Christmas Crafting - Rag Quilts

December has been a whirlwind.  I did a lot more crafting than I have blogged about and I have not been really on the ball about taking pictures.  My apologies.

Any ways, after making a rag quilt for a friend's soon to be new born, I decided to make quilts for my sister and my sister-in-law.  I picked out four colours/patterns in flannel for the front and a fleece for the back of each quilt.  I bought 2 metres of the fleece and 1/2 metre of each of the flannel colours/ patterns.

In a prior post I provided links to a couple tutorials that are really good explanations of how to make a rag quilt, so I won't provide details here.  Here are a few pictures from the last go round, but I realized that, brilliant me, I forgot to take pictures of the final products.  Sometime in the future I will update this post with final pictures of the blankets in use by the girls.

Christmas Crafting - Framed monogram

A little while ago, I tried making a monogram using rolls of book pages.  You can see the prior post here.

I loved this idea and now that I've tried it, I've thought of several ways to adapt this idea for gifts.  For my sister-in-law, as a Christmas gift, rather than making the monogram on a cutout letter, I bought a simple frame with a 1/4 inch plywood insert.I painted the insert red, and from there I cut out the necessary book page strips, rolled (using glue) 50 strips.

It's important that you have various lengths if you want to create the letter with tapering.  I used paper glue again, it seems to work well with both the rolls of paper and the wood.

As a final accent, I made two small felt flowers and attached those using a glue gun.

As an aside, I think this idea would be lovely if adapted for the first initial of a new baby's name, with suitable colours used.  For the book pages, you could use a children's book (at the very least, to be sure that no inappropriate words are visible).

Christmas Crafting - O' Christmas Wreath, O' Christmas Wreath

I earlier wrote about some of the fall wreaths I made last year (see With Fall Comes Wreaths for instructions and necessary materials - just change up the seasonal flowers, I find that Walmart usually has a great selection of faux flowers for Christmas at far more reasonable prices than Michaels).  I haven't had time to make any Christmas wreaths this year, but I made so many last year that I really don't have anyone left to give them to and my house only has so many doors.

Here's some pictures from the making of a couple Christmas wreaths that I gave to my parents and in-laws last year:

I also made a few for sale at my law firm's charity craft/bake sale last year for the annual United Way fundraising campaign, one of which is below:

I often found myself with too much ribbon or left over flowers, so I cut up some cardboard and glued it into the shape of small planters or vases.  I covered the cardboard with the left over ribbon and inserted flower Styrofoam, into which I placed the leftover flowers.  These actually turned out quite cute:

Christmas Crafting - Swirl Ornaments

I was inspired with the vases that I made as Christmas gifts and decided to give painted ornaments a try.  I've seen some great tutorials on these.  For example, Oh Sugarplum! has an entry on swirl ornaments (with a really cool tutorial on making marbleized ornaments as well).

I made eight, some with red and gold, some with blues and white.  My favourites though were a couple with blue, red and gold.  I used Folk Art Metallic paints for these.

Christmas Crafting - Painted Vases

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to make some painted vases as Christmas gifts this year.  This weekend marked the beginning of my Christmas crafting, I did a number of projects just to get a head start.  Since I'm planning on making a number of these painted vases, I figured I should start ASAP.

I tried two different techniques.

Air Blown Painted Vases:

For these vases, I pick two - four colours and "dribble" a little of each colour around the bottom edge of the vase.  From there, I just blow on the paint until it is sufficiently spread around the entire vase and in a design that I like.  Using a straw works if you are worried about getting too close to the wet paint - yes, I have ended up with paint on my nose as a result of losing track of how close to the vase I was.

Once the vases are painted, I let them dry for at least two days and then pop them in the oven to bake in accordance with the instruction on the paint.  I tend to use Americana Gloss Enamels, but mostly because that's the only enamel product that the Michaels closest to me.

 (I store them upside down until the paint dries.)

Interior Swirled Painted Vases:

These ones are as simple as adding a few colours to the bottom (inside) of a vase and SLOWLY twirling the vase to coax the paint around and around until the entire interior is covered.  Additional drops of paint are added as necessary during the process.

When complete, drain the excess paint from the vase.  I stored my upright to dry because I purposely wanted some streaking to occur, caused by the wet paint wanting to pool in the bottom of the vase.  When the paint is dry for a couple days, I'm going to coat the inside with a varnish.