I love cupcakes!

My cousin works at our local hospital, and she and her mom volunteered to create a Christmas tree for the Festival of Trees.  The trees are auctioned off to raise money for the hospital foundation.  They found a great idea here on Instructables, and created Christmas cupcake ornaments for their tree.  They were absolutely incredible and inedible! They certainly didn't look inedible though and fooled many!  Oh, and their tree was sold for $190!

My cousins were nice enough to have me over and show me how to make them.  Here are my Christmas cupcake ornaments.  They are too much fun to decorate and really not hard at all to make.

  The blue and silver ones were a special order for someone. 

One of my favorites! The "mints" are made of Sculpey clay.

Give them a try.  You'll have fun!

On another note, I have had some earthly angels come into my life.  For the past week I have been so overwhelmed with their generosity and kindness.  Because they have both been in my shoes at one time in their life-single mom, tough financial times- they wanted to do something nice for me, and nice is an understatement.  They have certainly made this single mom's holiday!  Thank you, my angels!

Another Simply Handmade Project

I think these turned out cute, but again, not a project I would normally do.  Definitely helping me to get back into the creative swing of things though.

Paint a couple of mini clay pots, two different sizes, red and green.

Insert some floral foam. Add some ribbon to the top edge of the pots. 

I added some little "gift boxes" buttons, and you can see them in the final photos.

Of course, the book has a detailed supply list, but you need red and green felt, a dowel cut to size for the trees, polyfil, ribbon, buttons, and anything else you might want to decorate them with.

There's a template in the book for the trees, but basically the larger is about 

8-1/2 inches tall, and the small one is about 5-1/2 inches tall.  

Cut a front and back for each size.

Once you stitch the fronts and back together, stuff them with polyfil, insert the dowels and use a little glue to hold the dowel in place.  Have fun decorating with buttons, ribbons, whatever floats your boat.  Again, I used glue dots to hold everything on.  Add a star at the top, some moss to cover the floral foam, and there you go!

Peonies: A New Beginning

“You've changed so much. I guess that's what happens. I wish you knew how much you changed me. I wonder if I changed you, if your life is different because of me. Because mine's different. My God, you taught me so much, and now we don't even talk to each other. I guess that's what happens.”

 

I can't find who to credit this quote to, but it certainly sums up one aspect of this past year.  I'm definitely glad 2010 is coming to a close, and I'm praying hard that 2011 is really going to bring about better times!  Granted, it wouldn't take a whole lot! LOL!

 

As Christmas approaches I've found my creativity mojo again.  It feels good and I've missed working with my hands and the satisfaction of completing a project.  Today, I finished a framed sentiment for a lady I work with to give to her mother for Christmas.  I think I'm happy with it considering it's really a different type of project for me.  I found this book called Simply Handmade, their holiday edition, and I highly recommend it.  

 

 

Here's the project I did today from the book: (Forgive my lousy pictures. I need a camera!)  The quote says "the next best thing to having you for my mom is knowing that my children have you for their grandma."  LOVE it! 

 

  

So you start off with a black frame and paint that.  You then sand some of the paint off so that some of the original black color shows through.

I printed the sentiment on some green patterned cardstock I had from Reminisce.  I was even able to download the font used for the words "mom" and "grandma" from dafont.com.  It's called Angel.  I cut the cardstock down to fit the frame, added some distressing with some brownish-black paint and a sponge.  What I thought made this was the stitching added to the cardstock to create a frame around the words.  Yours truly doesn't sew and if she does, well, let's just say I waste a lot of fabric, paper, whatever trying to get it right.  So what did I do, you ask?  RUB-ONS!  In my stash of way too much scrapbook stuff, I had white stitching rub-ons!  I added those and the sentiment itself was finished.  Sorry, forgot to photograph that.  

Next was to figure out those flowers.  Of course, the book has complete instructions, but again this is not my usual type of project so I was concerned. Turns out they were easy as pie!  Used the Cricut to cut out the flowers in 1-inch, 1-1/4-inch, 1-1/2- inch, and 2-inch flowers.  You then coat them with Mod Podge and as they dry, pinch the petals (hehe) to curl them up.  Loverly!!  Add some buttons with embroidery floss ties and arrange them on the frame to make you happy.  I used glue dots to adhere them to the frame since I hate using a glue gun.  I end up with too many glue stringy things everywhere. 

And here's my take on this project!

  

Of course, I think I could have used larger flowers and more of them.  But then again, I look at the photos and then at the actual frame sitting beside me and the pictures don't do it justice. 

Try Simply Handmade and dafont.com.  I love finding new-to-me things to spur creativity, don't you?

Another project from my creative Saturday coming soon!