My son wanted to play with clay last weekend, so I used that as an opportunity to finish up a project that had been in the back of my mind for more than a year. I had several leftover snowmen heads from making THESE little jar toppers in 2010, and I couldn’t decide what to do with them. So last week, I turned them into little snowmen figurines.

I started by crumpling/rolling sheets of aluminum foil into ball shapes and then covering them in thin sheets of white polymer clay (run through a clay pasta machine). The heads actually are solid balls of clay, but I used the foil for the bodies because that way, I could use much less clay. As you can see, some of the bodies are rounder than others. In the end, I liked the rounder look better.

Once the bodies were baked and cooled, I painted them white with acrylic craft paint (mostly because my clay had picked up bits of other colors and fingerprints and was no longer completely white. You really could use any color of clay since you’re painting afterward). I then glued the heads on, and applied glitter to the bodies to match the heads. The scarves are just bits of ribbon.

Now I’m WAY ahead for little gifts to give next Christmas!

You can find the tutorial for making the snowman heads HERE, in the free 2010 Inspired Ideas Christmas magazine from Inspire Co. Did any of you buy the 2011 version? I had too many projects in the works when I saw it in December, but I might buy it now, since I seem to be carrying over my momentum into the new year!

We’re a little behind on finishing our thank-you notes for Christmas, but I’m determined to finish them this weekend. Here are a few cards and envelopes I made using my Silhouette machine. I love how easy it was to cut the envelopes out of pretty magazine pages!

I tried a few different methods for making the cards. This is probably my favorite: I cut the words “Thank you” out of the card, and then glued a piece of magazine page under it. The downside is, when you open the card, you see the other side of the magazine page, but I’m telling myself that’s part of the handmade charm, right? Rather than deal with gluing on the little loose shapes from the interior of the letter “A” and “O,” I turned the font into a stencil-like font by just using the “Slice” tool in the Silhouette software to cut a little notch in those letters.

I also experimented with cutting the letters out of magazine pages. I had some problems with the thin pages tearing while being cut. Then I switched to the new ratchet-style blade and that worked better, though some spots still were problems. While this method eliminates the unsightly stuff on the inside of the card, it always means gluing each letter individually. (I have a Xryon sticker maker, but these letters are so lightweight they are tricky to feed in). I forget where I read this tip, but I cut a rectangle around the words, so I could use the negative space as sort of a guide to place the letters.  And I then could use that negative space/shape on another card. (see the first card on the left in the top picture)

Now that the New Hampshire Primary is finally over, I am looking forward to having a bit more time to sew and craft! Today was my first day off in 19 days. I haven’t calculated my overtime yet, but I covered more than 50 Jon Huntsman events during that time all over the state. It didn’t really hit me how tired I was until I went back to the office Wednesday. The adrenaline really kept me going!

Anyway, here are the last of the Christmas gifts I forgot to show you!

I made this quilt for my sister, using the excess fabric from my Christmas quilt. I had a bunch of strips of squares already sewn together, and my original plan was to use those to border larger squares of off-white fabric… but at some point I decided to make 1/2-square triangles instead. The top came together very quickly, though quilting those zig-zags is tedious given all the times you have to stop and pivot.

I knew I wanted this to be a cuddly throw, so I bought fleece for the backing, thinking I could skip the batting altogether. But the green showed through the white, so I ended up using batting.  As you can see, my quality-control kitties were quite pleased with the final result.

My husband helped with this next project, a set of drinking glasses made out of recycled soda bottles. We were inspired by this project  featuring wine bottles at Plastolux.com. I can’t remember where we ordered it from, but we bought the same bottle cutter featured in that post. Jason did all the cutting. He found it somewhat frustrating in that some bottles cut very evenly and others either broke into pieces or cut unevenly. Lucky for us, my father-in-law used to make stained glass stuff, so he had a sanding machine we could borrow. That made it much easier to sand the sharp edges.

They were really hard to photograph! (There actually were six glasses, one for each New England state)

We tend to drink more red wine than white, so we have a lot of dark colored bottles, which I don’t like as much in terms of turning them into tumblers. So we made this set using some soda bottles (I forget which brand, some fancy organic soda probably from our local food co-op) I used my Silhouette machine to cut vinyl stencils for the decorations and etching cream.

Our friends really loved them, so we’ll probably make more. Though this was one of those projects where we thought “We’ll make a ton of these!” and then ended up making …. one set. But we really should make more to at least get our money’s worth out of the cutter.

I hate, hate, hate taking down Christmas decorations. Though we did put up our tree pretty early this year, which helps a bit. But what is nagging me now is that there were so many decorations I wanted to make and display that never came to be… since we painted the living room last January, none of our old decorations really worked, and I had such grand visions of making new decorations. I made a few, but might just start from scratch for next year.

I actually did not finish this village until the day AFTER Christmas. I used the templates from Martha Stewart’s Winter Village and cut them out of cardstock with my Silhouette machine. (Martha, of course, calls for printing the templates, cutting them out, gluing them onto chipboard, cutting them out again, priming and then painting). No doubt, hers are sturdier than mine, but I did not have the patience, and the Silhouette won’t cut through chipboard. (at least, not the version I have). Rather than fiddle with trying to use the Silhouette’s trace feature, I just used the polygon drawing tool to draw the templates in the Silhouette software.

So, that made cutting them very easy. Putting them together was a little tricky. It was hard to glue some of the tiny flaps, particularly on the roof pieces. (You can see the little dormer roof on the green house is already coming loose).  Martha covers her windows with glassine, which is one of those things Martha always has laying around, but I do not. So I used waxed paper instead. To make the houses more sturdy, I cut pieces of thick cardboard as bases and then glued the houses around them using hot glue. Some came out more lopsided than others… I then brushed Mod-Podge over the buildings and sprinkled them with glitter. By this point, I was kind of sick of the project, and you can tell … the glue is a bit uneven and there are gaps that don’t have glitter. I perhaps could have used a spray adhesive to make it more even.

My plan was to display this on my coffee table but my husband thinks the cats will get destroy it, and he’s probably right. So it’s stuck on a bookcase shelf for now.

I also made a felted wool ball garland, inspired by this one at PapernStitch, to hang above my living room windows. These are pretty impossible to photograph given that they are against a bright window. I like them, though it does sort of look like I hung up a string of cat toys. Next year, I might take it apart and add more balls, but limit it to a set color scheme… maybe just the colors in my Christmas quilt, which I have slung over the back of the couch.

The quilt, by the way, looks very nice with my red pillow covers I made from that great fabric I got at the Crate & Barrel outlet.

I also had envisioned a bunch of snowflakes dangling in front of the windows, but only made 1, and I don’t love it.

I got the pattern/directions from here, but had a lot of trouble getting things to stick together. I tried glue dots, but the pieces kept popping apart. I ended up using thread to hold some of it together, but it looks messy. I probably should’ve just used tape. And then it looked sort of plain, so I added a little glitter.  It still isn’t really doing much for me. Maybe if I had a bunch in different sizes?

I’m telling myself that all these decorations are more “winter” than “Christmas” because I probably won’t have time to take them down until after Jan. 10, the New Hampshire primary day. (for those who don’t know, my day job is reporting for The Associated Press. I have spent the last six days covering Jon Huntsman and have seven more to go before the political circus moves on to South Carolina.)

That’s when my new year really starts, but for everyone else, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Usually I am so busy making Christmas gifts for other people, that I don’t make too much for my own little boy. I feel bad about that, but on the other hand, often when I’m making something for someone else, he will see it and want one, so I make him one on the spot instead of waiting. This year, I managed to make him a few small things, including a Harry Potter-inspired scarf. (Note: Parker has been reading  Harry Potter to my husband, and I actually haven’t read any or seen the movies. So I did a quick google/Amazon search to look at scarfs and made these rough approximations).

I actually made three scarves, because we bought my nephew some of the books and I made the scarf to go with them. And then my husband saw it and requested one for himself. I tried to talk him out of it (I think it looks a bit silly on an adult) but he insisted. I used red and gold/yellow fleece that was on sale for $2.99/yard at Jo-Ann’s. I think I got half a yard of each and had plenty to make three scarves. (We also bought Parker a Harry Potter magic wand, and on Christmas morning, my husband overheard him, waving the wand over a new box of LEGOs and whispering “Build yourself… build yourself.” Ha.) (A few hours later, he broke the wand, somehow by jabbing it into a plush pig… but more on that to come.)

Here’s my nephew with his scarf.

For my son, I also made some Angry Bird stuffed animals using the patterns and tutorials at Obsessively Stitching. I did not use her technique of sewing the appliqued bits on from the back and trimming the excess. Instead, I used fusible web/Steam-a-Seam to iron the shapes on (which is a little tricky with fleece. Some parts didn’t adhere well and I had to hand-stitch them later). I also didn’t have enough fleece on hand to really pay attention to which way the fleece stretched, so my birds/pig are a bit distorted, I think. But since their main function is to be hurled at each other, I didn’t stress about that.

For my cousin’s almost-3-year-old boy, I made this set of “portable roads” inspired by a version made by Lil Mop Top .

Mine are two layers of fabric (felt on the bottom, a home-decor weight cotton on top), fused together with Steam-a-Seam to make them a little sturdier (and no sewing!). I didn’t have too many sheets of Steam-a-Seam so I only made a small assortment of road pieces. (The square pieces are corners) I used iron-on heat transfer vinyl and my Silhouette machine to make the yellow dashed lines on the road, and for the decoration on the fabric envelope holder. (I forgot to reverse the car image, so I guess that’s Oliver driving in England!)

This last item isn’t really hand-made, but more of a kit so kids can make their own creations. My son loves to build “robots” out of cardboard boxes, tubes, etc., so I was excited when I read about Makedo, a set of hinges, fasteners and other tools designed for turning cardboard and other stuff into toys. The prices on the website are a bit pricey, but I found a set on Amazon described as a kit for 30 kids for $60. (300 pins, 300 clips, 75 lock-hinges and 10 safe-saws.)  I see now that the price there is even lower, $48, and the other smaller kits are on sale as well. I ended up dividing what I got and giving it as gifts to my son and three other boys (with enough left over for several future gifts as well).

I printed some pictures from the Makedo website and some instructions (since the kit only came with one sheet of instructions) and  made up boxes with the Makedo stuff, a few small boxes, paper towel tubes and stickers I made by cutting rectangles and punching circles from origami paper and running them through my Xyron sticker maker. I had planned on spray painting some boxes silver and making stickers that looked more like robot buttons but 1) I ran out of time and 2) this was supposed to be about the KIDS being creative, right?

(After I saw LiEr’s very cool series on cardboard and lighting, I really wanted to add a string of LED lights, too, but again, time was running out. But I know Parker would LOVE making his robot light up.)

We had a wonderful Christmas. It was especially nice to have the day before and day after off from work in addition to Christmas day because the next two weeks are going to be extremely busy for me with the NH primary Jan. 10.  I’m eager to share pictures of all my hand-made gifts, but I’ll probably divide them up in a few posts over the next week or so.

First up, some of the gifts for girls, young and old. Some of these were posted on my hidden holiday blog earlier.

Here’s a little doll quilt and pillow I made for my best friend’s 4-year-old daughter, loosely based on a zig-zag quilt pattern I saw at The Purl Bee. I love how half-square triangles can be arranged in so many different patterns.

Instead of making a traditional “quilt sandwich” and binding this quilt, I just cut the batting and backing to the same size as the top, and layered them with the batting on top, then the quilt top right side down, then the backing right side up. I sewed all the way around the edges, leaving an opening for turning, and then turned it right side out. Because I added a narrow white border to the top, that ended up sort of looking like binding when I topstitched in-the-ditch along that seam. Good enough for a doll!

Speaking of dolls, I made these adorable paper dolls for my 6-year-old niece. I downloaded the Betsy McCall paper dolls from this website and used my Silhouette machine and its print-and-cut feature  to cut them out. It took a little bit of work to do this, but once I figured it out it worked well, and now I’ll have the files all ready to go if I want to make more for someone else.  (I used Photoshop to make solid black silhouettes of each shape so I could then trace them in the Silhouette software to get my cutting shapes.) I also printed small versions of each magazine page and made a little book, because I thought my niece might like the little stories that went with each outfit. I’m hoping to make more for her over the next few months and send them to her as a little surprise.

For the dolls themselves, I printed the doll on cardstock and then used the Silhouette machine to cut four blank dolls, and then glued the whole stack together. The dresses are cut out of plain white copy paper.

I also gave her a set of jewelry like the sets I posted about earlier this month, and some polymer clay food for her dollhouse. I didn’t end up making as much as I had planned (it takes a lot longer than you’d think to make such tiny food!), but she loved what I did make. (as did my son… he got the same set for his beloved toy cat figures).

And for the big girls on my list ….

These are very similar to the ruffled scarf I made for my sister in October. I bought a bunch of different jersey knits from Fabric.com, some were as cheap as $2.99/yard, and I still have some leftover after making all these scarves. All of them are two-layers of fabric basically sewn into long tubes. Instead of the fussy way I was trying to fold over the edges and sew a satin stitch to get the edges to ruffle, I came up with an easier technique.

1) Cut a strip of fabric the width of your fabric (58″ in most cases for these fabrics) and twice the width of the finished scarf. (I cut 14 or 15 inches). (This is for a single-color scarf. If you want to use two fabrics, just cut two pieces, the width of the fabric and however wide you want the finished scarf to be)

2) Fold the fabric in half lengthwise, right sides together, match up the edges and pin along the long end. Sew along the long edge, making a tube of fabric. (If using two fabrics, pin them together right-sides together, and sew along both long edges)

3) Turn the tube right-side out so your seam is on the inside, and then press it so the seam runs up the middle, instead of along one edge. (if using two fabrics, skip this step, just press the tube flat)

4) Sew a narrow zig-zag along the folds of both long edges, stretching the fabric in front of and behind the needle as you go to create ruffles.

5) Close up the tube and make your finished infinity scarf using the technique described here.

Some of the fabric didn’t ruffle as much as others, but I ended up liking them all anyway. The tan/beige fabric is a very thin “tissue jersey.” The cream and black is a super-soft organic bamboo knit. The gray was probably the cheapest fabric, but I really like how it looks, both with the orange backing and on its own. For some of the scarves, I skipped the top stitching for the ruffles and just made un-ruffled scarves.

Even though I finished all my hand-made Christmas gifts with a day or two to spare, my mind keeps flitting to all the projects I wanted to make for myself (mostly decorations.) I even started making a little winter village this morning before work, and it is sitting on my desk right now. But really, I should just stop and enjoy Christmas with my family, right? Right.

So in that spirit, here are a few pictures I snapped yesterday morning, when we had an absolutely gorgeous sunrise. (Today, we woke up to snow, but it has already melted. Eighteen inches of snow at Halloween, none for Christmas. WRONG.)

For all my readers, thank you for all the encouragement this year. It means a lot to me.

 (and if you’re looking for a fun holiday read, check out this AP story I wrote about how Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer REALLY went down in history.)

*** EDITED to fix typo. The ornaments I tried to link to at Land of Nod no longer appear to be available for purchase. The picture is still listed on the website though. ****

Way back in November, I bought about a dozen clear, glass ornaments at Michael’s when they were on sale for 50 percent off. My plan was to come up with a few different ways to decorate them and then write a craft article for AP. But my first idea was a disaster, so I ended up just writing about one project.

This project was inspired by an ornament my mom made me when I was 4-year-old. She used to go to a paint-your-own ceramics place, and made me this cute ornament that has a little Christmas scene inside a snowball. I decided to make a simpler version (just a snowball) by covering a glass ornament with polymer clay.

(I’ve seen other tutorials that produce similar snowballs, some by covering foam balls with joint compound, etc. but I wanted to be able to personalize mine by imprinting a name into the clay).

Now that I look at these close-up pictures, they look kind of messy, but from arm’s length, they are quite pretty! They are covered in fine, clear glitter that doesn’t really show up well in photographs.

You can read my tutorial here. (NOTE: News story links often don’t stay live very long. If this link goes dead, just Google “Holly Ramer” and “snowball ornament.”)

(In case you’re curious, here was my other idea that did not work at ALL. Maybe someone has some tips?)

My first idea was inspired by these brightly colored ornaments at Land of Nod. My idea was to paint the insides of the ornaments in bright colors, and then etch names on them, so they would be personalized, but in a subtle, modern way. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted and never ended up with what I wanted.

I’m not sure what went wrong with the etching, but it came out so light you could barely read it. I’ve etched other things before with great results, so maybe it has something to do with the glass for these particular ornaments? I also tried a frosted glass spray paint that is supposed to mimic etching, but had the same trouble. It was so subtle, you couldn’t really read the names.

And I had a ton of trouble painting the insides of the ornaments. When I used just regular acrylic paint (squirting the paint in and then swirling it around), the paint cracked and slid off as it dried. I then got paint specially made for glass, which worked a bit better but it was still too thick to swirl around. Adding a bit of water helped, and they looked great initially, but after drying, I ended up with the same cracks and streaks. So I gave up.

The winner of my giveaway is comment #20, Alyssa T, who said :”Favorite tradition is dipping beeswax candles for gifts with my boys. Your coin purse is so lovely!”

Thanks to everyone who entered. Once the holidays are over, I hope to check out some of your blogs, as well.

(If you’re looking for my giveaway post, click here)

Here are some of the Christmas gifts I finished last week. My cousin has four daughters, ages 4-11, and my sister has a 6-year-old daughter,  so I’m always looking for cute but inexpensive gifts for them. (though I would wear these myself if I had any leftovers!) These were so easy. The jewelry is made from polymer clay using a few silicone molds from Mold Muse, and I made the little purse/box and the tags using my Silhouette machine.

If you like the bobby pins and earrings, see my giveaway post for a chance to win a set!

I’ve also started posting more handmade gifts on my “hidden” holiday blog,  so if you need that link, leave me a comment or send me a note.