Give-away: Week 3

Riddle: What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus? (answer below)

With Christmas getting closer and closer I thought I'd do another ornament give-away - Santa and friends.

This week one lucky person who comments on this post will win all three ornaments:

Santa (upside down because he's going down the chimney)

Rudolph

and Happy the Christmas Elf!

Leave a comment on this post telling me about your favorite Christmas tradition by midnight Thursday, Dec 11 EST to be entered to win all 3 ornaments! As always, I'll be happy to ship them anywhere in the world so all entries are welcome. Be sure to leave me some way of getting in contact with you (a link to your blog or email address) in case you're the lucky randomly chosen entrant! I'll announce the winner in a post Friday, Dec 12.


Answer: Claustrophobic

Give-away: Week 2

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

~Maya Angelou

For this week's Christmas give-away (don't forget I'm hosting a give-away every weekfrom now until Christmas), I'll be offering one of my favorite handmade bird ornaments from my previous post. This little guy to be exact:


I think the little tuft of black on his head gives him so much personality!

If you'd like to add him to your ornament collection, then just leave a comment on this post telling me about your favorite holiday decorations. It can be something that you hang yourself, something that you drive-by on your way to work or school that as soon as it goes up marks the start of the holiday season for you, or perhaps something that you traditionally drive out to see every year.

Tell me about your favorite decorations and you'll be entered to win the little birdie ornament. I'll gladly ship anywhere in the world if you're the randomly chosen entrant. Just post by midnight EST Friday Dec 5, for your chance to win. Be sure to include your email address or a link back to your own blog so that I can contact you if you win! The winner will be chosen in a random drawing and announced Saturday Dec 6 .

I look forward to reading all about your favorite holiday decorations!

Participant in Sew Mama Sew Give-away Day. Hop on over to sew mama sew for a list of all the participants.

edit: I've extended the dates of this giveaway to Dec 5th because of the huge list of participants! Thanks so much to everyone who's visited and entered!

Cinnamon bird ornaments

As I've mentioned before, the theme of this Christmas, for me, seems to be birds. Don't ask me why - I have no idea! I saw these super cute cinnamon bird ornaments in a Martha Stewart magazine, though, and I just had to make them. They are really easy to make and turn out very nicely with very minimal effort.

This is all you need to make the dough:
Cinnamon, apple sauce and craft glue.

You mix it all together,


and roll it out.


Then you cut out the templates (you can download the templates at the link I provided above)


trace around the template onto the dough and let dry for 24 hours. They mention in the article that you can bake them for 2 hours at 200 degrees in the oven. I did this for some of them and the ones I baked turned out much darker than the ones I air-dried. This affects the way the glitter and beads look, and I liked the look of the lighter dough better.

Anyways, after they're dry you use various colors and sizes of glitter and beads to decorate and voila you have some beautiful bird ornaments.






Stop by Wednesday Dec 3 to enter to win one of my favorite of these guys in my Christmas give-away #2!

Bloggers ornament exchange

"The love of ornament creeps slowly but surely into the female heart."
~Anna Maria Hall

I received my ornament from the blogger's ornament exchange today. Check it out!



I love it! I do hope she likes what I sent her too...
**actually feeling a bit nervous about it**

Christmas ornament exchange

"It is the beautiful bird which gets caged."
~Chinese proverb

I finished the ornaments for my bloggers ornament exchange. I used a bird pattern from spool sewing and tweaked it a bit to make three fun fabric bird ornaments.

Here's how I did it:

First I downloaded the bird pattern as mentioned from spool sewing. I knew I wanted three ornament so I chose 4 fabrics, the crazy striped one to be the belly on all of them and then one for each of the 3 bird bodies.

I cut out the two pieces from the contrasting fabrics - one bird body, on the fold, and one bird belly.



Next as per the directions on spool sewing (just want to be sure I give them their due credit), I pinned and sewed the belly, first to one side of the bird body, right sides together, then to the other. Spool sewing touts this as a good simple hand sewing project, but I went ahead and carefully and slowly used my machine and I think it turned out ok.

I will mention that always starting from the tip of the belly no matter which seam I was sewing made the intersections come out quite nicely.

Next, I inserted a piece of looped gold cord so that the loop was on the current inside of the bird (which flipped to be the outside).

I found it easier to sew if the two ends of the cord were side by side rather than on top of each other.

Then I carefully stitched the bird's head closed stitching the cord into the very back edge of the seam.

You might notice that the thread I used in this demonstration picture is red, but I found it very important to use matching thread for the real deal because I liked to stuff my birds pretty tightly which caused the stitches to show a bit.

Next, I clipped the corner of the beak and turned it right side out. With the cord on the right side it made it much easier to flip the bird right side out. I found the tip of my closed scissors worked nicely for popping the beak right side out.

I then stuffed the bird and hand stitched his tail closed. I repeated these steps three more times with the other fabrics and my fabric bird Christmas ornaments were born!

But did I stop there? Oh no! I thought they needed a bit of je ne sais quoi, so I sewed on a few beads with gold metallic thread to give them a bit of shininess and flash. They sparkle nicely in the glow of the Christmas tree now. Though, I think the simple fabric birds would be quite lovely hanging on a tree as well!

Fabric Scraps

"People always say congratulations. When you’re a successful bidder it means you’re willing to spend more money than anyone else. I’m not sure if that’s congratulations or condolences."
~Eli Broad



For the ornament I think I've settled on for my blogger's ornament exchange I need fabric scraps (as the deadline for this project is quickly approaching). So I decided to take a chance on a fabric scrap auction on ebay. For $5, with free shipping, I'm supposed to be getting "alot of fabric" in my scrap pack. I don't really buy much from ebay and I've certainly never bought anything without seeing it. But I did look at her other auctions which included fabric and fabric crafts and it looked like pretty nice stuff, so we'll just have to wait and see how it goes. I figured for $5 it could be an interesting gamble at the very least...