Decorating my Special Lanterns For Christmas

My husband really likes the way I’ve decorated the lanterns he gave me. I’m quite happy with the way they turned out.
These lanterns are special to me. It took me awhile to figure out how to decorate them without permantly changing the lantern body. I’m happy with the way I figured it out.
For the lower part, I took some plastic canvas and cut it large enough to fit like a collar on the lamps. I sat it on a piece of parchment paper to protect my table. I cut up a few inexpensive flower bouquets and hot glued them around the plastic canvas.
For the top, I crocheted a collar and hot glued some greenerery and bows on them.
Both of these decoration accessories are removable from the lanterns.
I had a fun day of designing and creating these decorations for my lanterns.
I’m probably going to make other decoration accessories for the lantern for other special times of the year. I think it’d be fun.

Wishing you all happy holiday crafting!

 


 

New Year and Christmas Thoughts – Card display

It was a dreary New Year’s day yesterday. The sun tried real hard to shine dimly through the thinner clouds. The temperature was quite nice, it was around 59°F.

For New Year’s dinner we had black eyed peas with ham, boiled cabbage, homemade chicken strips and corn bread followed by a slice of my homemade pumpkin pie.
I began making and baking my pumpkin pie around the midnight hour New Year’s Eve and it was still in the oven when the New Year rang in.
I’m considering ‘making a new year pie during the midnight hour’ a tradition. It would help me stay awake to ring in the new year. I hope I can remember it for next year. We shall see.

Here’s a few photos from Christmas 2018.
I managed to convince Sheli Bean to wear his Santa hat/vest long enough to get some photos of him. Then he delighted in taking the thing off and shaking it like he was trying to kill it. 😀

Our Grandson and SheliBean found a rare winter sun puddle to enjoy.

People don’t send out Christmas cards much anymore. We send out only about a half dozen. How to display the cards folks give us has always been an issue. This year, I had a brain storm and decided to hang a small cork board up to hang the cards on. I didn’t decorate the cork board much, but I’m happy with it. I plan to make this method of card display a part of our Christmas decor from now on.

Now back to today:
Do you still heve your holiday decorations up? We still have our tree up and all the decor. We’ll keep it up for a bit longer or until the mood hits to store it for the year. Fortunately, our livingroom is large enough that our Christmas tree and stuff doesn’t get in the way of normal living.

I hope you all rang in the New Year safely with happiness and smiles.
I’m wishing you all a year full of joy and success!

 

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Snowman made of cans

I realize this is a little late in the season, but I’ve been under the weather for the last week. Thankfully I’m better now.
I finally finished this snowman yesterday. I want to go ahead and post it. I got the idea from Pinterest seeing snowmen made out of cans.I absolutely adore this guy.
He brightens up the room and
makes me smile every time I look at him.

Wishing you all happiness with your Christmas projects.


Here’s a few highlights of how I made my snowman.

-I used 28 ounce cans.
-I used my old hot glue gun instead of my low temp glue gun. The glue’s slower setting and gives more time for moving the cans into place.
-I ran into an issue with hot gluing the cans together and having a neat seam. I also worried that the cans might snap apart if they got banged around any. I made a cardboard cap for the cans and hot glued it in the top and then hot glued the cans together at the cardboard ends. This worked out really well.
-For the brim of the hat, I glued 3 small paper plates together. I figure that my snowman won’t ever be outside so the paper plates wouldn’t be a problem.
-For the hat, I left the open end of the can up to put flowers and stuff in.
-My husband spray painted the hat black and then spray painted the body white.
-The white paint didn’t cover as well as I liked, so I went over the body with white acrylic paint and a coat of glitter paint.
-I hot glued the hat to the body.
-I sculpted the nose out of polymer clay and hot glued it on snowman’s face.
-I painted the eyes, mouth and buttons.
-I crocheted the scarf.

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Candy Cane decor

cannycaneI made a candy cane decoration out of empty paper towel tubes. It was harder than I thought it’d be to make the rounded crook of the cane. It took a few tries, but I figured it out and finally got one to came out fairly adequate.

Now on to my next project… whatever will it be…

I hope your week is filled with success
and Happy craftings!

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