Merry Potato Christmas!

By Rachel Scarlett

'Twas the Sunday before Christmas, when all through the house,

Everyone was stirring, yes even the mouse!

If you are anything like me, I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything in order for Christmas. I am doing a minuscule amount compared to last year, but then again I do have a baby to feed every three hours this year.... So that makes a HUGE difference. A huge wonderful difference :) 

So this last week, my good friend Hannah came over to visit and we had a fun little craft time. We both had it in our heads to decorate our Christmas gifts that were wrapped in plain brown paper. She had actually brought a big roll of paper and was planning on decorating the paper pre-gift; my gifts however were already wrapped. I had also been wanting to try my hand at potato stamping, so I suggested it and that's what we did. I love the 'stamped' look plus it was tons of fun!

Plain boring packages...

So this is a pretty easy project and besides the paint, anyone would probably have all the equipment in their home. You just (1) Draw, (2) Trace, (3) Cut, and stamp stamp stamp!

I drew my tree out on wax paper and then retraced over it to leave an indent in the potato flesh. I used a utility knife to cut downward about a 1/4 of an inch into the potato of the tree outline, and then horizontally from the outside inward (also a 1/4 inch deep) leaving the stamp elevated. When loading the stamp with paint, it only needs a small amount. Too much paint with just make a smudged looking picture. And I would definitely practice stamping a few times before the real deal.

The image above and to the left is a simpler design as an ornament, using the roundness of the potato.

I thought Hannah's snowflakes turned out pretty well, and she used a whiteout pen to add little dots to make a pattern. For the golden dots on the right, I just sliced a small potato in half to stamp with.

Overall, I think all of these turned out great! It was a really fun and easy way to add some decoration to brown paper. I will definitely be bringing potatoes back for some future project; maybe for greeting cards or even for making a pattern on fabric!

This craft was especially enjoyable because I got to share ideas and time with one of my greatest friends! It's so much fun (and inspirational) to create with other people. Her red ornament stamp is something I never would have thought of; my mind would have made it too complicated, but it turned out to be my favorite stamp! I hope everyone finds some time to be creative with someone this Christmas, whether it be through wrapping presents, cooking, decorating the tree, or even by putting a lot of thought into a gift you're buying. Share the Love!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Extra trees to use for individual gift tags.

The gold zigzag pattern on the reindeer package was added with a paintbrush.

The Key to an Epic Ugly Sweater

By Rachel Scarlett

A short post about ugly sweaters!

I assume you are all familiar with the popular ugly sweater parties nowadays? Really they have turned into wear-the-tackiest-Christmas-garb-you-can-find parties. The best ugly sweaters are the ones that are found in thrift stores. The ones that were legitimately made by a company in one era that look absolutely ridiculous in this one.

BUT you can also MAKE one to battle the tackiest of sweaters. I think there a few key ways to achieve epicness with your old plain sweater. They are repetitiveness and telling a story. Throwing a bunch of dollar store items on an old sweater is most effective when done with some order in a repetitive pattern. However the way I am going to show you is telling a story, and maybe you don't think this one is epic but maybe it can give you some inspiration ;)

As you can see I chose a favorite Christmas movie and made a scene that was telling a small part of it. Really I was inspired by some faux fur I had and I really wanted to use the crazed Abominable Snowman. I mean what's more tacky than fur on a sweater? By the time Christmas comes in the movie, everyone unites together and it's a happy ending with Rudolf leading Santa through the storm and a happy Abominable Snowman topping the Christmas tree!

The Abominable Snowman himself was made by roughly cutting his body parts out of fur and his hands are dollar store pipe cleaners. The star he holds is cardboard covered in glitter and he stands atop a mound of cotton ball snow.

His face is glittered foam from the dollar store and random googly eyes I had. His ridiculous teeth are plastic pearl beads.

I believe the fur used for the reindeer was from a caveman costume my mom made for my big brother almost 20 years ago... the old fur was starting to separate from the fabric.... pretty tacky. The antlers are more of those pipe cleaners from the dollar store and the reins are just one long continuous ribbon. And as you can see, I used different sized googly eyes for each reindeer.  

Rudolf with his foam sparkle nose....

Snow made from cotton balls and the tree is made from tinsel garland from the thrift store with an old ribbon I had. I glued on some beads that look like Christmas lights but they're hard to see. 

To make this sweater a little more lively, I continued the reins onto the backside to a simple picture of Santa's sleigh. The sleigh is a combination of that glittered foam and pipe cleaners, and the snowflakes are just foam- also from the dollar store.

I definitely could have taken things to a whole other level by making a waving Santa from the sleigh, adding better and more visible ornaments to the tree, and perhaps a banner of 'Merry Christmas' on the backside above the sleigh.

Happy Ugly Sweater Making!!!

Pickle Jars and Tissue Paper

By Rachel Scarlett

Happy Thanksgiving! Coming at ya with another craft using the junk/garbage around you... Thanksgiving means fall colors and decoration. While I'm excited to eat turkey in a few days, I am really not a fan of fall colors OR decoration. I love the changing colors outside but would rather not bring a gourd, leaves, or leaf color theme inside my house (brown, red, and orange all together?... gross). BUT I was determined to squeeze in a fall craft before jumping on Christmas, and I barely made it. To do this I took the fall colors and put them in my own theme. All you need for this is pickle jars and tissue paper along with modpodge(or glue). I think they will be a good decoration, at least for this year. And I could even put them somewhere in the baby room when Thanksgiving is over.

The tissue paper is from the dollar store and saved from past gifting.

And of course pickle jars, or any jar for that matter.

I measured out the dimensions (circumference and height) of the jar. I added about 1/2 inch to each side for error. I cut these measurements out of white paper. When applying the paper to the jar, put a very light coat of modpodge on the whole jar and avoiding getting any on the jar threads. Approach the jar with the sheet, shown in the picture above, aligning the bottom with your work surface to keep it straight. As soon as the paper touches and sticks, smooth it out from that point with your hands all the way around the jar.

The top left shows the tissue paper completely on the jar. As you can see in the top middle, it smooths nicely right to the bottom of the jar. Before it was completely dry I careful cut away the excess right below the threads with an exacto knife.

It is probably apparent that I like Native American tribal print, AND I would just like to say I liked it before it was popular ;). I grew up around beautiful Pendleton blankets and cowboy paintings. That said, it's easy to see where I got my inspiration. Usually before a project I also Google Image designs and patterns to pull from. That's where I got the basic image above. I graphed it out to achieve straight edges and corners, then traced the outline on tissue paper

The four pictures above show the various extra shapes I cut out by folding and cutting multiple layers at once. I started with general geometric shapes before knowing the final design.

After cutting the shapes- oh wait, is this not a picture of tissue paper? Oops.... distraction!!! This is my daughter that was born last week, it's hard not to just hold and stare at her 24/7... Sigh...

Anyway... After cutting, I played with the shapes, and laid out some general patterns.

Apply the shapes by lightly sponging the area with glue or modpodge, it hardly takes any to make the paper stick. I followed the label grooves on the jar to make sure I kept the pattern straight.

And there ya have it! I tied twine at the tops to finish them off. If you keep the lids you can use them later to store candy, cotton balls, pencils... really anything. It would probably be smart to put another coat of modpodge over the whole jar for protection, and then a clear coat of spray paint if you really want them to last.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!