Design Mouse
Originally uploaded by Flagstaff Mouse
Did you know there are over 100 types of mice in the world? One of the most common is the house mouse, or mus musculus.
Design Mouse, mus designus, is a lesser-known species. Design mice feed on creativity. They will use just about anything for nesting material - markers, sketchpads, ribbon, even typefaces.
This section of our blog will be dedicated to these crafty critters.
Happy New Year!
If you're looking for an alternative to resolutions this year, I suggest you check out the idea of One Little Word. I've been doing this for the last few years and I find it is much more impactful than a to-do list for the new year. Instead of focusing on what to do, it focuses on how I want to be in the world as I meet whatever the new year brings. For more information and background check out Ali Edward's blog.
My word for this year has been sneaking up on me over the last couple months. This morning I woke up knowing my word for 2012 is generous. I want to be generous with love, with gratitude, with listening, with art, with stories, with my family and with myself as I start a new chapter of life - motherhood. Last year my word was discover and I am still holding that word as I anticipate the arrival of our first child and everything my husband and I will discover together as we learn to be parents.
If you like to make your own cards but need a little creative boost, card kits are a great place to start. I find that they typically have enough supplies to make a lot more than the cards they specify. I took some classes at the CKC scrapbooking convention, which is where I made most of the cards in this post.
Here are my two favorite manufacturers for card kits that I have found to be fun and good quality. With all of them I have made more cards than what the kit specified:
Basic Grey: http://www.basicgrey.com/scrapbook/shop/category/card-kit
Technique Tuesday: http://www.techniquetuesday.com/category/Projects-And-Kits.html
The kits come with instructions and you can usually buy the papers separately. So, if you want to have more crafty fun with your friends, you can create more kits and host a card making day like I did this year. Using the kits is fast, too - I made all these cards in just a few hours during our card day.
Need some quick gifts for your neighbors or friends? These treat bags are easy to make and yet still personal. You could change the paper and treats for a different occasion, too.
Supplies:
Instructions:
See, wasn't that easy?
What can be more fun that creating with your friends at Christmas? Over the last few years we've been hosting parties to make and decorate gingerbread houses. This year we added a cookie decorating option for those who didn't want to try to get four walls to stand up. Every year we have a good time and see some very creative variations on the traditional house.
For houses I use a mini gingerbread house kit that my mom got me years and years ago. It's pretty basic, so you don't really need the cutters, you could just cut pieces from a template with a knife if you wanted to. The advantage of the small kit is that it doesn't take nearly as much time or icing to decorate.
I've collected a variety of decorating supplies each year. Some of the things we've used include: chocolate chips (different sizes and flavors), m&ms, gumdrops, gummy bears, marshmallows (this year there were all kinds of choices, including gingerbread men), candy snowflakes, sprinkles of all shapes and sizes, colored sugar, licorice (also comes in all shapes and colors), ribbon candy, pretzel sticks, candy canes, almonds, powdered sugar, red hots, and wafer cookies.
Some tips for hosting your own decoration party:
Here are some of the awesome creations from the last few years (and there are more if you click on the pictures and follow the link to my Flickr page).
A few years ago I bought a small live tree for my house. None of the tree toppers I had for my miniature trees were big enough, so I made this angel.
Materials:
Steps:
An advent calendar has been part of our Christmas tradition for as far back as I can remember. One year, I created a twist on this for my parents, who lived 13 hours away. I made 25 cards using family Christmas photos for the front of the card. Then I wrote my journalling on the inside of the card. I used foam stamps to decorate and number 25 envelopes.
I sealed the cards inside and sent two bundles, tied in ribbon, to my parents with the instructions that they should open one each day - according to the number on the envelope. Sending them in two batches meant that I only had to do 12 cards before December, then I had about a week to get the other 13 cards done.
For Christmas I gave my parents and album that had pages the size of the cards so they could put them all in one place. This was a fun way to use some of our many family Christmas pictures and capture some of my thoughts.
If you are a crafter & a photographer (or have one in the family) here is a great way to combine those two hobbies. And it's a quick way to make lots of Christmas cards. Not feeling crafty? You use the same concept by uploading your pictures to photo sites like Shutterfly and using their card templates.
Search back through your pictures and find ones that remind you of Christmas - they don't specifically have to be Christmas pictures. The pictures in these cards came from: a hunting trip with my dad, Christmas decorations in Sun City, AZ and a snow day when I first moved to Seattle. The snowman is actually made in the bed of my truck in a hotel parking lot. If you know you want to do this - plan ahead. Take pictures of details this Christmas and use them next year. I found the best pictures had a single focal point and some "blank" space. I printed off some pictures that were too busy and didn't end up using them.
Order a batch of 4x6 prints. How many you order depends on how many cards you want to make. I think I got these for free with one of the Shutterfly specials.
Cut your photos so that they are the main part of your card. You could do all cards the same size and shape if you want this to go even faster. I don't know why exactly, but I don't follow patterns well - I have to make each card a little different.
Embellish away. I used ribbon, stickers, rub-ons (these are great directly on the photo), vellum quotes and my own handwriting. This is the crafty part - so have fun with it.
Small Christmas trees have been a holiday tradition in my family. We often traveled during Christmas and it is easier to decorate many small trees than to do a large tree that we will only see for a couple weeks. My mom used to be able to find me cute miniature ornaments, which I got each day in my advent calendar. Now it is harder and harder to find good quality small ornaments. Some of the trees I found were also too small to support standard "miniature" ornaments. So I created my own. If you don't have small trees, these would also make great Christmas jewelry.
Here are a few of the ornaments I made for my 10" and 7" tall trees:
Supplies: Wire (small gage, but not too flimsy, different colors are fun), headpins (use the cheap ones unless you are making earrings), beads the right size for your tree and wire (I used a variety - some are glass, some are super cheap fake pearls, some are metal), pliers, wire cutters, fine-tip paint pens.
Instructions:
Swirl Glass Ornaments:
Vintage Heart Ornament:
Pearl Ornaments:
My mother-in-law bought a set of these Kirkland handmade gift tags from Costco a couple years ago. They are quite elaborate and it seemed a shame to only use them for one year. Maybe you even make your own elaborate handmade gift tags and don't want to see them go to waster. So here are three ways we've recycled them:
Here is a set of cards I made from the gift tags I saved. Each card is about 3"x5", depending on the size of the tag. It only took me a little over an hour to make 11 cards this way. For most of the cards I followed this basic formula:
