Crafting!

I'm posting my first non-required post in honor of two successful crafting projects which were completed tonight!

Project One: Swirly Decorative Cross

Materials: One J. Crew Catalog and Hot Glue

Time to Completion: 2 days (a LOT of folding and a LOT of gluing)

Project Two: Decorative Earring Holder

Materials: Lace Tablecloth and Crochet Hoop

Time to Completion: 2 minutes (basically putting the fabric in the hoop and cutting around the edges)

Hooray for making pretty things!

Christmas Crafting!

I made a Christmas wreath!  Hooray!  This was my first go at wreath making, and I must say I think it was pretty successful :)

Yay!  For interested parties, I used this tutorial.  It was actually really easy to make...the hardest part was getting it to hang on the door properly, because I can't tie a pretty bow to save my life.

The general procedure was this:

Step One: Gather Materials...

Step Two: Wrap the wreath form in yarn.

Step Three:  Make a bunch of felt flowers (way easier than it looks)

Step Four: Stick all the felt flowers on the wreath.  And BAM!  A cozy soft Christmas wreath of happiness and joy!  Here's a close-up of all the flowers together.

Besides crafting time, winter break has also afforded me the ability to sleep late relatively guilt-free, watch substandard chick-flicks on television, and cooking dinner and watching Breakfast at Tiffany's at my friends' house.  This is definitely superior to study marathons.

Christmas Luminaries

Homemade Christmas luminaries from jars...complete.

They make me happy.  The Christmas decoration piece count is now up to three, with the luminaries, scrap paper tree, and Christmas tree.  It's never too soon to get into the holiday season.  And, since I only have a week and a half of classes left (ah!), I'm *almost* on Christmas break anyway.  So it's all good.

The rest of the day was less than notable, spent in the library reading about creation theology and watching TV reruns.  That 70s Show has begun to make a regular appearance in my life.  I also made pork chops with fruit stuffing in the slow cooker...tasty!  At least, I assume it will be...I wasn't too hungry by the time it was finished so I just ate some of the stuffing.  It was tasty, so I assume the full dish will be as well.

Well that was an exciting conversation about pork chops, wasn't it?

As you may have guessed, I'm short for inspiration tonight.  So let's just call this post complete, shall we?

Christmas Craft...Revealed!

Perhaps the suspense isn't all that necessary, but it was unintentionally built up over the last couple days' posts.  So get ready...here it is!

It's a Christmas scrap paper tree!  It ended up being somewhat bigger than I anticipated, but I found a good place for it on the bookshelf, as you can see.  It was super easy, if somewhat time consuming...basically, you cut out a ton of leaves from scrapbook paper, glue two of them together with floral wire in between, and wrap the wire around branches.  And ta da!  Scrap paper tree!  I may go back in and take out one of the sticks...it's looking a bit cumbersome at the bottom.  But overall, I'm happy with how it turned out, and I really enjoy having a craft project sitting around to work on.  My next project (much less involved) will be luminaries made from jars.  Should be fun :)

The directions I followed are at this link.  Like any craft, their version is much more polished and perfect, but I like my more rustic version.  In totally unrelated news, I went and saw Tower Heist in theaters tonight, and it was good.  You ought to go see it.  Afterwards my friend and I got burgers at Chips at Lovers Lane and Inwood.  If you live in Dallas, you should go eat there.

Work meeting most of the day tomorrow...happy Saturday?

Cool Stuff I Found Online

If I wasn't knee-deep into this blog project (or neck deep, really), I would totally start a blog about cool stuff that I found online.  Having recently discovered the joys of Etsy through the Pride and Prejudice earrings, I've gone on a hunt to find as many unique handmade products as possible and either gawk at them or actually purchase them.  This hunt for handmade was a large factor in my current craft phase (more on that in a later post, once the project is finished).  But for a hint, here are the materials that are involved...

Yeah.  I'm sure you're intrigued.  There's actually one material missing from the picture because I haven't yet foraged for it (yeah, foraged), but more on all that in a later post.  But, it fits in this post because it's a cool project that I found (yes) online.

Back to the real reason for the post.  Today I received a handmade journal that I ordered from Ex Libris Anonymous, an Oregon-based studio that repurposes vintage books into journals.  If you like reading and writing, like me, then you know that this is SUPER cool (and at $14 a piece, they're super cheap).  Here's the one I ordered:

In this case, it's an old German book of folk songs.  And, like all of Ex Libris's journals, there are pieces of the original book incorporated into the now-journal.  Besides the cover, there are original book pages interleaved with journal pages...

...artwork original to the book...

...and, what I think is super cool, a little touch from a previous owner.

The result is that each journal is totally unique, and it was so exciting to have this arrive in my mailbox!  I don't know what I'm going to use it for yet...it seems like it should be something super artsy or poetic, so we'll see what comes of that.

So that's a cool thing I found online!  What cool things have you found?