My Husband's Woodwork Creations

Yes, my husband is very talented too.  He likes working with wood.  When we met, he mostly was making jewelery pieces. Nowadays he carves into the wood with his favorite tool, the Dremel, and makes wall hangings.  For Christmas this year, he even made some jewelery boxes, for my sister and niece.  My dad also got a box to put his wallet, cell phone and change in at night.  For me he is making a cedar chest.  It's not done, so I wonder how long it will take him to complete?  He likes mixing different wood types together, like oak, walnut, cherry or cedar.  He also works with ash.  So here are a few of the gifts he made for Christmas this year.  Enjoy!

This is a pub sign he made for my brother in law to hang up in his basement over his bar when they finish the basement.

A side view.  The letters are all part of the same piece of wood.  He carved around them to make them pop out.  Lots of hard work.  this is also the first time he painted on anything he has made.  He prefers to see the natural grain of the wood.  I think he did a great job on this though.  It would not have the same effect if it was all the color of wood.  Some day I hope to get him to use colored stains, like green, white red, blue etc.... one thing at a time.

Another close up.

This is a jewelery box he made for my sister.  The heart design he found online, at angle, and kept it the same instead of straightening it out.  It presents a unique effect.  I drew the swirly frame and he carved it out.  So I can say it was part my design as well.

The inside.

  

I made inserts to fit inside of the box to make it more elegant.  My husband would not let me put anything permanenet into it, so I came up with the insert.  Small pieces of jewelery or money can be hidden beneath.

I think it turned out great.  Cardboard (recycled no less!), fabric,  double stick tape, and a hot glue gun.

Here is the jewelery box for my niece.

Inside.

 

Inside with insert.

Insert.

I made my sister and niece aprons out of the same fabric as their inserts, but I forgot to take pics.

 

Here is a baseball bat my husband made for my nephew.  He even engraved his name into it, and my husband does not have the greatest of hand writing, but he did an excellent job on this!

 

This is a wolf carving he made for his oldest sister.  It has a mirror behind it.

Up close.

And this is a carving of a moose he made for his second older sister.

Close up.  Sorry there was a lot of dust that the flash has captured.  On these two carvings, he carved on the side that would sit against the mirror so that when a person looked at the carving they could see both sides of the animal.  clever!

 

Here is the box he carved for my dad.

Close up.

 Side view.  It is held together with glue and dowel rods.  Looks like in laid wood.

Lid off.  He later attached the lid with a hinge.  This box turned out so well, my husband wanted to keep it for himself.  First time I ever heard him say that. 

Need less to say, he has been very busy making these for Christmas this year.  I wonder what he'll do next year?

Enjoy!

My 35th Birthday!

Yesterday, January 4th was my 35th birthday.  Since my husband has been on night shift it was a very quiet day.  Also all of my family live far away.  A friend and her two boys stopped by and brought me some cupcakes and hand made  cards.  Then we went to Starbucks and got some blended strawberry lemonade drinks and took the boys over to McDonalds so that they could play on the indoor playground.  They had a blast!  We had an almost nice visit.  The boys got to hollering so it was hard to hear at times.  When I got back, my husband was awake and had taken the night off of work to be with me.  So we went to Applebees for a nice dinner.  We were going to try a new place in town, but heard some not good reports, so we will wait awhile before trying them, let them work out the kinks.  After dinner we went over to his parents house since they had a gift for me.  And spent the rest of evening visiting with them.

Even though my friend brought me some cupcakes, I still wanted a birthday cake since I did not get one last year.  I also wanted to see what 35 candles looked like on a cake.  (Pathetic?)  So I made the cake, even though it was after midnight by the time it baked, cooled and was frosted.  I put on the candles and brought it down to my husband who lit the candles with a fire starter that was on too high and melted the candles before they got lit.  Oh well.  Then he sang happy birthday to me and I blew them out!  I had to relight them in order to get pics of them, cause I was not thinking ahead.  The candles were really melted by then, but they cooled completely while I was busy taking pictures and they came out wax and all.  The only wax drippings still on the cake were from my husband lighting some of the candles with another candle.  I frosted the cake with pink frosting, cause I like pink and my mom always frosted my cakes with pink frosting.  So here is the birthday cake I made myself.

 

 35 Candles

Pretty daisy print candles

4 of the 7 cupcakes we received

 Tie dye wax? I just thought it looked pretty!

No more wax on 35 holes!

Christmas Card Swap 2009

Here is the Christmas card I made and sent to Vjkats from the HGTV Holiday crafts message boards.

Front of card

Inside of card.

Hidden pocket with ornament

The ornament (two sided)

The sentiment

My First Craft Show Report

On December 8th,  Marty called me to let me know of an upcoming craft show at the hospital.  I had thought I had missed out on all of the hospital craft shows for the year.  (I had been thinking I might have actually participated in one this year.)  So I was pleasantly surprised when she called.  Marty is the woman in charge of the craft shows for the hospital.  And a portion of the proceeds go to fund different events for the staff throughout the year.

Well she let me know that the craft show was on Dec. 18th, Yikes!, that only gave me 10 days to come up with something!  I spent the first 5 days playing around with ideas, and making a couple of things, but was not crazy about them.  Then I thought of the popcorn wrappers that many of the women on the HGTV message boards have been making for the last 2 years or so, with great success, and figured that's what I would make.  In today's economy, people are mostly buying less expensive handmade items.  I had not seen anything like them here, so they were a good bet.  So on Sunday I went to Office Depot to get some copies of the snowmen wrappers, bought a few more bits of fleece, dug some out of my stash at home, and began to work.  I worked on them off and on this last week, going back to OD for more copies and for copies of the cute tags to go with them.  Finally I finished them, tags and all, Thursday.  I took them to the hospital on Thursday night.  The craft show started at 7AM.  Since I am not a morning person, taking them the night before was better for me.  I got to see the other things for sale while I was there.  There was a nice selection of items. No one was there while I was setting up, so I did not fill out any paper work, and I was not sure how the system worked.  I went back home and began trying to grunge up some shipping tags. (I had made a tag for the candy cane wall decor and wanted to play some more.  I stayed up pretty late doing so and was still awake when my husband got home after getting off work, 5 hours early from a 12 hour shift.  Oops!  He was not that surprised as I always am up late.  I had planned on going to the hospital early in the AM, in order to fill out the needed paper work, but of course was too tired, so I woke up after noon and then ate lunch and got ready to go.  I got there after three, and had discovered the night before that in the entry way a person can look down into the cafeteria where the craft items were displayed.  So as I walked in, I was shocked to not see any popcorn wrappers left, but two.  I had convinced myself that no one would want to buy much stuff from me.  But I chosen the right item to make.  Yeah!  Out of the 48  I made, and  brought 47 to the show (I gave one away to a friend) I only have two left.  I also made 4 Tootsie Roll Snowmen, (same snowman image wrapped around a tootsie roll bank), sold all of those, I had 4 sled ornaments (made 2 years ago, and did not have time to make more this year), sold those.  One paint can snowman, did not sell.  One Candy cane door hanger, did not sell.  But I still consider this a success since most of what I made is now gone.  Hopefully I can participate in more shows next year.  Craft shows are something I've been wanting to get into for a long time.

Here a my pics of the popcorn wrappers and other items.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

  I sold 45 of 47 of the popcorn snowmen.  Yeah!!!

This is a paint can snowman.  It did not sell, but I only had one at the show.

This also did not sell, but again I brought only one.

These are some sled ornaments I made.  All 4 SOLD!   I'll make more for next time, but these i already had on hand so I brought them to see how they'd do.

These were tootsie roll banks (filled with tootsie rolls of course).  I wrapped the snowman wrapper around them and added a hat and scarf,  I used the same sizes from the popcorn snowman.  I sold all 4 of them.

So, for my first ever craft show, I think I did well.  Gives me hope to try another one.  Later!

  

HGTV Christmas Card Swap 2009

I participated in a Christmas Card swap this year on the HGTV craft message boards.  My swapping partner was Vjkats.  We exchanged cards in this swap.  Here is what I got from her on Friday.

Click on the picture to see a larger version!

A beautiful Christmas card, a gift card holder, 6 card stock ornaments, and 5 sheets of sparkly, iridescent paper.  How pretty!!!

 

Here is the card!

Inside of the card.

Gift card holder.

Pocket side of gift card holder.

The ornaments were cut out with a scalloped paper punch, wrapped with sliver and white string and then two were taped together, for double sided ornament.  Cute!

And here is the card I made for her.

Sorry, all you get is a hint for now til I know she has received it.

Some of My Favorite Ornaments

These are some of my favorite ornaments I've made.  I have more pics, but they are not digital yet, so whenever we get a printer hooked up to this computer I'll be able to scan them and then post.  Some of those include sleds made from mini craft sticks,  Snowmen, and more.  So stay tuned!

This Hymnal Angel was made from a Hymnal ornament.  The pages are blank, but the cover says silent night.  This is very easy to make, just a bit time consuming.  the head is a wood ball knob, the halo is a pipe cleaner and the ribbon came from the ornament, it was used as a bookmark.  

This link will give the instructions for a full sized Hymnal Angel, that can be adapted for a smaller book.

http://synodresourcecenter.org/wma/art/educational/0003/index.html 

 

Here is an Angel made from large eyelet lace, a doll clothes pin, small ball knob for head,  embroidery thread for hair, pipe cleaner halo, mini craft stick arms, lace for wings.  Cute!

Here is a sock snowman ornament made out of a baby sock.  Unlike the larger versions, this one is only stuffed with stuffing to keep it light weight for hanging.  (Larger version has rice in the bottom to make it stay in place.)  Hat is a baby sock cuff, face is painted on with fabric paint, nose is tiny bit of orange fabric, blush for cheeks, fabric scarf, felt mittens, floral wire wrapped around a pen, (only wire I could find at the time.)  These are so fun to make because I mix and match the hats, mittens, and scarves.  No colors are the same, but all look great together.  I need to make more since I have a huge stash of materials just waiting to dig into.

So that's all for now.  I hope you enjoy!