Wood Shim Wreath Project Done

     I have been wanting to make a wood shim wreath for almost three years.  I bought the wreath forms back in 2020.  I wanted this to be a joint project doing it with my daughter but that never happened so I made one by myself.  I found the instructions on pinterest.  Here is a link to the website that pops up for me that was the most helpful with list of materials and step by step instructions.  

     The pictures of pinterest show the wood shims stained a dark color and that's how I wanted to make both of my wreaths, but when I asked dear daughter if she wanted her shims stained she said no.  She wanted a white wash on the shims.  The shims are a very yellow wood and I told her that a white wash might not look that great on the yellow wood so we decided to paint them completely white.  I painted the back, front and sides of each of the 27 shims I used and the wreath form with white acrylic paint.  You can  use any acrylic paint.  

   Then I glued the shims to the wreath form with E6000.  It took me several days to finish this because I had to wait for the paint to dry and on the last day when I was gluing the shims to the wreath form I had to wait for the glue to dry on the first set of shims before I could add more.  It was a process.  I can't remember how much I paid for my wreath forms in 2020 but I bought 6 packs of shims for the two wreaths at $1.58 a pack at home depot.  I bought extra shims and I'm glad I did because some had knot holes in them and some were very rough and I didn't want to use them so I weeded them out of the project shims.  The acrylic paint cost me $2.00 at walmart.   I'm glad this wreath is done.  I'm making one more for me with stained shims.  I will start that project next week.

   I finished knitting my gray earwarmer and I'm working on a dark blue one now.  

   One other thing that I have been wanting to make is a trivet using half wooden beads and felt.  I saw this on a youtube video.  Here is a link to the entire video:  Liz Fenwick DIY  The instructions for this trivet start at minute 35:10 of the video.  The trivet I made used 66 half wood beads and I glued them with E6000.  I made three of these for dear daughter.  A pack of 300 half wooden beads cost me $12.99 on Amazon and I bought a yard of thick dark gray felt at Hobby Lobby for $6.99.  The felt I bought was very wide.  It's a lot of felt.  This is a very easy project and you can glue 3 of these in about an hour.  Wait for them to dry and trim the felt.  

    Here is a picture of one I glued before I trimed the felt.

More Crochet. Lavender Flowers.

    There are loads of tutorials for the lavender flowers.  You won't go wrong with any of them.  I did use one tutorial for the flowers and one tutorial for the leaves because I thought the small leaves worked better with the flower.  These were fun to make.  It takes about 45 minutes to make the flowers and another 20 minutes to make one leaf.  I painted each skewer/dowel stick green that I glued the flowers to.  That was the easiest way for me to get color on it.  I didn't want to wrap it with yarn like one tutorial did.  I thought that was a waste of yarn.  Here is a picture of the small (using a 6 inch skewer) and large (using a 12 inch - quarter inch dowel stick) lavender flowers I made.  These are going to dear daughter.  I'm going to make some for me in the next few days.  

Crocheted Snowflakes

     It's never too early to crochet Christmas ornaments.  I found a lovely snowflake pattern on youtube by Jonna Martinez, the link to her youtube video is here.  

     I made the snowflakes with a size 3 white crochet thread and a size D crochet hook.  Each snowflake took about 40 minutes to make.  The video is very well done and easy to follow.  

    I made a total of 13 snowflakes.  Ten for dear daughter and three for me.  Here is a picture of them blocking them with glue to make them stiff.  

    I mixed 2 parts Mod Podge with 1 part water, stirred it up and I dipped each snowflake in the glue mixture until is was soaked, squeezed all the excess glue/water out then I pinned each snowflake out on an old pillow I bought at Goodwill just for this project.  They took about 8 hours to dry.

   I've been wanting to make some snowflakes for a while now.  I never made any before.  I enjoyed making these and I would have made more but my daughter has enough handmade decorations for her tree now.  

Air Dry Clay Success With Some Machine Embroidery Done

   A couple of years ago I bought some white air dry clay so dear daughter and I could make ornaments for her Christmas tree.  We used cookie cutters to cut out gingerbread men and stars.  We didn't get real crazy with it.  We left all the ornaments unpainted. 

   Dear daughter wants to make some of those big cement mushrooms for the garden and I have to say I want some in my garden as well.  They look easy to make.  While I wait for dear daughter to get in the mood to make the big ones, I crafted some small mushrooms from air dry clay.  These are easy to make and fun to mold.  I got the basics of working with air dry clay from several different Youtube videos, there are tons of air dry clay tutorials.  I love that organic shapes doesn't have to be perfect and my mushrooms are not perfect.  I made 5 of the mushrooms but only had room for 3 on my little tray I made. I let all my pieces dry for at least 72 hours before painting.  

   I'll be making more of these for my fairy garden that I want to construct in the future.

   I also took out my embroidery machines to finish up making some embroidered quotes for small decorative pillows for fall.  All I have to do is make up the little pillow forms, put a cute border on the quotes and put them together.  

If you got it, haunt it.

I'd turn back if I were you!

Home sweet haunted home

Let's boo this!  (for our fall Disney trip).

Happy Fall-i-days

   I've got about 12 of these little quotes/sayings to make for Christmas and I'll start those a little later in the year.

Fun With Beads And Wire

   I found a tutorial on how to make a wire wrap dragonfly sun catcher on Youtube on Jesse James Beads channel.  Link is here.  I haven't done a lot of beading except to make simple bead necklaces with multi colored seed beads.  My favorite.  This looked like it was too much fun not to try.  I bought beads (on sale at Joann's) and 20 gauge and 26 gauge silver wire.  The instructions call for a jig to shape the wings, but I shaped my wings without a jig and didn't have any trouble making them.  This sun catcher took me about 4 hours make.

   I bought clear beads, silver glitter beads and some larger white shaded beads to use for the head/tail.  I changed my mind about the large white beads for the head/tail and wanted a green bead instead. I was thinking about buying more beads when coloring the white bead was all I could think about.  Instead of painting the bead (so messy), I pulled out my Sharpie magic markers and found a greenish blue that wasn't dried up and just colored the white bead with it.  Love the look of the custom bead.  I did add a hanging wire to this after I too this picture that I attached to the top of the left and right wing.  You can always hang it directly from a wing for a wonky look.

   Here is the suncatcher I made for dear daughter.

Christmas Gingerbread Ornaments

   I just got back from a week in South Carolina spending time with my daughter, her doggie and her friends.  We made our home base in Greer, SC and were close enough to make a couple of day trips to North Carolina to visit the Arboretum and Biltmore Gardens since they are doggie friendly.  Anything not doggie friendly and I was there to stay at the VRBO rental to be stay with the doggie.  While dogsitting I would work on these little guys.

  These were easy and fun to make.  I made 6 of these but you can easily make enough for a gingerbread man army.  I used brown craft felt, tiny rick rack, ribbon for hanging, brown and white embroidery floss, black beads for eyes, tiny white buttons, fiberfill, and Alene's glue to attach the rick rack, and a little hot glue to attach the buttons.  You can also sew the buttons on.  Here is the link to the instructions I used:  link here.