Are You Ready??...

... to party with The Grinch??

Just a couple of shots of the Grinch Party we had last night.

We watched the movie, ate from the popcorn buffet ( a popped bag of popcorn per person and you top with whatever you want!!) and drank Grinch Punch (Sprite and lime sherbert) from Grinch cups that we got to take home!!

 I just gathered up anything green - napkins, plates, plastic serving containers, trees, etc and added the awesome Grinch cups I found at Wal Mart. I bought swirly candy cane straws at The Dollar Tree. A super easy party to prep for!

I painted the classic Grinch quote on a pre-cut smooth paneling board from Home Depot. It is about 30 x 40 and is less than $6.00. It has a great surface to paint on - a coat of primer and off you go- and is easy to transport because it's so much sturdier than foam core. Since it costs about the same thing as foam core I prefer to go with the board. It is thin and lightweight, too. You can paint over it if the prop isn't something you want to save.

 

 The Grinch in the box of Christmas wrapping trash is straight off Pinterest* ( I saw this project on Pinterest but it has been brought to my attention that it was not linked back to the originator's website. Please see the comments below to link back to the original website. I created mine from the picture on Pinterest and did not take credit for it but I'm sure the original instructions are very helpful) as was the idea for Grinch Punch.
 The Grinch from a milk jug - right up my alley!!! Wish I had thought of it :)

So, Merry Christmas to all you Whos in Whoville!!!

*Dear Mollie's Mom. I commented on the Milk Jug Grinch Craft you have up on your blog, http://madebymolliesmom.blogspot.com/2012_12_01_archive.html but you didn't acknowledge my comment. The Milk Jug Grinch Craft was created by me and is up on my web site on this page: http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/christmas_page3.html#grinch
I designed the craft and am the copyright owner. You state that you got the idea from Pinterest, but Pinterest is not the source, my web site is the source and you must follow my copyright regulations which state that you must link back to my web site for the complete directions and give my site credit. Please correct this entry and give my site credit. While many of my crafts are free they are still valuable to me. I spend a lot of time developing them and when people copy them and post them on blogs and don't give me credit I lose customers. Thanks
By the way, it came out great!

 

Missing: One Grinch!

 

Usually it is a good thing when you can't find a Grinch anywhere around you but my Grinch is missing!!! He usually happily (as happily as a Grinch can) hangs out on the swinging bed on the porch the entire holiday season. I've looked everywhere. Where could he be??
I've even asked the 2 furry Goldens.
Maybe they know and are keeping quiet.
 Mums the word around Mom when it's about missing furry stuffed toys.

They've already 86'd the Beanie Baby Flamingo peeking around the pillow at Mr. Grinch!

And They're Off...

... to good homes! I've been delivering for 3 days and my kitchen table is finally clear. Now we can fill it back up with baking and wrapping!
 

 

The Gingerbread Man on the right has his saying permanently painted on instead of a chalkboard!! The owner said she wanted it painted on because she doesn't write like I do and she wants it to look like that all the time :)  Too funny.

 

Mr. Snowman is all buttoned up!
Check out the roll of cute owl Christmas paper on the left.
Guess whose gifts will be wrapped in that?

 

 

Again, middle-of-the night pictures but two long, skinny signs off to the same house.
Two little custom order ornaments are left to deliver and I'm closing up shop until after the first of the year!! It's been fun to be this busy but I'm ready to finish my decorating and bake some cookies when College Girl rolls in from finals!

The Official Start...

... of the Christmas Season, in my book, is December 1. So tomorrow is the day and we can start to wish people "Merry Christmas!"  I realize that the retail world started the Christmas season wayyyyyy before I did ( liike my fav craft store was putting out Christmas ribbon in August before they actually rolled out the Halloween stuff!!)
Anyway, I went to grab a fish taco last night at my fav place for those things and pass off some Mod Podge  to a friend that her daughter needed for a school project!



I took her one of my long, skinny signs! She said, "When do you make this stuff?!?" I told her the middle of the night as you can tell from the awful middle-of-the-night pictures. :)   This one even has a cardboard box in the foreground.... My kitchen island is stacked with boxes of sweatshirts to be delivered to my fav Chi Omega's.

I paint these signs on long, skinny repurposed wood. They are actually bed slats from an IKEA bed. Someone left them behind in a rental house, (I KNOW!!!??!!) and my husband brought them home to me. They are awesome. They are connected together with a canvas strip and when you buy them for the real purpose they just roll up to move from place to place. Like everything else from IKEA they have a nice finish. They are sanded smooth. The edges are slightly rounded. With the price of wood and the poor quality I am finding at HD this may be the way to buy wood for signs anyway. I haven't done the math because they left behind two twin bed sets so I am set for a while!!

 

 These have been delivered so now I can show you this fun and easy project! I made these no crimp hair ties for all the girls at Chi O for Christmas. College Girl and I try to come up with a fun little goodie each Christmas. The girls were loving these hair ties but they are pretty expensive in the stores. I experimented a little, googled a little  and found out these are cute, inexpensive and super fun.  I wanted them to be Chi O-ish and not just red and yellow. I love my Staz-On stamp pads so I gave stamping a try and it worked like a charm. I ordered FOE in Chi O colors and bought red and yellow Staz-On stamp pads and went to town.
FOE is Fold Over Elastic and is what the hair ties are made from. It is from the lingerie industry and is very inexpensive. I found it from this super nice company in a zillion colors and great prices. They shipped it right out and I took it to the beach for Thanksgiving and made 190 hair ties in no time flat!!
 

I simply stamped them, cut them to length, knotted them and then used a lighter to lightly heat them so they don't fray. These would be a great girls birthday party activity. They could make a bunch - they love to wear them on their arms bracelet style and they could make them for gifts as well. The FOE is not expensive!! They could stamp their names or designs on them. The little stamp sets are in the dollar bins at Michael's. The only thing they couldn't do would be using the lighter.
I wanted each girl to get two so I bagged them up in small cello treat bags from another great company,Nashville Wraps, and put a little To/From sticker on them.
 In Atlanta they are $5-6 each!! Crazy!

As I mentioned, we went to the beach for Thanksgiving to see my parents and while I do not Black Friday shop (College Girl and I hit King Street in Charleston 3 times before Thanksgiving!! She is now hooked on shopping in the preppiest town ever and would move in and live at Dumas and Sons. ) I did have a black moment on Friday morning....

... my beloved iphone was in my hand one moment and on the concrete at my feet the next moment. UGH!!! Again! But I love my phone so off to the repair shop I go!
I did rescue the day by having oysters at The Noisy Oyster in Charleston so all was not lost!!

 

Painting Peppermints...

Several people have asked how to paint the peppermint part of this guy, a cute Gingerbread Man! *
It was giving them trouble and I have a few heading out the door tomorrow so I took some pictures while I was painting this week. 
This is how I do it...
I use Krylon Dual Spraypaint and paint the pizza pan white. I cut triangles from repositionable vinyl that I use on my Cricut. You could use painters tape as well.



Then I use a flat paintbrush and paint the edge of each of the triangles. This keeps the red from seeping under and gives a nice clean edge.
This step is well worth the time - it makes all the difference!

Then you can spray paint the red triangles or brush the red paint. Either way works well.
Carefully peel up the vinyl triangles. You should be left with nice, clean edges!
( Check out that messy work table - crazy!
 I cleaned it up today so I could actually do some work!)
 

Then I use a thin flat brush and lightly paint a highlight about an inch in from the edge.

The last step is spatter painting the whole thing with white paint.

It's pretty simple and if you remember to paint the edges with white before painting the red then you will have a perfect peppermint pinwheel when you finish!

 

* According to my Google stats the original post on this guy has been viewed over 24,000 times. I think that is amazing - that he has drawn that much attention and that Google keeps track and I can know this. And I am fascinated by the fact that people who are thousands of miles away look at blog posts about Gingerbread Men!!

 

...and Another One...

 

 ... is out the door on it's way to someone else's front door.

 

Let's do the Twist...

... the Peppermint Twist. It's all about the peppermint stripe around here at Christmas time. I love candy canes and the iconic, traditional red and white stripe. I love peppermint tea and College Girl texted me from campus yesterday to just tell me she was having a Peppermint Hot Chocolate with whipped cream from Starbucks!! We did the happy dance when the Peppermint Mocha signs went up there at the beginning of November and we'll have a treat one day soon at Chic Fil A because the Peppermint Choc Chip shake is back!!!!
But right now I am all about filling the orders for these candy cane name signs!!! I can only show you a couple - the ones people ordered for themselves. The rest are gifts and I don't want to blow the surprise!



It's cold and windy so we have to settle for a picture taken inside on my kitchen cabinets in poor lighting. ( Every tip I read about being a good blogger says that excellent pictures are super important - oops!)

Someone asked about painting the peppermint look so I'll show you how I do it - I'm sure there is a right way, too. Haha !

I painted the letters in white on a black board.

Next I use a flat brush to make the red stripes. I curve them slightly to help with the illusion of the rounded candy cane. I brush fairly quickly and not too precisely. You have to give a little thought to where you are placing the stripes so that they mimic the shape of the letter and then I try to stay consistent with that if a letter is in a name multiple times. It makes it easier to read.

The key to the whole look is the little white highlight. I use a very small ( I call it a two hair brush!!! It's small!) and a little bit of slightly thinned paint and run a highlight over the red stripes. Make it fairly "loose" and quick. You can see the highlighted letter next to the unhighlighted letter above. It changes the whole look.

I'm not too worried about making sure the highlights look like the light source is from the same direction, etc the way you would for something more realistic. This is just cute and fun but the highlight adds a lot. Feel free to go there but I'm just cranking these babies out.

The other thing that I think changes the whole look and "makes" the Christmas items I make is the spatter painted "snow."

So, I give everything a light "dusting" of "snow" spatterpaint at the end.
 

Without....
 

 

... with.
 I think it makes a difference!  Happy painting... gotta go... it's time for hot Peppermint Tea.

From spooky to something sweet....

... this 75 % off paper mache spooky house is changing holidays.
No pumpkins, bats or ghosts for this house. Can you guess where I am going with this one??

 
This will be a bit of an expirement and I'll show you how it turns out - if it's cute :)
 
But before we move on from Halloween - does it make it things look spookier if it's in B/W mode ?? :)

 

Swish your Bushy Tail....

.... if you are a gray squirrel, that is!!
We had a little art camp the other day and it was all about acorns and Mr. Gray Squirrel!



Once again, a Dick Blick canvas panel ( nada from DB, still.), some scrapbook paper,
Mod Podge and some fuzzy felt for the tail!

I line all the supplies up "cafeteria style" and the children come up and choose for themselves. It gives them freedom to choose their supplies and keeps the activity from being static. They get to get up and move from time to time. They can also move along at their own pace to some degree.
This lesson was all about shapes. We created our squirrel and his acorn from different basic shapes - rectangles, ovals, squares, circles, half circles...

They have a ton of personality for something created from a few basic shapes.
 We added the furry tail and a real bit of twig for the acorn stem.

There was heavy Mod Podge usage so all of these pictures still have some white "globs" on them!! :)

So enjoy the Fall weather and swish your bushy tail like Mr. Gray Squirrel.

The Great Pumpkin....

... with a 'stache!!!
This was the pumpkin I made for our "Trunk or Treat"* two weeks ago. He has been hanging out by my office door and one of the kiddos told me last week that he was "her dream pumpkin!"  :)

He'll only be around one more day and then I get to figure out where to store him until next year. I keep making huge decorations and then, reality.... where to put them??? :)

I'll worry about that on November 1st!!!!

Happy Halloween!!



* a  pic from Trunk or Treat. Everyone decorates their trunks or dresses up and the children go from trunk to trunk getting lots of goodies. It was so crazy and fun - about 450 showed up - that I didn't get many pictures!! ( this is my gig so I was busy, busy and not a good photographer!!)

College Girl came home for the event - she can't stand to miss this event. She's been at Trunk or Treat since she was little, then she started driving and decorated a trunk and now she comes back to hang out at my trunk. You can see the great big pumpkin behind them. A friend helped me make the photo booth mustaches so every child could have one!!! Kids of all ages wanted them. They were so much fun!!

Here Come the Big Dogs, FB.....

 

You can find the made by mollie's mom facebook page here :

https://www.facebook.com/Madebymolliesmom

For whatever reason, Facebook and I are not getting along and I can't seem to add the FB button to my blog - no matter how many times I try :( 


 I'm going to have to call in the big dogs for some help next week!!



Glad I don't have to feed this big guy!


 

Showtime!!!

One day down and one day to go !

Here is my little booth. I was worried about having enough stuff to fill it but it worked out. Most of my "art" is made from recycled and found items, scraps of paper, fabric and ribbon, etc. so I decided my display would be the same. I gathered up all my galvanized items from the house and porch and a galvanized ladder from the backyard. The "filler" around the base of the trees is shredded newspaper and the tags are paint strips - may I say that I have used paint strips for art and gift tags since before anyone even thought up Pinterest :)



This was first thing in the morning!

 

 By late afternoon all the pumpkin stakes except one lonely guy were gone along with the snowman and gingerbread ones !

 

I sold most of these long signs and took some orders, too.

 and people started to ask : Are you going home to paint some more tonight??

I decided to be wise and go out to dinner with a friend instead!

I was pooped - Craft Shows are fun but they are work!!!!

I'm off to the show... have a great day!


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Things I do when I need to be painting...

I've been busy at work, busy at home, busy with College Girl (which was a ton of fun!), busy getting ready for the craft show, you know... busy like everyone else.

And I need to be painting but instead I have been...

arranging my spray paint in spectrum ( rainbow) order. That's how my scrapbook paper and recycled plastic lids are organized... for some it's alphabetical but for me, it's by color! Is that weird?

... and unloading pumpkins at the church. I love these "white" pumpkins.

 

 

... and I have been getting ready for the craft show. I made a ton of ornaments and canvases but time is short now and some of my ideas will have to be saved for another day,

I'll be sure to take some pictures at the craft show and let you know what creative and clever things were there!!

We interrupt...

.... getting ready for the-getting-ever-closer-craft show to bring you ... ...Football!!!!

Actually, better than just football which RULES in the South,
it's HOMECOMING!!

College Girl was in charge of pre- Homecoming Parade breakfast at the Sorority House so we imported the most amazing donuts ever from a little family bakery down the street from us in Marietta - Ray's Donuts!! If you are salivating just looking at this picture you should have been in the car at 5:30 a.m. with all those warm donuts!!! I'm telling ya...

The centerpiece was created from all found items we had laying around... the University Colors are red and blue and Chi O's is red so we focused on the red. The bucket came from Target Dollar Spot (their July 4th stuff), gift wrap shreds, skewers from the kitchen drawer, scraps of ribbon and I printed out the big red circle (looks like their Homecoming buttons and stickers!) and blue pennants on glossy photo paper to give it a crisp look and put it all together with a little hot glue. Done and done in about 5 minutes. This could be done in any team colors or sports season for tailgating or sports banquets ( I've done a ton of those and they never budget for decorations ... or paper goods!!)

So now we just hope for a WIN!!!!
What more could you want??? Warm Donuts and a WIN!!!

Pumpkins from Paint Can Lids...

Remember this post ?

Here are a few of the finished product ready for the soon-to-be-here craft show.

 You can poke them in the ground coming up your walkway or in a nice, big Fall mum. I have been painting like crazy so I  have not bought a single mum yet.
So I stuck it in my neglected, unpruned boxwood. Yep. And if you look carefully you can see all the dead leaves that need to be raked. :)

 

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