Gourds, Pumpkins and Burlap, Oh My!

I find inspiration everywhere....often times I'm in a craft store and see something I want to monogram.  Last year and this year it was the small white craft pumpkins that I monogrammed as a hostess gift or just a small treat for a friend.   My friend Mary found these awesome brown, yellow and green gourds, I just had to do a brown one for a friend and of course myself.  Gold paint pen in hand with my new "I-Rock" glam setter heat tool that I used on white pumpkins, t-shirts for Halloween etc.  here is my take on the brown gourd:

Here is a pic of the white craft pumpkins that are outside my front door and that my dear neighbors chase down the street for me when we get a big gust of wind...haha!  I seem to add a new one each year...

and then we have the burlap.  I absolutely love the look of burlap, but boy is it messy.  My freshly cleaned craft room was a dusty, burlapy mess after a rotary cutterfest for this Thanksgiving banner.   After cutting the banners, I then hand-stamped a swirl in cosmic copper and burgundy glitz ink in each corner.  I then monogrammed each flag to spell out "Be Grateful".   I took a coordinating ribbon and glued it down on the banner and accented with a few rusty gold hydrangea petals.  I put it up in my dining room for our Thanksgiving Day dinner.  My first time hosting Thanksgiving -- which means I have to cook the turkey.  That's an entirely different panic attack I'm trying to put off right now :)
Here is the banner:

I was planning for these awesome monogrammed burlap napkin rings, but have re-thought that idea as I don't want shedding burlap on the plates at the table.  Not to mention all that dust triggered a sneezefest for Keil and Wilson, so I am on to Plan B for the monogrammed napkin rings.  I'll keep you posted on that progress.

Until the next craft,

Angie

Yes, Virginia, those are brown coffee filters!

So imagine my surprise when I'm trying to come up with an alternative to burlap napkin rings for Thanksgiving and I stumble across coffee filter crafting.   Then I discover they have natural colored coffee filters in all their ruffley goodness!  I was sold and my mind was racing.  I immediately set-out for Michael's (in Leesburg because the people in Sterling know me on a first name basis now) got a wreath and stopped into Target on the mission for the natural colored coffee filters.


I came home and set out for the recently organized craft/scrapbook studio/office.  I covered the straw wreath with satin off-white ribbon -- burned myself a few times with hot glue and then rubbed the edges of the coffee filters with a gilded gold and coffee brown inkpad.  Then I was ready to hot glue the filters.  I loved every sparkly, messy minute of it -- even though my eyes went cross, I stayed up too late and I'm pretty sure I have about 17 HG (hot glue) blisters. 


Here is a pic of the finished product!

It was amazingly easy and VERY inexpensive.....200 coffee filters for $0.87 and I think I used 100.  It's an awesome idea for a love gift or two for Christmas.  My mind is racing with ideas for other holidays....Valentine's Day (white filters with red or pink tipped edges)....St. Patricks Day...
Easter....4th of July.  Oh and did I mention letter shaped ruffley goodness?


This is me on craft overload signing off for the night.....I think I might need to start a chapter of Crafters' Anonymous.


Until the next craft,
Angie

Blog? Me? Never!

Well here I am....never saying never again.

After many crafty calls with my sister-friend, Allie, I decided to see what all this hype about blogging is about.  Oh, and maybe to stop boring all my Facebook friends with multiple pictures of my COTD (craft of the day).   I'm fairly certain that while I think these posts/pictures are utterly amazing, some of my best friends that are male are just rolling their eyes at me, calling me Gladys and skipping right through.

I'm not a gifted writer, just a girl that has a passion for all things arts and crafty.  My goal is to share my twist on things that I've seen or dreamed up one post at a time. 

Until next time,

Angie