Summercrafter

First Grade Project Gingerbread House with assistance from the Summercrafter, me! Children should not use hot glue!!   After we covered it with felt, we let the student use fabric glue to finish it off with pompoms and such. Home Made Tags: Card stock, stamps, ribbon, stickers, jewels: easy peasy! Santa Claus Broom Miniature Wreath (6-8 inches)

The Day after Christmas has always been such a downer. So much hype and anticipation and then there’s the day after .   You wake up still cleaning up boxes and paper and organizing new and old stuff and the dreaded task ahead of taking down the tree and decorations.   I find there are some things that make the 26 th less hum drum. First, plan to leave on a trip! Second, stay home in PJs watching movies all day. Third, have a crafting extravaganza! J Fourth, go out on the town doing something completely new. Fifth, of course, stay home and play with all the new stuff! What did I do? A little of the cleaning, a little playing with new stuff and a little bit of crafting. I was so happy to sit down and try this decoupage technique.   After having this sign for years, literally, I finally did this craft and it only took about an hour.   This is how I did it. 1.   Precut the shapes from the wrapping paper (I used Mary Engelbreit Designs) before yo...

Joy to the World  The Lord is Come, Let Earth receive her King! Let every heart prepare Him room. Merry Christmas friends!

Hi everyone, Thanks for reading and visiting my blog! I am thrilled that the page views for my blog are over 700, and I started the blog about 3 months ago. Mostly though, I hope that you are enjoying it as much as I am and maybe learning a thing or two along the way. Hey, maybe you are trying out some of the crafts. It's all about relaxing and expressing your own creativity and style, everyone's got some! What's really cool is that some of you are from all over the world! Hi to you in Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, South Korea, England, Brazil, and the good old USA, including Alaska and a new hit from Italy! That's amazing! So, I added a "FOLLOW" option besides the email option so I can see who you are! I am sorry I am not on facebook yet, that may be coming up at a later date... Please feel free to leave me a comment, just click "Add a comment" that is under each post. Tell me what you like, don't like and want...

Edna Ferber said "Christmas isn’t a season, it’s a feeling."  I agree with her. I love Christmas and the feelings that come with it. Celebration, anticipation, joy, detachment from realities of life, even if it's for a 2 hour Christmas movie escape.   Sure, who doesn’t love to open something, but it’s just not about that anymore. This year I noticed I have WAY too many Santa ornaments and not enough mangers, Holy Family, and especially the Baby Jesus. That’s what it’s about. Focusing on that is so difficult with the TV on, the mail—yes the mail, never mind the mall , the sales, and the traffic. Everywhere you go there is mayhem! This year I want to make room for Him. It’s a paradox, 2000 years ago there was no room in the Inn, and now, in my life, and in how many others, we are completly caught up in the commercialism and the hassle and bustle and there is still no room for Jesus. We must make room for the author and finisher of our faith. Case in point......

I have more room now, but not enough tables or surfaces. I want to deck the halls with boughs of holly, and the rooms with mini Christmas trees but it is slow in coming!   December has gone by so fast!!! Last year, I bought this 18 inch tree and put it on one of those round side tables that costs about five bucks in Kmart or Walmart. So I made this Ice Skate tree in winter colors. It’s decorated with shimmery snowflake ribbon for the topper, white lights—20 count, and ice skates made of felt, the blades are paper clips! This idea is from the featured magazine below.   Once I made the original red pair of ice skates, I went to town making them in different blues and white and varied the embellishments. Now, I am on the hunt for ice skate décor, watch, that’ll be the new trend for next year. Pier 1 has a knitted pair but they’ll be cuter when they are 75% off!  Ice Skate craft idea from this 2010 issue  What did I add for this year?  I adde...

I really didn't think I had done so much craft supply shopping this season.  I have so many "backed up" crafts to make from Christmases past and my crafting "Hope Closet." Originally, one of the reasons I started the blog was to "make" myself craft more often because the blog would kind of "keep me accountable."  After all, potentially, I would have all these readers depending on my crafty posts, right? : ) Anyway, in my zeal, I think that I over-estimated, even with the craft blogging, how much I could actually get done! Well, December is not over yet!! And I am really itching to make some quilts--no, not bedsized quilts, the anxiety that churns over the time it takes to make somthing of that magnitude is too much.  But I have resorted to a do-able compromise. I have seen them in loads of mags. Mini quilts.   They are perfect in the form of banners, place mats, rectangles & squares for small spaces and gifts. ...

The Better Homes and Gardens publishers have some great magazines . For some reason, I really like their layout and although I have seen others, these are still my favorite, and the ones I buy repeatedly. This one featured [Holiday Crafts] is a great magazine that comes out every year before the Holidays. It's supposed to come out in August but I never find it until October!   It has great ideas that are very doable and easy to modify to your own tastes or supplies. Naturally, after  I browse through and mark the pages (with tons of sticky notes), I make a list of things I don't already have, which are few , but nevertheless, a trip to the craft store is necessary!! List? check. Coupons? check. Sales fyer? check.  If I come out with ONLY the items on my list, it's quite an accomplishment and a rare occasion, although it has happened before. : ) The trend I have seen a lot of this year is wreaths made of yarn. I found them in this magazine and ...

My daughter wants to take the Christmas Card Photo with the sled... this year ? So, Summercrafter meets sled.  Upon closer examination, apart from the broken board I thought I needed the plumber's strap for, all the nails in it are rusted. No problem, pull those suckers out and replace with shiny new nails; I've got some of those and I have my very own hammer! Uh, not so fast,  if I am going to do it right, I should take it apart to sand it properly and after a coat of primer get a nice solid coat of "red colonial" paint on it.  How do you remove rivets? Ok, call in the professionals. My husband, Handyman, Jack, of all trades.  I was so excited to do a craft with my husband --then I saw the look on his face.... Me: "Well, what do I have to do that depends, as little as possible, on you?" Handyman:  "Well first, blah blah blah blah blah, DRILL, blah blah BLAST, blah blah blah, JIGSAW, blah blah blah, RUST, blah blah blah,...

Back by popular demand! I wanted to play a little more with these little ornaments using different designs, in addition to the teeny, tiny glass beads, I also added some tiny pearls and bugle beads. The apple and the Scotty are new and the flip flops I had done before. I wanted to give some as gifts and, a friend asked me to make some for her to give as gifts too.   They look real pretty when they are all in a box, like a gift set. I have some smaller balls I want to do too and another technique I want to try, painting the inside. I saw that idea in a craft magazine and on a blog several months ago. Let's see how those turn out! Summercrafter Designs I wonder how they'll look on the tree?

I really enjoy wrapping paper. When I was poorer, younger and had more time, I used to love wrapping gifts in brown butcher paper and painting on them with all sorts of paints and use thick wired or fabric ribbon to wrap the gifts. Who cares what was inside!  They just looked pretty and old fashioned like they should be sitting under a natural pine tree that was dragged in from the woods just behind the cottage in my imagination.  This cottage, of course, would be nestled comfortably amidst a sparse forest of trees whose leaves make that lovely swishing sound when the wind blows. Then outside the window you would see the sloping green grass that went down to meet the embankment of a creek or babbling brook. SIGH! But I digress. My favorite kind of wrapping paper was the kind they would sell through fundraising catalogs with the neat samples in the middle. This was the real thick wrapping paper that was like $7.00 a roll, about 20 years ago! I haven't...

 Cat in the Hat with  This craft was born from a gift I received for Christmas from a little girl named Kelly. She gave me a cinnamon broom decorated like Rudolf,the red nosed reindeer in 1989 or 1990.  Winded Snowman   Back then, I was teaching pre-school, and my students were 3 ½ years old. The children and I had so much fun.   We sang, we finger played, we read stories, we did lots of art, and sometimes we wouldn’t even follow the schedule!   It was the best job ever. I loved going to work, it was a blast and the children learned, go figure!    Sometimes the planning and scheduling were a little off, but creativity always saved the day!   So, 20+ years later, I think about going back to that: the fun, the joy, the creativity, the freedom. I asked a watercolor teacher I once had “why do we find out what we love to do so late in life?” she said “That is part of the  journey.”  The first one, a Cat Looking ...