Christmas and a Recycled Wreath

Here's our Christmas tree this year.  We opted for our standard Douglas Fir that we've been getting every year since we've been married.  This was the first year that we put on ornaments that we had made as kids or actually a large collection of ornaments in general.  In the past, we've "decorated" with dried leaves, pine cones, and acorns for a "from the woods" look.  (And of course on the stair railing base is one of those great magazine trees.)

We also made a number of ornaments this year.  A number being made from leftover pistachio shells saved from our all our old biscotti baking.

 When we were going through our ornament collections, we realized we each had made an angel ornament with our photos on during the same year (1992).  So obviously, they needed to go on the tree together.
Here's my latest project in my quest to find ways to use left over milk caps from work.  A holiday wreath! (You can find other projects here and here.)
I used a wooden craft ring (12 inches) that I painted a green color.  One thing I realized after I completed the wreath was that I should've strung a ribbon or wire through two of the holes so it could be easily hung.  However, it still hangs perfectly well on a hook.  

Each cap I hot glued down to the ring form and then to create a "bow" I layered a few caps in the lower corner.  For added interest, I then attached various buttons to each cap center.  


And the finished wreath hanging.....

How to....make free (or practically free) sparkly ornaments

We've been trying to find ways to use our ever growing collection of milk caps from work, so it was only fitting to try our hand at making ornaments for our tree (Dougie Wonderfir).  Kinsey came up with this sparkling design.

For this project, you'll need: glitter (we used Martha Stewart's glitter which is superfine and was super on sale at the time), a hot glue gun, Mod Podge, milk caps, and string.

Here's the simple how-to.  Cut a small amount of string to hang the ornament with and hot glue to the inner edge of one of the milk caps.  Take another milk cap and hot glue the two together around the inner rim.  Next, brush on glue quite liberally.  Then, pour the glitter all over where you just spread glue.  (Note: only glue/glitter one side at a time or you'll end up smearing the glitter.  So try to be patient and wait for the back side to try before attempting.)  

And this is what you'll get!



Easy, sparkly, and inexpensive (free if you have glitter on hand!)  They sure beat those standard glass balls.

How to Turn All Those Magazines into Something That Looks Good

If you're anything like us, you have tons of past issues of magazines laying around. I usually go through them and rip out any recipes, stories, or inspirations that I might want to reference later. I put these in folders, which keeps it pretty organized. Then, Kinsey usually goes through them for materials for his collages. More often than not, that's the end of the journey for them. Very few get thrown out until it gets to the point where I get tired seeing them and purge a lot of them. Now I found a reason to keep them around a little longer.



These trees are made from a magazine that has been folded a certain way on each page. Actually there are three different folds on every page. I saw a how to video on Martha Stewart's website (who else would have this? Actually it's on Reader's Digest's site, too.) At first I thought it seemed great, then I watched the video and thought it seemed like a bit much...it seemed like a lot of folding and that it would take a while to finish. I decided to give one a try anyway. I don't know what it is, but it was very relaxing to do. I suppose it's because of all the repetitive motions, but I actually enjoyed the process of folding.



I used Bon Appetit for the larger tree and Everyday Food for the smaller one. Martha spray painted and then glittered her trees. I kept my plain, at least for now. I like that they look like magazines.

You can see a detailed how-to here.

They look great in small groups! Maybe even include an origami deer with them?

recycling and embroidery...

So during the day, Kinsey and I are bookstore managers/baristas.  The cafe we work in uses all organic and fair trade coffees and teas, as well as gets our milk delivered in glass bottles.  Of course, we're the type of people who think the milk from glass bottles just has a better taste to it (which is very true!).  We're also the type of people who try to find ways to reuse things.  Old flyers for a past event?  We cut them in quarters and make scrap paper tablets out of them.  Old books with falling out/destroyed pages?  We cut them up and use them for color and design on signs we make for our coffee and other items for sale.  So we were eager to find a way to re-use one item that seemed to pile up fast....milk caps.  

I've been occasionally saving a few for a number of months, but didn't know what to do with them.  Magnets seemed easy enough, but it wasn't something I'd like to make tons of.  Then one day, after looking at a towering stack of them, I thought about embroidery.  Maybe pendants for necklaces?  

Start with a milk cap.  Something I love about these is how sturdy they are.  Not your typically thin, plastic, supermarket milk jug caps.  These have a little girth and hardness to them.  The color scheme is limited to bright green, red, blue, and clear, however because of the nature colors I tend to use to stitch, the cap colors are a perfect fit!

I cut the tall edges away and smooth down the sides.  This leaves me with something that looks like this:

After hand embroidering a scene onto some fabric scraps, I'm left with some great, one of a kind pendants.  To make a necklace, I just string the recycled cap on to a piece of brown cord.  

Small,  embroidered art that's wearable.  


Both of these examples can be found in our shop.