How to Speed up the Aging Process - A Rusting "Try"al

I seen a rusting recipe on Pinterest - and wanted to try it on some ornament hooks. My tree is going to be more rustic this year, and the silver hooks are not going to work - so another Pinterest idea got put into action. Here is what I did....

I bought some cool ornament hooks at the $ Store. I checked out the link to the rusting recipe from a blog called Lipstick and Laundry. You need to check out what she rusted - CLICK HERE TO SEE!
I cut the recipe in half and used a yogurt container. I stirred the concoction with all disposable utensils JUST IN CASE. Once you put your metal in it will foam up - so make sure you have a big enough container.  I used 1 cup peroxide, 1/8 cup white vinegar and 1 tablespoon salt.

The ornament hooks took one hour to rust. I have some bells rusting - I will leave them for 24 hours. I didn't want to chance dumping the remains of this recipe in my sink, or grass - so I dumped it in a ditch with weeds and gravel.

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Stuffed Muslin Ornaments

I wanted my tree to look different this year without spending a lot of money - and these muslin ornaments were the solution. For the ornament above I used the silhouette frame from Graphics Fairy for the outline, and Noel is from a free font called Christmas Cheer.  I made these ornaments using muslin, and I made them the same way I made the stuffed tags a while back - CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE TUTORIAL. 

I did put on some of the ornaments a rusted ornament hanger. I rusted the hangers myself. CLICK HERE to go to the post on how to rust metal objects.

Here is another ornament, using the same silhouette frame from the Graphics Fairy with the Joy to the World in the frame that is one of the options with that graphic.

Here are a few other ornaments I made. We are putting our tree up tonight - I am very excited to see how it turns out. 

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Graphics Fairy

Paper Tole Nativity Made from Christmas Cards

Paper tole is the process of making a dimensional picture out of several copies of the same image.

I made this paper tole nativity a few years ago. I had a package of Christmas cards with quite a few left over - and I knew I wanted to paper tole these cards. There is an avid paper tole crafter in my church who was a sweetheart and guided me through this project. She thought I was crazy for picking such a hard project for my first paper tole experience. What made it difficult was the small size of the pictures.

Since I made this a few years ago - I do not have the pictures to make a tutorial - but I found a paper tole tutorial using a stamped image CLICK HERE.

Trying to get a picture with the right angle to show the depth of the picture was a challenge. 

I just love how this turned out. I framed the work of art in a $store shadow box. It wasn't in the frame department - rather the picture deptartment. It had a 3D teapot in it that I removed. This was way cheaper then paying to get it framed. 

I hope this gives you some ideas....

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"Lil Luna

Book Page Snowman Gift Bag

I am on a mission to make gift bags right now. I am loving the book page craze out there and so I decided to put that on a gift bag. Here is how I made it:

1. I copy and pasted book page graphic from Graphics Fairy, to my favorite publishing program. I added the cute snowman dingbat that I downloaded for free. The font is called "Janda Christmas Doodles" and it has a lot of adorable pictures on there. I like dingbats because you can paste them onto a background and it looks like you have drawn it on there. The font size of my snowman is 450. After printing I cut the image out, and colored in his nose.

2. I picked a background paper, inked the edges with light brown ink, sewed around the edge, and adhered it to an 8x10 kraft gift bag.

3. I glued on the snowman, snow flakes and "Merry Christmas". The Merry Christmas was cut out using the Cricut cartridge - Joys of the Season - size 2 1/2. The snowflakes are from a Martha Stewart punch. I added some jewels to the centers of each snowflake.

I just love that snowman - he is soooo cute! Thanks for stopping by!

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Graphics Fairy

Lil Luna

Make Your Own Family Photo Christmas Card

I saw a family photo Christmas card idea on Pinterest - which originally came from an Etsy shop called Announcing You.  I loved the photo strip idea and so I made it into this years Christmas card.

It is easy to make your own family photo Christmas Card. Here is how I made mine:

1. Use the publishing program of your choice on your computer. I have a Mac. I use Keynote.

2. Choose a background color. I chose grey. 

3. Insert a white square and stretch it the length and width you desire. Insert desired pics and crop them to fit the white rectangle. After all the pics were the size I wanted - I rotated the rectangle and pics 2 degrees.

4. Type in a sentiment.

5. After I was happy with how everything looked, I clicked on File and then export. I clicked on the images button, made sure it said JPEG file, and saved it to my iphoto. In iphoto I cropped it to constrain it to a 4x6, but you can choose whatever.

6. Now I will transfer it to a jump drive and print it out at my favorite photo lab. The going rate in my city is 19 cents per picture - not bad for a family photo Christmas card.

Here is my family photo card from last year...

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Whipperberry

Silhouette Christmas Tags

Here is another project from my pinterest to do list - Christmas silhouette tags. The inspiration for these tags can be found HERE on a blog called Anne's Paper Fun. 

First I printed out a a book page background (found on Vintage Moth) - and cut it into tag sizes. Then I printed some mini tags using a dingbat that you can download for free HERE called "Christmas Cheer". The tags on Anne's Paper fun blog had the silhouettes printed directly on the book page - but I couldn't find any digital silhouettes I liked, so I cut some silhouettes out with my Cricut, using "A Child's Year" cartridge. I glued the silhouettes on the tag - added a black tag for a background and put it all together with some jute. I used cream cardstock for my paper, and of course used Tim Holtz antique linen distress ink to make the paper more interesting. I read somewhere that you can use shoe polish to distress paper and get the same effect. That would be interesting to try one day. 

I was playing around with some different ideas like the monogram. I think the child on the rocking horse was fitting for a Christmas tag. I sure like the dingbat "Christmas Cheer" - it has some neat images on it that could be used as silhouettes for these tags. 

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Whipperberry

Break Glass In Case of Emergency - Gift Idea

I saw this idea on Pinterest - but I can't give credit to the proper person as the link did not have a link. Please let me know if you are the genius behind this idea so I can give you the proper credit. I wanted to make this for my hubby to put in his "man cave" and I still plan to do that - but this one I made for my nephew who apparently loves Pepsi. 

Supplies - I used a wooden plaque from the dollar store, and a photo cube - also from the $ store. After I painted the wood black - I adhered the cube to the wood with epoxy glue. I adhered it so that I could add/remove the can of pop. I used the mini can that fit in the cube. I glued glass marbles to the bottom. I printed the "Break Glass in Case of Emergency" on a sticker sheet and stuck it to the wood. Very simple and very effective - it made for a good laugh at the birthday party - and I think a perfect idea for a teenage boy. There are so many things you can put in one of these. There are also shadow boxes at some $ stores that you could put chocolate or other items in. 

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Lil Luna
Gingersnap Crafts
Tatertots and Jello