Nutcracker Themed Envelope

This is a recent envelope I did.  This stamp from the Vintage Circus Posters set reminded me of a ballerina and one of my aunts is fond of The Nutcracker, so I thought it was a perfect theme for this time of year.  I did a little research and discovered that there are three main sets/scenes, so I divided the envelope into three panes with "Stage curtains" to divide it.  I used highlighters, markers, colored pens, metallic & paint markers and colored pencils as well as a few stickers.  Not perfect, put quite cute I think.

I thought the part that turned out the best was the tree, I've played around with drawing pine trees this year, you may have seen my earlier version in my December 13 Smiles Sent post.  I finally settled on giving a light background with a highlighter, drawing random branch bases with a fine tipped brown marker, then came back with a green pen and added needles.  Rather easy yet a nice effect.

Also, as it's Christmas day, I thought I'd share a photo of my "mail-able" gifts!  I really like to get this kind of things, you can see from the photo at the bottom of this post from 2012!

Christmas 2014 decorations

Welcome to a quick tour of our house decorated for Christmas

Just inside the front door.

Greeting card display.

Christmas Envelope

I didn’t decorated most of my Christmas card envelopes (since I couldn’t figure out a way to match) but I did write a letter last week, and found a fun way to decorate the envelope.  The tree was a stencil, but I free handed the rest, I just used a pack of gel pens.  I think it turned out pretty cute, and was quite easy.  I ended up extending the snowflakes up to the address which I wrote in a matching pen.  Below you can see how it matched the paper.  I just think doing something like this really dresses up a letter almost like wrapping a present or decorating the inside of a mailbox.

Christmas House Tour

Well, it’s time to give an overview of our house decorated for Christmas (Note: the bold, colored text will take you to a photo & post about it).  Last year I started the tour in the kitchen, well, I’ve already covered the kitchen as a whole, the top of the china cabinet, and the hutch, so I’ll skip it and you can see it in the links.  I also did a post about our table, but now for what  I haven’t posted yet.  You can see our tree at right and below, I didn’t do a separate tree post this year since it is almost the same as the tree we did last year, actually it just had less ornaments…

Kitchen for Christmas

Here’s how our kitchen is decorated for Christmas.  You can see the hutch just inside the door, and more details on the top of the china cabinet/tall hutch in my posts on them.  I also posted about our table that is in another room.  But here’s an overview of our kitchen all decked.  Here you see the corner inside our door where we lay things like purses and keys when we’re getting ready to go out.  The cookie jar belonged to my great grandmother.  We use a modified sugar cookie recipe of her husband’s which we bake on cookies sheets from another great grandmother’s. Well, let’s get on to the rest of the kitchen…

Metallic Christmas Table

So, here’s our Christmas table.  I decorated it a little later, I’d done something simple, but then I decided to ratchet up the decorating. My grandmother gave me the trays and we had some balls left over.  Since the table runners I already had on, and our china from my great grandmother had silver on the rim, so I decided to go with a metallic look.  One great thing about this table is I just used things I had on hand, so it didn’t cost me anything, yet I think it worked out well.

 

Top of China Cabinet

Well, I don’t have a mantel in my house.  We live in a farm house, parts of which are 100+ years old, but there are no longer any fireplaces.  So I have a couple substitutes: this China Cabinet/hutch and the other hutch in the kitchen. The other hutch has a more refined-fancy look, but with this I decided to go for a more classic colors and look on this one with a focus on children.  Ice-cream doesn’t really make me think of Christmas, but that’s where the churn stays, and children enjoy ice-cream, so I thought I’d leave it. I hope to post about the rest of the cabinet later, and if I do I’ll add

Christmas Hutch

In the past I’ve looked at the date for Christmas linkys I’ve thought, “But I’m not all decorated by then”.  Well, this year since we didn’t get to make the trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, and wanted to be ready early since I had my wisdom teeth out last week, we were almost completely decorated before December came around.  This is the hutch just inside our main door.  It’s supposed to be a staging area, but I’ve been keeping it pretty decorated for holidays this year (Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Summer, & Thanksgiving) so that hasn’t worked out to well.  The runner is the same one I used for Valentines (it’s the back of the one I used for Thanksgiving.). The sleigh is where we put the cards we receive until they are open and hung in their place (we tend to open the cards together as a family).  This is the nativity scene is one I picked up a few

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, it’s Thanksgiving, so I thought today would be a good time to give a wrap-up of my Thanksgiving posts.  Here is an overview and links to my Thanksgiving Cards and the envelopes I decorated with the computer, markers, or watercolor.  Here you can see my Thanksgiving Hutch.  And here you can see my fall photo craft/tree. 

I’d also like to take a chance to reflect all that I have to be thankful for.  As I mentioned earlier this year on Memorial Day, I’m very thankful for the freedoms I have in this country.  Thanksgiving is a festival that is around the end of harvest, and I’m thankful that, unlike so many in the world, I have plenty to eat, a safe place to live, and plenty of people to love and be loved by.  I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend. 

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

I’m linking up to:

Thanksgiving cards

Unlike last year when we were able to make the trip back to Ohio for Thanksgiving,  and unlike the year before, we don’t have friends whose family was also out of state to come for dinner, so it’s just us this year. So, our visiting has been done via cards.  I’ve found that stores don’t seem to stock many Thanksgiving cards, so most of these are ones I picked up another year when I found them so as to have them on hand.  I decorated a number of the envelopes, you can see my posts on the ones I decorated with: the computer, watercolors, and markers.

While doing these cards I found that there aren’t really any good stamps to use for Thanksgiving cards.  A couple years ago they had these Thanksgiving stamps from the US Postal Service. I bought a sheet and used it for a year or two, but I used them up, (I was thinking the cost

Computer Envelopes

Well, I have for some time preferred doing art-type things on the computer, but lately I have been doing envelopes by hand.  Well, for one of the envelopes for our Thanksgiving cards I went back to the computer.  You can see a bit of the card there, and it just didn’t have anything to match easily by hand, so I went with the computer, I decided to try to match the plaid boarder.  I went into Microsoft ® PowerPoint ®. I made rectangles in shapes that were the right color (& made the larger ones transparent to mimic the weave), then just grouped and copied part of it up and down the main stripes.  Then I saved the finished boarder as a picture and put it into Microsoft ® Publisher ®.  I had trouble getting my printer to print on the envelope the right size, until I realized that it was 8 1/2 inches wide, so then I just treated it like a whole sheet of paper on the computer and feed the envelope trough sideways (the longest way parallel to the printer instead of perpendicular) and made sure the embellishment was on the part of the paper that printed first. I think it turned out quite well.

Watercolor envelopes

So, I decided to try something new for these envelopes.  I found this site about decorated envelopes, and I saw the envelopes from Bride design and was inspired to try watercolors. Now, I’m not very good at painting since I’m no where near as gifted as these people are, but I thought I’d try.  I had been going through some of my old craft stuff and came across my watercolors & brushes from childhood, the cards had watercolors on their covers, plus I was sending them to my aunts, and what are aunts for if not to receive one’s attempts at painting?   After a lot of experimenting I decided on doing a leaf & a heart on the envelopes to match the cards.  I didn’t try the acorn and couldn’t get my trees to look the way I liked.  Now, I didn’t really freehand either of these things here’s how I did it and you can too.  One hint, practice on

Decorating envelopes with markers

I like to decorate envelopes, when possible to match the cards.  This Thanksgiving I’m trying different mediums.  This is about the ones I used magic markers on.  

 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Yes, I know Christmas is still over two months away, and personally I like to avoid decorating  or listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving (although my entire holiday schedule is off since The Game [Ohio State vs Michigan] is now after Thanksgiving, instead of before, totally changes the whole feel).  But, we are still starting to work on Christmas. 

I’m getting our Christmas card list together and beginning to embellish the envelopes and address them.  This is taking a little more planning than normal since when we bought our cards on clearance last year we picked 3 different kinds, and are picking which one is best for which person/family.  I’m actually a little behind on this, since my goal is to have all my envelopes return addressed by now, but hopefully I’ll be able to

Fall tree craft

Last year I made a “Thanks Tree” Just some sticks, dried leaves, and little pieces of paper with different things I was thankful for like: Family, Faith, Freedom, etc. This year I decided to make a fall tree. Once again I went out and gathered some sticks and dried some leaves. Only, instead of writing what I was thankful for, I used photos that seem to illustrate some of the fun parts of fall to me.

For the base, I used a couple rubber bands to make the sticks into a bunch, then I put them in this pitcher I had on hand which was made by a local craftsman. I then used scrap computer paper to crumple up and stuff around the bundle to hold it upright. I used other leaves I’d dried to cover the paper: