Christmas Gifts #3 - RUN wall art

Jen is my race buddy.  We ran the Rock'n'Roll 5K in July, the Go! St. Louis Halloween 10K in October and in eight short weeks, we'll be running the Disney Princess Half Marathon!

 

For Christmas, I wanted to keep with our running theme.  I made this RUN wall art for her to hang all of her medals from finishing races. 

I got the letters at Hobby Lobby.  I drilled holes and glued the pegs in, then primed them.  I painted the letters to match her master bedroom.  Now the biggest problem will be what to do with all the extra medals when she runs out of pegs!

Christmas Gifts #2 - Explosion Box

I started my mom's gift months ago. A friend had shown me pictures of GORGEOUS explosion boxes that she had made and I was ready to try my hand at it.

I used Bo Bunny's Welcome Home collection for the box. I generally don't stick to "collections" when I do things, but this was such a huge undertaking, I thought starting out with everything that coordinated was a great idea :-)

I was excited to make the box interactive for my mom. There are tags to pull out with words and pictures inside. Some of the extras were "hinged" with brads so that they could be pulled aside.

I made the flower out of one of the patterned papers and one of the coordinating colors I bought to go with it. I cut each one 1/4" smaller than the previous, and used the end of my Xacto knife to "cup" the flower petals to give it depth.

I used a lot of the beautiful family photos we had taken in October!

It was definitely the Christmas present I was most excited to watch opened this year!

Christmas Gifts #1 - Yarn Wreath

I made this wreath for my aunt. She lives in a log home and it felt like the perfect rustic addition to her house!

Funny story, she flew in from Cleveland on Friday am before Christmas. I was in the living room and heard her say "Wow, this is a beautiful wreath!" I had a moment of "Oh crap!" because that was HER Christmas gift that I'd forgotten to take off my door and wrap. :-)

Luckily, my small partner in crime said "It's for YOU, Auntie!" to help avoid confusion ;-)

I followed the directions I found on Pinterest except that I used styrofoam instaed of the covered straw. I will DEFINITELY find covered straw next time, as the yarn stuck to the styrofoam and made it difficult to wrap.

I made all of the felt flowers, also using the tutorial from Pinterest. (I am LOVING Pinterest! - if you want to check out my boards, I'm here)
 

Homemade Christmas Part 2

The grandma's got brag books for Christmas!

 I've done a post about accordion albums before, and these ones were just as much fun as the first!

I used Zutter 4.25x4.25" chipboard covers on these accordion albums.

Lots of pictures of my daughter, some cute quotes and, on one of them, even some art work that she did herself!

I used a Crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the front for the jewel brads, then hot-glued the ribbon in place for the fastener These make great purse albums to carry around, ready to show off the grandbabies at the drop of a hat!

Homemade Christmas Part 1

A friend sent me a link to the Moda Fabric Wreath tutorial about 2 weeks before Christmas. And I decided it was a MUST for those "hard to shop for" people on my list! So I set out on a journey to find the honey buns to make them. I wound up ordering three from Etsy and one I found at Hobby Lobby (it was wider, with less variety than the honey buns, but it worked out!) 

These took an average of about two hours.

I had to do math, though, which I'm not good at. I enlisted my husband to assist me in determining how many knots would go in each section.  I had about 320 strips, so it was a lot of math to do. :-)

I think these turned out really beautifully!  

I loved the way they look all set up on my ottoman (there were more on my couch arm!)  I will warn you, though, the honey buns shed like CRAZY! I'm still finding little strings in odd places in my house :-) But it was well worth it!