Nativity Silhouette Experiment

Experiment time!

Back in high school, I used to do dot art. Think Seurat's pointillism, but with ink pens. One of my really good friends and I just went back through my high school art collection and my old pieces inspired me to try another version of the art and transfer the dots into calligraphy (of sorts). I also saw something similar at the Craftsman's Classic craft show Thanksgiving weekend and couldn't wait to try.

First I took some versions of nativity silhouettes from the internet (thanks Google search!) and modeled my own quick sketch after them. Then I penciled in the Christmas story from the book of Luke. I'll admit I was totally inspired by Linus's recitation from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I retraced my pencil words with pen, erased the pencil marks, and was left with my finished product:

Here's a closer view...

I followed the manger around, did a few words around the star, and then did the story from Joseph to Jesus to Mary, ending with the words proclaimed by the angel as the ground.

And for all fellow translation nerds, the words came from my New Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition bible. 

I won't say it's my favorite piece I've ever completed, by the message behind definitely ranks number one in my book.

Any nativity crafts to share? Let me know in the comments!

The First Noel (I Made Myself)

I. Love. Christmas!

I know we aren't quite to Thanksgiving yet...but I couldn't wait to get started on more Christmas decorations for my apartment this year.

Yarn crafts + Christmas = magic...so obviously I had to do yarn covered letters. I picked out some sparkly red, green, and white yarn and tag board letters spelling "NOEL."

For the "N" (the hardest letter for me), I tried using small pieces of yarn on the tops and bottoms of the letter to cover the edges. It was a lot more work than the second method I discovered after a little extra hunting online. On the "E" and "L" I wrapped each entire letter up vertically and then went back over each letter horizontally again. (The "O" was as simple as going around and around and around through the middle.)

I used Tacky Glue to secure the end, but I would suggest hot glue or something else that might adhere to yarn more quickly. After holding the ends in place for 10-15 minutes, my glue worked out all right though.

I don't have a tree skirt (and I'll admit my tag board isn't wide enough to stand up by itself the way more boxy cardboard letters would), so I laid them out around my little 3' tree as a psudo-skirt.

And in all it's beautiful majesty...

Who else is excited for Christmas already?

Personalized Stockings

Our poor Christmas stockings. For years, I've been promising my mother I would find some way to attach our family's names to our stockings. Something better than the paper tags I made about six years ago...

I promise the looked better at the time of the original installation.

So the last couple of years, I've been toying with the idea of embroidering our names onto the stockings. But how to do that on the extremely fuzzy tops of the stockings without having fuzz poking through all of my stitches?

My first thought was to stitch our names onto some ribbon and wrap the ribbon around the top of the stockings. The bad blogger in me didn't take pictures of the disaster before I threw it away. You can use your imagination. Just imagine lots of embroidery floss holding together the tattered threads of some white ribbon.

It really did feel about that bad.

So I took some left over cloth I had from another project and began stitching on tried and true Aida.

Font from: http://www.freepatternsonline.com/xscharts/page/abc13.htm

Much better. And I really liked the font and colors I picked out. Perfect.

But they turned out so small. They definitely wouldn't as replacements for my paper tags. So then I thought maybe I could turn them into tags attached to the loops they hang from.

I added some evenly spaced stitches to pull back the uneven edges...but I think I left too little room between names to make the best borders. I label this one as a work in progress...but it's still a giant step in the right direction away from torn construction paper and shredded ribbons. Updates soon!

Any Christmas improvements you've been meaning to do?



It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year! And I learned the hard way last year that if I want to be able to give my friends and family homemade gifts...I need to start much earlier than Thanksgiving. I improved my record from last year by about a month and started with a little embroidered Christmas ornament.

I started with a beautiful pattern from www.needlethread.com:

Then I imported it into Microsoft Word and overlaid a grid, making it a little more user-friendly.





Next came the question of how I was going to bring this perfectly Christmas-y pattern into real life. I attempted cross stitching, but the didn't come out as cleanly as I had hoped. So then I started over and outlined the shapes in back stitch, filling in later with a satin stitch. 



I still have some lines to clean up, but overall I'm very pleased with the finished look. Are you planning any holiday projects this year? Share in the comments!