Aloha, all!
In mid-October, once again our life was interrupted by constant moving of furniture back and forth. While I tried to weather through all that was going on, by the beginning of November, I realized that I needed to focus on where we lived and keeping it livable than on my crafting. If you can believe it, I managed to go to a Stampin’ Up! event in mid-November without ANY swaps to speak of. I had committed to a shoebox swap with a small group of friends. But I had done plenty of tutorials over the year, and I found one that meant all I had to do was cut paper to prepare.
In the first part of this year’s renovation season, which I’ve mentioned in the past, we had contracted to have all of the windows in the apartment replaced. DONE!!! Then we had to get our handyman in to do the caulking and painting finish work. DONE!!! Once some spalling issues in our exterior walls were fixed, we were ready to have the rest of our under-window cupboards installed. DONE!!! Finally, just this past Friday, we had crown molding and a new door to one of our rooms installed, along with a few leftover odds and ends. Yay! It’s all DONE!!!
The first thing that I did was to put up a Christmas tree – we didn’t have one last year because we were still dealing with having had to move twice after the volcano destroyed our house. So Christmas was in our hearts only, and then barely there. But this year we have a tree!
AND, featured paper crafting project, I made a wreath for our front door. I made this using a pattern published last February by one of my favorite sister Stampin’ Up! demonstrators, Lyssa Zwolanek. She used soft, color-coordinated papers. I wanted red and green for Christmas, so out came the very Real Red and Garden Green, of the Toile Tidings Designer Series Paper set. Lyssa says in her blog post for this project that it can be made in 45 minutes. After cutting 4 sheets of paper into 4″ squares and folding the first ring, I thought, “No way am I going to get this done in 45 minutes!” But the rest of the rings were oh so easy! So, even after putting on the optional 4th layer, I got this done in under an hour.
After putting all the papers together using staples and Stampin’ Dimensionals, I added some of the red and green Toile Tidings Glitter Enamel Dots to the tips of papers all over the wreath. I finished it all off with a bow and hanger made with the Real Red 1/8″ Curly Ribbon that’s part of the Let It Snow suite of Stampin’ Up! holiday products.
The wreath now hangs with our apartment number beautifully centered by all the pretty paper!
This year, I’m ready for Christmas!
Happy stamping!
These, along with a stapler, are all the products I needed for this project. Click on any of the icons if you’d like to check any of them out. This goes right to my Stampin’ Up! store, so buying them from me is easy!
