i HEART decorating the Christmas tree

Decorating the tree HANDMADE style.

We have had a little set back or two today while decorating the tree! You know how you get an idea and you just can't get what you need locally to get the job done? Well I really wanted just red lights on the tree this year and do you think I could find them anywhere! They are now on there way from Sydney thanks to Mr. EBay. 

You've already had a little peek at the felt doves we had been making and with 6 now done and one more to finish off that's one job nearly out of the way. Miss Emily and I spent some of the morning cutting out snowflakes from the pages of an old vintage book we found a the local secondhand store. Emily had said her favourite bit was unfolding the snowflake because it was exciting- like unwrapping a present, just don't know what you are going to get! Bless her little cotton socks. 

Decoration number three was even easier again. Using the same book we ran the pages through the printer with words and phrases such as "Merry Christmas", "Jingle Bells" "JOY" and images like our love heart onto them and simply tied them onto the tree with red ribbon. I love the effect. But as we were busy finishing off the paper side of the decorations minor disaster struck. Our Feed bin filled with tree, gravel and A LOT of water, sprung a leak!  There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza! There is not much I can do at the moment except keep on mopping up water until it has drained out enough for me to be able to budge it. I can barely lift the tree on it's own as it is. Let alone with 3 buckets of gravel and 20 litres of water too. So here are the pictures of what we have done so far...

Home printed vintage messages in "Stencil" and "Claudia Jean" Font

In this picture hand cut snow flake vintage messages prints no. 15 advent rusty bucket, felt dove

"No. 15" advent calendar rusty bucket from The Upholstery Gallery- Ballarat

Hand cut snowflake from vintage book. Little Felt Bird hand stitched in the background.

Home printed message on vintage book page. "Heart"

Hand cut snowflake again.

This is as far as we got before the leak won!

Add a Little Bit of Vintage Love to Your Shoes! - A Tutorial

A Little bit of Vintage Love...

For Your Shoes!

I have heaps of left over lace bits of late that are not quite big enough for much at all really. So what to do with them all? When I saw a couple of little pairs of cheap ($2 a pair) canvas sand shoes recently I had a light bulb moment!....Bing....

So, I'll attempt to take you through a pictorial Tutorial so you can see my attempts at bringing an idea to life, some successful and some not so! This is how my light bulb moment came into being.

1. Take one pair of cheap canvas shoes. These ones were $2 on sale at Kmart

2. Grab your scrap pieces of lace . I also have used some scrapbooking card stock underneath the lace, you will see why in a minute.

3. Start spraying. I have used glimmer mist from tattered angels, but It would be a better idea to use fabric dye solution and put it into a little spray bottle. (or an empty glimmer mist bottle)

And some pink and any other colour you like. Then once you have coloured all of your lace you will have a lovely assortment of pretty coloured lace to use like this...

4. What I ended up with was a bit of a of a stencilled effect on the card stock to used for Christmas tags or a scrapbook page. Each lace cotton or nylon had a different affect. I thought I would try this on the canvas shoes! How amazing would that look! Well in my head it would look amazing anyway.

This was my favourite one!

5. So once again using the lace as a stencil I placed it on the shoe and spritzed away with the glimmer mist.

So far so good...

Away I went, spritzing some more. I had in mind that I would layer each of the laces making a different coloured layer each time. What I didn't do was let each layer dry before adding the next one. It would probably be a good idea to let it dry.  Woops!

The effect did not work out the way I thought it would.

As you can see it didn't really work out as well as the doily on the side. Oh well, into the washing machine for these little shoes and on to plan B!

PLAN B- I Still had all that pretty coloured lace, so I add some glue to the shoes. ( Glue that stick fabric and is a little bit flexible when set would work best- not the glue that I used!)

Stick on the lace then carefully trim the lace close to the top edge of the rubber

Adding the next layer...

And then the next. You might need to hold the lace in place until it sets so those little edges stay down! Overall I'm pretty happy with the end result but more importantly so is miss 4 yo! And what to do with the cut offs, well...

Make a Christmas tree of course! complete with a 'little bit of vintage" button at the top.  It is almost here you know! This lace Christmas tree idea can be used on cards, a scrapbook page or on a canvas why you could probably even glue it to card stock of the same shape to hang on your Christmas tree. Don't forget to make something  crafty with your negative prints that you created when spraying. Some ideas once again for that is Cards, wrapping paper, gift tags and scrapbook pages.  So there it is using scraps of scraps to create something a little bit vintage and a whole lots pretty. Would love to hear about what you come up with if you give this little project a go. xx R