Midnight Madness, YoYo Trees and a NEW Headband

#16
I have a few things to report on, but I will be careful and not put all my goodness into one post, cause for all I know I could have a creativity block tomorrow and have nothing to blog about.

Firstly, posting on my blog everyday for Blogtoberfest is really hard.  I used to post only twice or so a week.  It is starting to hurt my brain.

Secondly, I have actually got a few things done over the past few days.  I'll share a few.

Midnight Madness
Every year my church puts on a Christmas Craft Night.  They always put it on super early BEFORE the Christmas rush, and of course to allow time to finish the projects so they can be used at Christmas time.  Last night was this said night.  It goes from 6pm till Midnight - thus it's called Midnight Madness.  I only signed up for 3 craft classes last night.  In years gone I've done up to 6, so it was a quiet night for me.  I made Christmas cards and gift tags.

They were all relatively easy and as you can see, they're very effective.  Geez Kristy (my Stampin Up Lady) is clever.  You should check out her blog, she is doing Christmas gift ideas every week for 12 weeks up until Christmas (you receive the tutorials if you sign up to her email list).  She is getting married soon and I have to try and think of what to get her as the engagement present.  I think she's gonna need storage for her GIGANTOR stash of SU goodies :)

Next I did the Wooden Ginger Bread Men.  These little men made me a crazy woman.  They don't look like much.  But LET ME TELL YOU.  They hurt my brain in a big way last night.

I had instructions, but they weren't relevant because all the supplies they used in the tutorial, were not available on the night.  So I had to freestyle it, and that doesn't always work with me.  So I open my little bag of 5 wooden gingerbread men.  I sanded the edges because they were a little splintery (is that a word?).

Then I needed to make all the edges brown.  There was no brown paint, so I had to sponge it with ink.  It took over an hour to do this.  Holy hell, my patience went out of the window with those little guys in the inking process.  BUT I PERSEVERED and ate lots of kabana and drunk lots of delicious lemonade to keep my spirits in order.  (And I realise at this stage I should have photographed all this as I went so you'd have instructions ((unlike me when I did it)) on how to make them yourself, but oh well).

Then I chose my papers.  As part of the pack that I bought to make them, I could choose 3 double sided patterned papers.  I had to like 5 of the 6 sides of paper.  So I picked my papers and traced the men on the papers and cut them out.  Then using PVA (or you could use Mod Podge, but PVA was what was provided) I glued the paper down to the men.  I then trimmed the excess paper overhang on the men, which was incredibly annoyingly fiddly.  Followed by sanding the edges to give it the rustic feel and to neaten up the look.  It is a great effect but of course took an hour to do all 5.  By this stage it was close to midnight and I hadn't even started to think about decorating them with embellishments etc.  Oh and did I mention I had fluid retention in my hands?  Yeah, it felt AWESOME!! haha!!

Then disaster struck.  But I didn't know it until it was too late.  I had one TINY picture to use as a guide for decorating.  In the picture the men had faces drawn on.  So I copied.  After I had finished all 5 faces I realised it looked TERRIBLE.

They looked like scary evil weirdo Gingerbread Men.  And at this point it was AFTER midnight.  So I just pretended I didn't care (but was so incredibly mad at myself inside for ruining them) and helped the ladies pack up and went home.  I showed the husby, and he too agreed they looked evil.  So guess what I did this morning?  Re-did them all over again.  From scratch, on the other side.  I didn't have enough paper from the night so I had to use some of my own too, which was difficult finding the right colour combinations because they papers to choose from last night were all co-ordinating becuase they were all from one set.  But I managed to work it out, and this is the new transformed Gingerbread Men that I am finally happy with.  Actually that's a lie.  I didn't need to pierce the holes on their heads and didn't realise that till I'd done them all but I'll have to get over it.  I finished them off tonight (after a really long day which included assisting in my brother's proposal, having a migraine, sleeping & baking) and have worked out where I am going to hang them for Christmas.

So there they are.  The feral annoying Gingerbread Men.  I'm sure I'll forgive them for being so annoying in due time.

You also may have noticed I never ended up doing embellishments.  I didn't trust myself to do it without ruining them all over again, and also decided that simple was better.  Really I was just glad to have them over and done with.  I love the effect and will do it again, but have learnt what to do and what not to.  Hopefully  next time it won't be so jolly frustrating!

Goodies in the Mail
I had a suprise in the mail for me yesterday from the giveaway I won at Kiwi at Heart last month...

And it had this inside!

Thanks for my Mini YoYo Christmas Tree!! I love it!!

NEW Tie Headband
So I have found another use for my old Thrifty ties that were 50 cents.  I will admit I broke the needle on the sewing machine so I realised I needed to handsew it together which was alot of work but definately worth it.  Do you like it?  

I likey.  Do you?  I might make another this week in a brighter coloured tie.  I was also thinking of doing this with a Christmas tie to wear on Christmas Day :)

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I'll save all the other goodies I've been working on for my posts over the next few days.  

Hope you had a great day, and don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already.  There's hardly any entries so far so you're in with a stinkin good chance this time!! 

Oh and I have a new button that my husby has been working on so I'll have to get him to get it all up and running tomorrow and show you.  It's the same as I have now but just jazzed up a little.  Next on the to do list for him is to do my name sign off coding doovey lackey, and then he is building me a website.  It'll only take 5 years to get it done :P

Until tomorrow...

Christy