Gingerbread houses 2012

As a family we had our gingerbread house day! We do this during Christmas vacation & this year we had the supplies as the treats in the Christmas stockings ;)

 Our village :)

 Above is mine: I made a barn and silo this year.

Above is my husband's.

Above is our 8.5yearold's "mansion" and our 6yearold's "castle."

 It's SO easy to just use old boxes and cartons- tape them together, then just stick on graham crackers via frosting!

Want to see the previous year's gingerbread houses? click here

Gifts I made

I made a lot of the gifts we gave this Christmas.

 I really like this wire & bead nest idea; had fun making a few (one for me too!)

These three above were all made a bit differently.

Here is the tutorial that helped me: (click here) 

And these bracelets were fun to make and to give as well. :) (which you fasten by putting the last button through the loop on the other end)

Here is a tutorial as well: (click here)

 I made two of these on old rough plank wood I had.
(I hand-made a tree & water design which I cut out of paper for a mask, and the letters are stickers I placed too. Then I painted over it all, then removed the tree and letters.)

detail (btw it is Psalm 1:3)

And last but one of my faves: my almost-3-year-old nephew loves his swords and tools and so I made some accessories that slip on a belt and hold swords and tools. Essentially a toolbelt. I used mesh and felt (with hot glue, gotta love that stuff).

Personal Canvas Collage

 I asked a friend of mine what her favorite verse is and she said it is Philippians 4:13.  I also asked her what hymn is her favorite, and she replied: "Great is Thy Faithfulness." That hymn is beneath the black paint, although it is hard to see...

My friend also recently re-decorated using a lot of distressed black.
Today is her birthday and this is for her! :)

More Canvas Collage

I got to play more with making collage on canvas.

Above is the detail of one new piece below. I made it by cutting up a picture of a field of flowers. Then I placed all the letters (stickers), painted a wash of white over them all, then peeled off the letters to reveal the picture. (And for the missing piece area, I pasted an old Bible page on, placed letters, then painted black and peeled away letters.)

 This one above says: "God is putting together all the pieces, and He will fill what is still missing with His peace."

Here's another detail of another piece. Beneath it all is sheet music for the song "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." Again this was by placing then peeling letters. And I added a picture of raindrops on a blade of grass, and also cut out a tree shape from decorator paper.

 This one is Jeremiah 17:7 "Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him."

And lastly, one of my favorites (it was hard to give away!),
here's a detail:

I painted over a magazine picture. The verse (done with applying then removing stickers again) is Galatians 6:9 "And let us not be weary in welldoing, for in due season we shall reap: if we faint not."

Here is a grrrrrrrreat song called "Faint Not," if you need some encouragement! (click here) Enjoy!

[btw I will be donating these canvases to be auctioned off at a benefit for a friend in November! See another piece which I gave as a gift: (click here)

Thanks for visiting!]

More Canvas collage

 Played with altering cheap canvases again. After I painted over the existing art, I pasted this sheet music print onto the top canvas. Then I placed vinyl letters over it and painted a little more before peeling away the letters. For the one with the tree, I cut out the tree shape from the same music, and glued that on, but the "with my soul" has a bible passage under it instead.

a close-up.

Crayon room

 That little artist's green room in my previous post has had a makeover. This idea is from the mind of an imaginative 5-year-old. After I said she could have a crayon/artist room and so asked her what color the walls should be, she said, "Blue, like the sky, and the crayons are falling in the sky all over. That's how I imagine it." So I said okay...

 It is a brave thing to take a pencil to a newly-painted, pristine wall, and boldly scribble clouds! But I did, after I had put up an artist-theme bulletin board trim (dollar store) all around for a border at chair-rail height. Then I let the kids fill in my cloud drawings with big, circular motions.

 I got large plastic crayon banks at the dollar store, and used a box-cutter to slice them in half, and then place them on the unused wall in entryway. There is the hanging art in background (above)

 I even put a big plastic crayon on her lamp to the left.  Then we made many large crayons out of craft foam and littleartist arranged them (the aforementioned falling-in-the-sky idea).

We added more crayons on the tabs of the curtains, and lastly, I wrote with crayon (yes, wrote on the wall with crayon) the first ten verses of Psalm 139 along the top of the wall (wraps around the whole room).

Hanging kids' art

I have always let my kids tape up their art to their walls-- it's their space and I will be painting over it again anyway. (Wow the camera is showing up the residue from tape....) Well I wanted to get some reins on the abundance of tape and art going on, so put up some rolls of clearanced ribbon and we now only clothespin the art onto the ribbon on the walls. Looks fine even if they are empty, and it is more orderly. Fun project anyway. (hey, to view the above bedroom's farm theme, here is the old post when we did it).

(This kid is def a little artist --you should have seen the "before" picture!)

Winter arrangements

It's always fun to switch certain decorations in each new season. Putting away my Christmas stuff finally, I arranged new Winter decor--snowflakes and frosted pine cones a necessity. New idea this year: pussywillows in the water jar around river rocks.

(wouldn't it be fun to be an artistic florist?) bonus: the picture in the frame above is:

Collage on stretched canvas

So I got some kinda craft bug, and I painted over a dollar-store "stretched canvas." ...I pasted a female cardinal from a magazine cover, and a (picture of a) Bible page. My favorite experiment in it was the letters: I placed letter stickers over the first layer of paint, then painted/sponged a darker color over them, then I peeled off the stickers.

Of course the Scriptures paired with a bird in the snow were: from Matthew 6... "look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store up in barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable to Him than they?" :) ...Hence the lettering of "Be still." (--which is like Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God."

And, randomly, I had this idea to add to my beach-y bathroom. That was fun. Thanks for visiting!

Crayon art

Just for fun, I made a crayon decoration, inspired from a pin I saw on pinterest. Right now it is at our children's art table. E (for all our names) was easier than S (for last name)!