last year with no idea that it would be quite so coarse and when I received it I was disappointed; I just couldn't see what I could possibly use it for. Now I'm so glad I have it! After I dumped off the excess coarse glitter, I then dumped fine glass glitter over it to fill in any open areas of glue and to add an extra layer of sparkle. I wish I could show you how truly sparkly it is in person--it just doesn't translate well to a still photo. Here's the best I could do:


In person, it glitters as if it's covered in thousands of tiny mirrors! One thing I learned is that you should do any inside or hard to reach areas first--I saved the inside of the H for last and it was tricky to get the paintbrush in there while holding onto the the outside. The glitter is so coarse that it's kind of poky, plus I didn't want to knock the glitter off the already-glued portions by handling it too roughly. Dear Lizzie also sold a line of boxes completely covered in the glitter and as soon as I can run to Hobby Lobby, I'm going to buy a few boxes of my own. I found some thrifted wooden eggs rolling around in my box of Easter decor so I did the same treatment to those as well. They're drying right now and they look great! Now I wish I had other colors of the coarse glitter besides silver. Wouldn't a whole bowl of pastel-colored glittery eggs be pretty?

The other crafty thing I have to share is for a church party in a few weeks. The women's organization is having a dinner with a birthday theme and we made favors to put on the tables.


We'll be decorating the tables to correspond with the months of the year and using holiday decorations for each month. So, the December table will be Christmas decorations, the February will be Valentine's, and so on. We chose to do the favors in primary colors because then they'll match all the different holiday decor, plus I like bright colors for a birthday party. I got the idea for the little jars from my mom, who sent me a couple filled with pink and red M&Ms for Valentine's Day. I copied her design exactly using the bright colors and used Skittles in the jars instead of M&Ms, just in case of peanut allergies. The little jars are from Michael's and Party America, I used cardstock scraps from my stash to punch all the shapes, and I got self-adhesive rhinestones from the $1 section at Michael's and used my 40% off coupon to buy a box of Glue Dots. We made 56 bottles and the total, including two huge bags of Skittles was somewhere around $40.00! Not bad, eh? I prepped all the pieces and then we put everything together in less than an hour at my meeting the other night. Easy as pie! Now the hard part will be finding a Maren-proof place to stash them until the party on the 19th.

Quin left today for the weekend; he's attending the wedding of a good friend in Georgia. I'm envious that he gets to go somewhere where it will be warm and there are flowers and green leaves. I would like to just skip March and April altogether and head straight to May's warm temperatures, thankyouverymuch. Spring is by far my least favorite season--around here and where I grew up in Utah it's just so wishy washy. Warm one day, snow the next. The crocuses get brave and push their little heads through the cold ground, only to be felled by yet another night of below freezing temperatures. The sun comes out and looks deceptively warm, but the air is still too chilly to spend much time outside without the burden of a coat. Blah. Give me summer or autumn any time! The only good thing about spring for me right now is that it heralds the beginning of yard sale season around here. It's still a bit early but I did see two yard sale signs when I was driving home from the commissary today, so that gives me hope! And you know where I'll be tomorrow morning. :)

The Aftermath & A Swap

Thank you all for your comments about my video. :) Truly, I laughed and laughed! For those of you who mentioned how calm I sounded, I did my freaking out/swearing before I picked up the video camera. The whole thing went down like this: I discovered Maren, took one glance at her "finger painting" project, grabbed her wrists with my Mommy-death-grip and rushed her to the bathroom to attempt to wash her hands before she could touch anything else. I actually was able to laugh about it when I was scrubbing her hands and they weren't getting any less purple! Once I had scrubbed Maren as best I could, I grabbed the camera! After I captured my blog-worthy footage, I grabbed the rubber gloves and paper towels and went to work. With the exception of the fabric on my chair and Maren's pajamas, the dye came off of every other surface due to the liberal use of a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I'd like to find the person who invented those little white miracles and give him a big, sloppy kiss!

My calm in the face of disaster may also have been because this is not the first time she has done this. That's right, folks--this is actually the second food coloring incident this month. The first was far less catastrophic: although another of my chairs got ruined, she didn't get any on her brand-new Gymboree cupcake clothing and the mess was minor. I don't know what possessed Maren to get my food coloring out in the first place, other than her internal radar for finding the things that will cause the biggest mess in the least amount of time. I kept it in the back of a kitchen cabinet, and have no idea how she spotted it. After incident #1, I moved it to the very top shelf of my cabinets. That means on Monday when she got it out, she had to climb from the chair and stand on the countertop in order to reach that top shelf, and even then it must have been a stretch. That alone is enough to give any parent heart palpitations--she is fearless, I tell you! And really, the food-coloring mess pales in comparison to the Great Rit Dye incident of '07, which ruined another chair (that's three, if you're counting), several towels, and left a big green spot on the office carpet.

In other (less destructive) news, my swap partner Amy from the Sweet Heart Box Swap received her package so now I can share it with you. The idea for this swap was to decorate a heart-shaped candy box and fill it with supplies and other goodies. I was lucky and found this really great fabric-covered box at at thrift store, so all I had to do was cover the bottom with pretty paper to disguise the nutritional information and then gussy up the top. I made a ribbon flower with a vintage earring in the middle and used a vintage black rhinestone shoe clip to frame a cute fabric tag phrase. Not sure why I went with the black but I just liked how it looked with the pale pink and red. Here's what the inside looked like:

With the exception of I think three or maybe four of those little cups, everything else was stuff that I had in my stash! I'm currently working on another heart box for a different swap and I have enough to fill that one too. That, my friends, means I have a LOT of stuff squirreled away in my craft room. Yikes! This was such a fun swap and I do hope Amy liked her swap package.

It's back to the craft mines for me--I have to finish heart box #2 to be mailed out by Friday (eek!) and come up with a brilliant idea for the Sweet Goodness Hanging Heart Swap, to be mailed out by Monday (double eek!). Back to the glue & paper I go!

Washi eggs

This is an Easter craft I made a few years ago. These eggs were featured on the cover of Martha Stewart Living for April 2004. You use origami paper and Mod Podge (always with the Mod Podge) and wooden eggs. As always, mine didn't turn out as perfect at Martha's goons' eggs. It's tricky to get the paper sliced just so so that it will fit smoothly around the curved ends of the egg. The green egg on the bottom was my first attempt and you can see that it's bumpy, but the other two eggs are better--practice makes perfect and all that jazz. I do love them and someday I'll attempt a few more.

I'm excited to be participating in the Spring Fling Pink & Green swap! My partner is the very fabulous Risa and her blog is The ParTea Planner. Risa is lucky enough to have a job where she gets to plan wonderful tea parties; how fun! Do go over and check out her blog, especially the photos of the absolutely gorgeous parties she has done. I guarantee you'll want to be her guest!

Speaking of Martha (aren't I always?), the previews for tomorrow's show have her doing glittery Easter crafts with someone named Laurie Davis. Glitter? I'm so there! Also, Katie linked to this cutie pie pom-pom bunny that was on Martha's show yesterday. I meant to watch but forgot! They don't look too difficult, but you can also buy them already made. Maybe I'll bookmark that for next year. I think I'm about crafted out for this Easter!

Spring Snow

Just when you thought it was safe to put away the winter clothes, you wake up to this:
And you realize that it's still March, and we're not out of the woods yet. Boo! March and April are technically the wettest months here in Denver, and we typically get about 12" of snow in March in an average year. This is actually the first snow we've had all month, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Talk about a rude awakening, though!

Even though it's wintry outside, Spring is in full force in my house. Just want to share one of my favorite new Easter decorations this year:
This is all covered by my tall glass cloche but I had to remove it for photographing. The big bunny is from Hobby Lobby and although he looks pretty convincingly like you could take a big bite out of his ears, he's actually ceramic. I put him on the slate platter that came with my cloche. The platter is covered with a doily and a scattering of foil-covered chocolate eggs. The large eggs are floral picks with the wires removed, and are also from Hobby Lobby. I'm all about the colored foil in my decorating this year.

I finally finished up an Easter craft I've been working on for at least a week now. These eggs are featured in the April 2007 Martha and as soon as I saw them, I knew I could make them:
Martha used real blown-out eggs but I think that's just silly when I could get papier mache eggs cheap at the craft store. The only other supplies needed were Mod Podge and canceled postage stamps, both of which I had in my stash. I was too lazy to make one of Martha's egg drying rigs so I was only able to glue one side of the egg at a time, which is why it took me a week to get them finished! If you want to try them, be aware that you are putting a flat item (the stamp) onto a round surface (the egg) so the stamps aren't going to fit smoothly. I had to use my fingers and really smooth the stamps down after they were saturated with the glue. The end result is that your egg will have a somewhat bumpy finish, but if you look close at the magazine photograph you can tell that Martha's eggs were bumpy too, so I don't consider that a failure!

Now that those eggs are done, the next project is --dun-dun-dun!-- the infamous pipecleaner chicks and baskets. I'm a little nervous, but I'm going to give it a whirl anyway! I'll be sure to report back, success or no.

Ribbon wreath

...And I'm back again! Whew. November was such a busy month for me with my trips to NYC and San Diego, the preparations for said trips and ensuing exhaustion, and my family's visit for Thanksgiving. All really fun stuff, but I'm ready to get things back to normal for a few weeks at least, until we leave to spend a week with our families for Christmas. Gotta enjoy the normal while it lasts, I guess!

I was able to read blogs while I was gone but commenting was a pain because I was on DH's laptop with no mouse. I hate those darn touchpad things, and I hate typing on laptop keyboards because the keys are so close together that I make lots of mistakes. So I will try to catch up on leaving comments, as I saw some wonderful stuff out there! You all are some clever folks.

I do know from my blog reading last week that I am way behind the power curve in Christmas decorating! There wasn't time the week of Thanksgiving and then we were gone for 5 solid days. I still have some cleaning up around here to do before I can drag the boxes up from the basement but I hope to get things done by the end of the week. I think I might take a different approach this year and not get out every Christmas decoration I own. I don't have tons and tons but I do have a fair amount of stuff and I just don't feel like getting it all out. Then next year it will feel like I have all new stuff because I haven't seen it for 2 years, right?

I still have my Thanksgiving decorations up and will hopefully get it put away tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to share one last picture of something I made. In my Ribbonrie book there is an image on the last page of a wreath done using the same technique as the ribbon topiaries, but there aren't any instructions specific to the wreath. I had lots of leftover ribbon when I made the ribbon garland for Shanna's Thanksgiving swap and I didn't want to make another topiary, so I tried the wreath instead. I used the same technique and the same length for the ribbon, only I used a styrofoam wreath form for the base, the kind that is white and flat on the back. It was pretty easy but there was one slight difficulty. The wreath form was quite thin so I had to be careful about the way I angled the pins when I got close to the edges, otherwise they poked right through the styrofoam! Youch! Found that out the hard way, I'm afraid.

Apologies for the rotten flash in the photo, but I hung it on the back of the front door (didn't want it outside exposed to the elements) and that is a place that never gets much natural light. You get the idea, though.

I'm glad to be back and I feel like I have lots to blog about. So much in fact that being the Type-A crazy list-maker that I am, I've made myself a list of topics because there was so much I wanted to remember! Yeah, I'm a dork.