Gearing Up for Christmas/ The Tree Skirt

I modified a basic Christmas tree skirt pattern to make my new crazy quilt/gear Christmas tree skirt.

This is the pattern I used:




I traced the boarder pattern onto a large piece of paper ( we have a large roll of art paper) and added the gear teeth, spaced as shown in the picture below:




I made the center panels by sewing together fabric scraps in a random/crazy quilt style, with lace, rickrack, appliqués, and charms.

The Christmas Tree

We went tree shopping yesterday afternoon and today we decorated it.



Our treat after we finished decorating the tree: a vanilla ice cream ornament

The Gold Glitter Top Hat Tree Topper

This cheap party store top hat was labeled "steampunk", but was not at all attractive.




I removed the hatband and sprayed it all over with gold glitter paint.

waiting for the paint to dry:




It will be the topper for our Christmas tree, but first it was the hat I wore to school on Thursday for "silly hat day".




I think it would also make a fine New Years Eve party hat (it now has that kind of over-the-top showiness).

Here it is on the tree:

Gift Tags

I love Urban Threads! They not only offer really awesome embroidery designs at really good prices, but I have discovered that the designs made for hand embroidery make good graphics and coloring pages.

I used some of their steampunk Christmas designs to make these gift tags,



along with the Mechanical Fanfare Alphabet for lettering.

Here is the pattern for two sizes of tags. Just print out this picture as a full page:



Antiquing the edges of the was very easy. I simply rubbed the edges directly on the Distress Ink pad. I also used the ink to color the hole reinforcement stickers.



Our first use of the tags was on the Christmas cactuses that Blaze gave to each of his teachers and his speech therapist.

My Other Blog

Since about the middle of the summer, I have been keeping a blog for the Trilogy School elementary classes. It is a small private school. At the moment our entire elementary program consists of only 11 children, so if you are looking for homeschooling ideas, many of our classroom activities could be easily adapted.

http://trilogy-school.blogspot.com/

Beeswax Airships

This evening I discovered that regular, thin plastic, chocolate molds can be used to make beeswax ornaments, without the plastic melting.

Just melt beeswax in a double boiler. I create my own double boiler by placing a clean can in a pot of water. That way I can throw the can away, instead of trying to clean wax out of a pan.

The hanging loop is made from embroidery floss, which is placed in the mold prior to pouring in the hot wax.





The light colored airships are plain beeswax. The ones that look like milk chocolate are colored with shavings from a brown beeswax crayon (about a 1/4 crayon). The darker brown was made by adding more brown crayon. For the black airships, I added about half a black beeswax crayon to the existing brown wax.


Beeswax ornaments of the past:
http://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2008/12/birthday-and-christmas-prep.html

Planning to Do Nothing

There will be no exciting outing for me to post pictures of this Saturday. We have purchased crackers, cheese, fruit, and pepperoni, so that we don't have to cook and have declared Saturday "a pajama day". We are all gathering books to read, movies to watch, and in my case, a little hand-sewing, and we are going to lay around in bed all day, rising only to forage. I think a relaxing day to de-stress will do us all a lot of good.