Christmas Crafting with Cory

JOY

What could be more fun than spending time with your very best friend and do nothing but eat, drink, and craft!?!?!?

As I mentioned before, I went down to Florida to see the new arrivals, and to spend some time with my closest friend, Cory.  She and her husband, Tom, are both retired and now live permanently in their totally renovated condo in Cocoa Beach.  Talk about BREATH-TAKINGLY GORGEOUS!!!

We had decided ahead of time that we were going to craft for Christmas, so I brought along all that would fit into my suitcase (I had to check my luggage!) and she dragged out all of her Christmas goodies.  We scoured Pinterest in preparation and noted things we’d like to try, and tried to pull out only what we’d likely need.  Our goal was to craft to our hearts’ content without spending much.

Cory has this cute, round Christmas clock on a long wall and she wanted to add the letters J and Y to fill in the wallspace.  We did have to buy the wooden letters (Hobby Lobby had the perfect size for her clock – 13″), but she had the dark green paint left over from an outdoor project.  After the paint dried, we added sundry bits of old Christmas decorations and hot glued them onto the letters.

We placed them on the wall in an arch – they looked fabulous!

Next came our “sweater stars” – an idea we saw on Pinterest.  I had brought along two sweaters that had shrunk in length, but they had a sweet little cable stitch in them.  After much discussion, we came to a plan: we traced two different style cookie cutter stars onto the sweaters, placed some stuffing between the front and back, and pinned all around.  As I prepared to sew the layers together, using the sewing machine, I held a strip of tiny rick-rack from point to point.  It went smoother than you’d think – the trim kind of held the knit in place as the machine foot moved forward.

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Then we trimmed the sweater close to the edges and attached a bit of yarn to use as a hanger.

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Next came angels – another Pinterest idea.  (Great tutorial on YouTube!)

We each had some wide (2 or 2 1/2″), wire edged glittery sheer ribbon (who doesn’t?), some narrow, glittery ribbon and/or “jewels,” and ribbon for hanging. Cory had some 16 mm gold and silver jingle bells left over from a previous project.

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The “skirt” uses about 14″ of the wide ribbon, which is then fan-folded into seven 1″ pleats.  Cut the top wire off and staple folds together at the top. The “wings” use about 10″ of the wide ribbon to make five 1″ pleats . Fold wings in half, staple on the crease and hot glue crease onto top of skirt pleats.  Spread out bottom folds of skirt and both sides of wing folds.

String ribbon through loop on the jingle bell and hot glue the bell on top of the wing crease.  Glue a little shiny bow or a flat-back “jewel” over the area where the skirt meets the wings.

These were fun to make, and really fast and easy once we got an assembly line going, so we made a LOT!  Cory sent a bunch over to the new Mom, and she gave them out to the nurses in the NICU.  I understand they were a big hit.

Another idea we saw and liked on Pinterest was trees made of ribbons and pearls.

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There was no link to the source and no written directions, so we just used the photo, which had the trees laid out on a measured grid.  I’m posting this way after the fact, and we played around with the size of the loops for a while, so I can’t give you exact measurements.  But basically, each loop was about 1/2″ less than the last.

We knotted a pearl to serve as the “trunk”, either with a tiny bead or just a knot. Then we strung a piece of the ribbon, then a pearl, then a smaller piece of the ribbon, and so on, until we reached the top 1/2″ loop.  By attaching the hanger ribbon or cord to the top pearl, it created the secure stop at the top.

The sheer ribbons were very delicate-looking.

We found that we had some really cute Christmas ribbons that were not working, because they were printed only on one side and the looping made one side look blah.  Cory came up with the idea of using two different ribbons, back to back, to create a different look.

We didn’t have much time left, and we still wanted the new babies to each have their own ornament, so we made two quick yo-yo angels.

We had seen different versions on Pinterest, and, after experimenting, we decided the 3/4″ wooden balls made better heads than the flat wooden disks.  We used a fine line black Sharpie to draw a simple face of two u’s for closed eyes and an o for the mouth.

We didn’t want to use the same old pink and blue, but chose Christmas fabric that had tiny hearts on them.  The circles were 6″ in diameter.  We cut 8 1/2″  and made a double-loop of 1 1/2″ wide sheer wide ribbon for wings, which we glued to the back of the yo-yo.  The center of the yo-yo on the front was covered with a red and green bow of 5/8″ ribbon.  The “head” had snipped bits of garland glued on top (sounds crazy, but it worked!), and a ribbon loop was sewn to the back at the top for hanging.

Talk about running out of time!  Guess what we were doing at the airport restaurant before Cory sent me off?

Gum

Last year for someone’s stocking, I had drawn the little snowman heads on the bubble packed gum.  Adorable.  So, on the way to the airport, we bought what we thought was the same kind of gum.  WRONG!  But, never fear, the plan just needed a little alteration!  We just drew the heads onto the top of each paper-wrapped piece!  Even our waitress was impressed!

I’m sure both Tom and Cory are glad THAT craziness is over!!!

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And never waste time on the plane!  I managed to get a whole bunch of crocheted snowflakes and stars made while at 30,000 feet!

Snowflakes

These are only two examples – there are a bazillion on Pinterest!  They make nice gifties at Christmastime – my buddies like that they’re small and very lightweight, can go on any tree.

And one last Christmas idea – my friend Sue was wearing this at our Christmas get-together.

Sue's reindeer

Don’t you just LOVE Christmas!?!?!?!

Comments? Questions?