Keepsake

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A house is not a home…

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…without a wreath. I’ve made lots of wreaths. I think I’ve got at least two blog posts on wreaths. You can find them here and here.  I figure now that Mr. Smith and I are finally settled into our own home it’s time I made a wreath for us. 

  
I used a pretty basic wreath form. As you can see here I already wrapped  a branch with some black twine.

  
I then just wrapped a couple of sections with some burlap ribbon to serve as my base.

  
Then it was time to pick out flowers and bits and bobs.

  
I felt like this flower needed a little embellishment so I added some hands of a clock. 

  
In fact I added the gears in another section. It’s the clock that I turned into a lantern last year, which you can see here.

  
I also warped a few keys into the vines

  
And easy as pie we have our own wreath for our own house. Finally 

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Mother of Dragons

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I made dragon eggs!!! Ok technically they are supposed to be pine cones but they definitely look like what I imagine dragon eggs look like. 

  
Start with some squares of paper 

  
Or alternately short lengths of ribbon (I used sticky back ribbon for extra ease) 

  
Fold your ribbon or paper so you have a peak and pin them onto your styrofoam ball 

  
Start with four “scales” all pointing towards one another, overlapping them in the center

  
Then cover your outside corners with four more

  
After that you can just start spiraling around with your “scales” being sure to overlap and cover your pins

  
It can be tedious

  
But so worth it

The if you want them as orniments simply find a means to hang them

  
For my first one (the ribbon dragon) I found one of the old drawer pulls from my infamous desk 

  
I (ok my dad cause I was a scardey cat) drilled all the way through, I used some guilding wax on it and strung some twine through.

  
 Then I just hot glued the repurposed handle to the top of the ball  to create a hangar  

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Clothes Pin-terest 

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As you saw in my last blog I’ve been scouring Pinterest for DIY Christmas ornament ideas so Mr. Smith and I can have some memories for our first Christmas as husband and wife (maybe even in our first house if everything goes to plan) 

I came across a few involving clothes pins the other day that looked pretty easy so I thought I would give them a go.

  
Start by taking apart some (by some I mean 8) wooden clothes pins.

    
Then glue the flat sides together like so

  
I followed that up by staining them  along with a lot of other Christmas ornament supplies by using diluted paint. That’s completely optional though

  
This is also completely optional. I wrapped the edges of the pins with washi tape. 

  
Next lay out your pins in a star/snowflake pattern. It’s easiest to first do four at 90* angles from each other and four in between those

  
  
Then find a bauble to glue to the middle on each side.

   
I chose to use a small fabric flower topped by a wooden snowflake

   
Just string some twine or ribbon through one of the small holes in the pins or glue one on and you’re all set

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Like Tiny Snowflakes 

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Mr. Smith and I are getting ready to buy a house and we get to move our hodge podge of stuff into it. Unfortunately that hodge podge does not include any Christmas decorations. 

  
So we are going to make some of our own this year. Here is a quick one I did over the weekend.

  
I started with one of these laser cut wooden snow flakes. Similar to my laser cut frames I painted a while ago and just as cheap.

  
Then I actually used washi tape to decorate something instead of as makeshift painters tape like I usually do. 

  
After covering the whole thing I just used an exacto knife to cut out the holes. 

  
So when I said quick that was a relative statement.

  
 It was something interesting to do while Mr. Smith played Fallout 4 in the background though. 

  
When it was all done I used some of the guilding wax that made an appearance last week to jazz it up a bit. 

  
Repeat on the other side, seal with clear acrylic, tie a ribbon to hang and you’re all set. 

  

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Something Old

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Clearance isles are the bane of my existence. This has already been established. But I couldn’t resist these little beauties

  
They are pendant frames, though to big for me to imagine actually wearing it as a pendant they are still very small.

I knew almost immediately what I wanted to do with them, I just needed cooperative subjects. 

So I sat Mr. Smith down for a picture. Then I had to get him to take a profile picture of me. That was a little harder since it was me trying to direct him so that he was exactly beside me. Height difference and all

  
I then printed off those pictures and cut out the silhouettes

  
Because the pictures were taken from different distances and different orientations (portrait vs. landscape) I then used my copier to shrink them down to appropriate and equal sizes.

  
 Then I just transferred the images onto the tiny canvases and used a fine sharpie to fill it in

   
As you can see my hair was a little to big and wild to fit in an oval frame and the texture of the canvas made using a sharpie not ideal. I’ll likely go over all of this with paint. Perhaps when I’m more comfortable with the medium given this week’s endeavors. It’s been all down hill since last week. 

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Keepsakes

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I like to make artwork out of things that aren’t really “art” I suppose it’s a bit like scrap booking, I call it Keepsaking.

 

So along with the foreign money I arranged in frames I framed another little keepsake. I was cleaning out my purse not too long ago and I found a ticket stub from Cinderella. I wasn’t overly wowed by the recent live action iteration of Cinderella (fingers crossed for Beauty and The Beast) however it has a more sentimental value. That was the night my boyfriend (ok fine fiancé) proposed to me.

 

When I found the frame for my calendar (you can see that here) I also found this rather epic frame on clearance. So I decided to put my tiny ticket stub in it.

First I had to make a mat for it though

I just cut an old mat up as a template. Then I used some washi tape to jazz it up

And finished off the edge with ribbon

Then, Hey Presto! I got myself a little keepsake for my desk at work.

Not to mention absolutely no excuse to forget that particular anniversary.

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Make it Rain

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Obsolete money.

Yeah, I have a strange plethora of foreign currency. A good bit of which is obsolete. At least the coinage is. A small portion of the paper currency may still be good, I’m not sure. At any rate I’m not using it for anything but décor. I had one of these done already, but then as I was cleaning out my bathroom for its recent remodel (which you can find here) I found a matching frame … kind of. I had forgotten I painted it to hide its gaudy gold. So then it was a matter of trying to paint the new found one to match several years after the fact.

A little brown, a little black, a little bit of pearl sheen. Eventually I got them to match up. Close enough at least.

Then I just arranged the money to fit into both frames instead of just piling it up on top of each other

What kind of artwork do you have that isn’t technically artwork?