Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Christmas Crafts - A Sneak Peak

Well, my Christmas Craft Show is this Saturday and I'm basically ready. Yay!!!!! I have packed up most of what I have made, so I will take pictures at the craft show, but I have a few things to show you a sneak peak.

I found both of these ideas on Pinterest.


"Joy" signs made from weathered wood found on our property. I printed out the letters on copy paper, then cut them out and traced them on the wood.  Then I painted in the letters and I sanded down the white letters to make them more distressed.  I tied a strip of burlap around them and I found the bell with the pinecones and greenery at Dollar Tree.  I nailed on a metal picture hanger on the back. (Actually, I did that before I attached the bell, so it wasn't in the way.) Done!

The tag says, "Monday the washing..."




Saturday, October 11, 2014

Sold Out at the Farmers' Market

Ben, Rebekah and I took our pumpkins and gourds to the last Farmers' Market of the year yesterday.  We only ended up with about 30 pumpkins (plus 9 that we kept) in our patch this year and about 40 gourds, so the Farmers' Market seemed the best way to sell them.


I didn't think they would sell because they were still a bit green.  The really green one one the pick-up is the Goosebumps variety and it takes a long time to turn orange, but I kind of like them green.  I couldn't believe the pumpkin frenzy we created!  We sold out of pumpkins in an hour and a half and we only came home with 10 gourds!

It was a fun morning.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Make Your Own Fall Fixin's

It's my busy crafting time of year again. Well, actually, it's only busy because I am a huge procrastinator.  I was at a Farmers' Market today and wanted to bring some fall themed crafts.  Last year for a Christmas Craft Show I made Winter Fixin's, which you can see here.  I thought it would be cute to make some Fall Fixin's.  Really, that is just a new name for potpourri with neat things in it.
 
So, I went out and picked rose hips off the wild rose bushes that grow here.  Usually I pull the long poky things off before I dry them. Then I bake them at low (170 deg) temperature for 1 - 2 hours.  I learned that this is necessary, rather than letting them dry naturally.  I let them just dry on their own a couple of years ago and made potpourri and put it in bags.  When I went to use it, there were these little grubby type worms in the bag with the rose hips! Ew! I found that drying them in the oven kills these worms. You can see a bunch in the picture below.
 

I wanted to put little crows and pumpkins in these Fixins, so I pulled out a package of modeling clay I bought at the dollar store last year and made a bunch of each.  This one package made enough crows and pumpkins to make 8 packages of Fixin's.  That is 2 crows and 3 pumpkins in each package.  To make the indentations on the pumpkins, I used scissors and just started at the top, pushing the scissors in the pumpkin and curving the scissors to indent all the way to the bottom and did this equally spaced around the pumpkin.  I made the stem and then poked a hole in the pumpkin to stick it into.  I let these air dry for 2 days and noticed they weren't completely dry yet, so I baked them on low temperature for about 1 hour.  I  painted the crows all black with a little grey dot on each side for eyes.  I painted the pumpkins with "Americana" Honey Brown paint.  I painted the stem with "Ceramcoat" English Yew Green.  Then I mixed "Americana" Dark Chocolate  paint with 2 parts water to make a wash and covered the entire pumpkin with it to grubby them up a bit.  When all the clay figures were dry, I sprayed them with gloss clear acrylic spray paint.

 
I  added some star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves and pine cones to it and this is what I ended up with;


I Love it!!

 
And here is the packaging I made to sell it in.  I found the crow clip art on our Microsoft Word Starter Edition clip art.  I used 6.5"x6" zippered sandwich bags (which I found at the dollar store in boxes of 50) for the bags.  I made sure to poke a hole through the bag where you can't see it to keep some air flow, just in case the clay isn't completely dry all the way through.
 
 
Here is a (blurry) close-up.
 
 
These turned out exactly as I had envisioned in my mind and I couldn't be any happier with the outcome.
 


Thursday, October 9, 2014

Throw Back Thursday

I love looking at people's Throw Back Thursday pics. So, here is one of my own.
This is Jacob and Rebekah at our pumpkin patch 3 years ago.