AAWA 12 days swap..day 8

This photo should have been posted yesterday. Below is a tag that Linda sent to our group. I copied a photo of the tag from our groups photo album. The post office failed me, because my envelope never arrived, as it must have got lost in the mail. I am still hoping my tag makes it way to me. The tag is beautiful isn't it?

I think the snow in that tag brought the real thing. It started  snowing late Sunday afternoon.

AAWA 12 days swap...day 7

On the 7th day of Christmas my friend Liane sent to me, a package wrapped in green. Inside I found a beautiful paper rosette ornament. The ornament was made with double sided holiday colored cardstock.
It is very pretty. Thanks, Liane!

AAWA 12 days of Christmas...On the 6th day of Christmas

Another morning of anticipation, trying to guess what was inside the day 6 package. I could hear a faint jingle bell sound. Before I opened my gift I had to take a photo.
Kris's gift was in a decorated cellophane bag and the gift was wrapped in green tissue paper.

The gift inside...a  hand carved, painted wooden cardinal ornament. Kris used parts of a doilie to decoupaged  her little birdie. I love cardinals. Such a treasure. Thank you Kris!

Easy Victorian girl snowflake ornaments

Last evening I was reading some blogs, and on Robin's blog, I saw some beautiful victorian snowflake ornaments. There was a link to the blog, joli-paquet where Robin found the ornaments that she made. On the blog there was a wonderful tutorial, and free images of two little girls to use on the ornaments. Lovely!


I knew I had a box full of the plastic snowflake ornaments in the basement. So, downstairs I went, and brought up a few of the snowflakes. I didn't feel like digging for the box of lace, and other embellishments, so I used what was close at hand to make my ornaments. I also don't have glimmer mist or platinum stickles. With a sponge brush, I lightly applied a coat of Delta Ceramacoat Gleams Metallic File Gold, acrylic paint, which is very sheer when applied on paper. For the back, I punched out a circle of scrapbook paper of sheet music design. I added small flowers, and ribbons that I had on hand.
So, this is my version of the Victorian girl snowflakes.
I was happy with my first attempt at creating the ornaments. I want to make more of these to tuck onto Christmas gifts. They were very easy to make and didn't take any time at all.  You should give these a try for a fast and easy ornament or gift tag.

AAWA 12 days of Christmas swap-day 5

This morning was time to open the day 5 gift from Ellen. Below is the envelope that the gift arrived in.

Inside the red tissue paper, I found beautiful gift tags. Oh my, so pretty, don't you think! I already know which wrapped Christmas presents these tags will go on.

Christmas is fast approaching and I still have lots of wrapping to do, how about you?

AAWA 12 days of Christmas swap-day 4

Day 4 was my day to make a small gift for the ladies in Group 2.
Last year I made heart shaped fabric pillows that could be used as an ornament or to hang in the recipients art room. I tried to use fabrics that related to everyone's particular likes and hobbies. You can see the fabric hearts in my picturetrail album.
This year I made beaded  crystal icicle ornaments. I used crystal beads in graduated sizes strung on a 3 inch, silver head pin.
This is how I wrapped all of my gifts:

I hope the ladies in group 2 like their crystal icicle ornaments.

Glass box with Christmas lights and another easy card

While I was in Michael's today, I found  heavy, square, glass boxes with an opening on one side. You can insert whatever you want to put inside the glass box. The boxes came in 2 sizes, but I could only find the smaller size. The opening on the smaller glass box is a round hole with a plastic plug. The larger glass box has a rectangular shaped hole on the side. I bought a few of the glass boxes to make into Christmas gifts.

I removed the round plastic plug and inserted a strand of 20 clear mini Christmas lights into the glass box. I  then tied a sheer blue/silver bow to wrap the glass box to make it look like a gift. I used a whole roll of ribbon that was 9 feet in length. In the photos because it was already dark, the ribbon looks purplish, but it is a pretty royal blue. I can see that I need to straighten the ribbon a bit, as it is twisted on the bottom in one of the photos. I bought rolls of different colored sheer ribbon to use on my other boxes.
The lighted box was hard to get a good photo.
Below are photo's taken from the  top of my wrapped glass gift box, front and side pictures. I think this will look really pretty sitting on a table all lit up.





I love how these came out, and it took all of 5 minutes to put together.  I think it is really pretty all lit up. What do you think?

Also, this morning before I left to go shopping and go to the post office to mail out a few packages, I started a Christmas card. I used a piece of navy blue cardstock, a Dreamweaver snowflake stencil, Dreamweaver Embossing paste and glitter. I have glitter everywhere. Oooh, what a mess. When I got back home this afternoon, I put my card together as the paste had dried.

Well, that's my projects for today. I still have to finish working on the rest of my Tim tags.

AAWA 12 days of Christmas swap-Day 3

This morning was time to open my day 3 package from Dawn. How fun to get to open a small gift every morning until Christmas.  I have a confession to make. When I was a younger, I was so very bad. Yes, I was! It drove me crazy to see packages under the tree with name on them. If my parents went out, I would carefully unwrap and then rewrap my gifts after I peeked at what was inside and put them back under the tree.  When Tom and I first got married he would keep my gifts hidden somewhere else, because he knew I would peek. I didn't get my gifts from Tom until Christmas morning. I don't do peek anymore. :-)

Here is my wrapped package and gift from Dawn.

Hammered copper wire that has curled ends with little charms of a gingerbread man, candy cane and ornament. I love to read, and so I am sure this bookmark will get lots of use.

Lenna's Mail Art Swap package arrived today

Awhile back I joined an envelope mail art swap hosted by Lenna Young Andrews of Creative Swaps.  Today I received my swap envelope with the swap. Yipee!!!
Click on the photos to see an enlarged image of the fun envelopes.
Lenna's large envelope held the other mail art envelopes. I love that fun crow image with the letter in it's
mouth. Didn't Lenna use some fun images and art on her envelope?
.
Below: Front and back of envelope by JoAnn Reichert, Butler, PA...so colorful.


Below: mail art envelope by Kelly Hendrickson/Rogers, MN..love that stamped image

 
Mail art on large envelope front and back from: Julie Coon/Debary, FL

the back of the large colorful envelope has a picture of an older golden retriever, and it reminded me so much of my beloved Bear who we lost to cancer a little over a year ago.

Thanks Lenna, for hosting this fun swap, and thanks to Joann, Kelly and Julie for the fun envelopes.
If you are interested you can view the envelopes I created for this swap on my blog, in a post- November 7, 2010 you will find my envelopes, and on November 9 the fabric postcards I tucked inside my decorated envelopes.

AAWA 12 days of Christmas swap-Day 2

This morning I opened my 2nd package in our 12 days swap. Cyn, created a beautiful ceramic tile magnet. The magnet has  a red bow and the word JOY that looks like peppermint stick candy attached to the top. The photo doesn't do this piece justice, because a lot of sparkle doesn't show up. Cyn also created a gorgeous snowflake card.

AAWA Yahoo group-12 days of Christmas swap

DAY 1
I should have posted this yesterday, but I didn't get a chance, because I got home late and I was tired from hosting my dad's 92nd birthday party.
Anyway, this year on the A Affair with Art, yahoo group that I belong to, instead of having a 25 days of Christmas swap like last year, Yooper hosted a 12 days of Christmas swap. The start date was yesterday, December 12th. 12 participants in each group, and we had 3 groups. I was in group 2. Everyday we will get to open a small gift from one of the members in our group. How fun!
So, last night I opened my first gift that Candy created. Below is the wrapped gift before I opened the package, and the beautiful embossed rubber stamped tag with silk flower that I found inside. The lovely tag was tucked inside the fun tag holder. Thank you, Candy.

Day 6 Tim tag

I started my day 6 tag last evening, but finished it this morning. This is my version of Tim Holtz's day 6 tag to share with all of you.
First off, I don't have any reindeer rubber stamps, or dies to cut out a reindeer shape. So, after thinking about what I could use, I decided on a snow/snowman themed tag. For some reason on my finished tags the white snow created with a rubber stamp and Adirondacks snow white acrylic paint dabber don't end up showing up when I take a photo of my finished tags. I think the reason is that the rubber stamp I am using has really small dots on the surface, whereas the stamp Tim uses has bigger surface areas on his dotted stamp. I bought the SNOW scatterable confetti at WalMart.  I originally bought the package to use on holiday cards, but I think the piece worked out great for my tag.  Tree stamp is by G Rated, and the snowman is a scrapbook sticker. The iridescent snowflakes were something I've had for years, but the small clear snowflake was something I picked up in Michael's or AC Moore. I used a strand of small iridescent beads with a beaded pearl snowflake accent for my tag fibers. The Martha Stewart course crystal glitter on the bottom of the tag really doesn't show up in this photo.
 
I like how this tag went together.  Now, to day 7 tag.
Have a wonderful day. I have errands to run, but it is frigid outside, so I am in no hurry to go outside. :-)
P.S...figures...When I went to Tim's blog this morning, his day 10 tag has a snowman on it. :-) Oh well!
I almost used palm trees with a stamped image of Santa with a pack of stamping supplies on his back when I first started thinking about creating this tag.