Kicking off Christmas

Ashley and Kirsten below totally freaking out over the hotel room view in NYC on Thanksgiving weekend. The Macy's Parade and Thanksgiving with my sisters was a huge part of our Christmas kick-off. Just spending a few moments to remind anyone who may venture here to take care of yourself this Christmas season. Generally if you're reading this, it's because you are a girly girl who likes to play with art supplies and skews towards vintage, eclectic style, but all are welcome!

But...if you are a girly girl, you may also be the one in charge of Christmas in your home. That may also mean you get what amounts to a third full time job for the month of December, sometimes stretching into January. So, take the time to care for yourself. You know the saying, if Mrs. Claus ain't happy, ain't nobody happy! (or something like that, but it's true)

If you do get some time to take a few moments to yourself to play with art supplies or make heartfelt gifts for your loved ones and friends, check these links out for great ideas, tutorials and more:

One Pretty Thing ~tons of links to tutorials for everything under the sun, you could get lost for hours here

Little Pink Studio ~if you're into vintage chic, Cerri will show you the way

The Graphics Fairy ~loads of vintage images to download for creating to your hearts content

If you're in the mood for guided Christmas creating, check out these workshops or tutorials:

Teresa McFayden ~offering her 5th annual Christmas e-course

I'm Just a girl ~Spark your Christmas workship with a big emphasis on transforming what you already own. You know I'm a green, tree-hugger, so this speaks to me.

christytomlinson: 12 Artsy Ornaments of Christmas.. a mini workshop ~12 different talented artists will guide you through not only ornaments, but also home decor and gifts as well.

Tim Holtz ~I think this is Tim's 5th year of his 12 Tags of Christmas. Free for you to enjoy, duplicate or use for inspiration. You'll learn lots of new tips here too!

Through December, if you like, keep checking back to the Granny Panty Chic blog for more Christmas ideas and (hopefully) inspiration. I'll admit, I get totally giddy over this month. It's just gotta spill somewhere and it's gonna be here I decided. ;-)

How time has flown by

Today is my oldest child's birthday. My little cuddle bug with the big giggle and even bigger sense of adventure is...a man. (and yet, I mysteriously remain forever young!)

I can tell you this; I have a friend who says "Little children, little problems. Big children, big problems." It's true. When you are in the midst of colic and diaper rash and potty training, it can be truly, mind-numbingly exhausting. When your teenager comes to you after some incredibly bad decision and is facing extreme consequences, it is true that when they're heart breaks, your heart breaks right along with them.

We can't dwell on the valleys because the moutaintops are numerous and rewarding and life is a terrifying, wonderful thing.

Cliches are grounded in truth. The cliche that they grow up before you know it is absolutely true. Oh, to redeem the time wasted when I was 'too busy' or 'too tired' as he grew up, but I am trying to choose to treasure all the moments, the milestones and the memories.

Zach is a guy's guy, so I made him a pretty simple, but bright card.

One of his little secrets is that he loves flowers and gardens. He won't tell you, but it's easy to observe. When he was younger and we lived in a townhouse, we built some raised flowerbeds. I bought loads of perennials and annuals. He is the one who arranged how they were planted. When he badly hurt his knee and realized he was a horrible patient at home, he asked his dad to help him shop for a rose bush as an apology. He walks around the yard smelling flowers and brushing his hand over herbs and he takes an active interest in the vegetable beds, but his big request is to plant watermelons. So, a little spring bouquet for him. How appropriate that the world is coming awake as his birthday arrives.

And this is super late, but last week Opus Gluei had a challenge to use material in a project. I have an older friend who is extremely ill and I know that she loves flowers, so this little embellished burlap bag will hold a tiny bud vase and several tiny daffodils. Hope she likes it!

C-H-R-Y-S-alis!

I'm a volunteer youth leader in my spare time. What does that mean?

A lot of the time, it means sleep deprivation, heart ache for them, overwhelming joy for them, advocating for them and way too much caffeine while sharing the message that God loves them and longs to be in relationship with them. Some days it leans heavily to the sleep deprivation side and others it leads heavily to the sharing God side. Any balance isn't of my own doing, but from the Big Guy.

Lately it means I won't have one free weekend for well over a month due to youth related activities, but I'm having an awesome time this weekend.

You see, last night we dropped off one of our teens for a special weekend retreat. Just last year, this girl was so shy, so introverted that most of the time it looked like she was trying to escape.

Slowly, slowly we got to know her and she got to know us and Look Out World, here she comes! All by herself, she asked to join the church and be baptized. A lot of us fully mature adults are too hesitant to make a decision like that.

She also stepped out of her peer group and joined us at Creation with about 100,000 other crazy teenagers. I'll never forget the night she came up to me, jumping up and down, covered in glow sticks, hugging me and screaming "I love Tobymac!" Gone was the shy flower.

And she just keeps surprising me. So, this weekend she is at the retreat getting treated like a Rock Star and showered in love. One of the ways we show our love is through all of the little details (and I can't go into those because I don't want to spoil the surprise for anyone else who might go).

I do think I can share these...Sometimes they may find a personalized placemat at their meals. Sometimes. I made her a couple and took them to be laminated, so they're safe from spaghetti sauce. They're pretty simple. Couldn't go wild with the embellishments since they were going to be laminated, but I have to say my favorite is the big layered butterfly I cut with my Silhouette.

That's her, a beautiful butterfly. :)

Sweetness for the Sweethearts

Sooooo, it's about time to pack up the Valentine goodies because I need to move on to some top secret projects for someone, but before I finish sealing these up in envelopes, here are a few more sweet, funny Valentines...You'll note the copious use of those little honeycomb heart cupcake decorations. And I found these bags of vintage buttons I had packaged up for a flea market that got rained out, so I decided their creamy patina was perfect to frame a heart. For a soft, simple Valentine decoration that wasn't blatantly red & pink, I cut out a heart old-school style; fold, cut and unfold. Pulled out cards of vintage (and not so vintage) laces & trims and hot glued them. A banner covered in antique German glass glitter with I Love You and a vintage earring finished it all off. I'm adding this heart decoration to the Opus Gluei challenge of creating a decoration for your home. Doesn't have to be a Valentine's decoration. You are free to get crazy. :) Be sure to check out their other entries!

The Season of Lurve

Have I asked you to hold me back from buying any more Valentine's Day papers because I already have more than I'll ever need? If I have, apologies. If I haven't, for the love of Pete, somebody stop me!

And half the time I make cards, layouts, canvases for different occasions using supplies that have nothing do to with the intended holiday. So why do this stuff continue to work its way into my supply? I'm pretty sure it's because we're all a bunch of happy enablers. Our 12 step program involves tips for finding the latest & greatest, new sources and coffee places in close proximity to our supply meccas.

Faced with all of these supplies, lovely and amazing though they are, I sat down to try and actually use some of them.

I made these cards with a mix of Teresa Collins, K & Co, Basic Grey and Heidi Swapp (super old stash, yikes). And you know what? I still have a LOT of Valentine's stuff from Teresa Collins, K & Co and Basic Grey. I love it all though. I mean, how could you not love a big pile of soft blush, pink and red with frilly stuff all around?

The next card has mostly stash; some Teresa Collins, Basic Grey, K & Co, Making Memories. But what isn't old stash is something I found in the cupcake supplies at the store. I saw these honeycomb heart cupcake toppers and said to myself "Self, those would make killer cute embellishments on a Valentine's card!"

You know what? They really do! Just snap the wooden toothpick off and you are all set. If you're mailing the card, don't open the honeycomb. Let the sender do that (send a little set of user instructions of course). The honeycome hearts are getting used elsewhere too. Hope to show that off eventually.

Until then, it's less than 2 weeks til Valentine's Day! If your honey doesn't do something special for you, do something special for yourself. You deserve it! :)

My Funny Valentine

After having an amazing time for Making Merry in December, Rosemary, Kim and I decided to get together for a day to celebrate Valentine's Day. This time Kim was hostess at her lovely home and she fed us incredible food. Nom, nom, nom. I'm still dreaming about that white lasagna...

Kim had us create 2 beautiful cards. I love that she didn't use a traditional Valentine's Day palette with the lavender card. For the other card, she had us beading which was soooooo fun! I could've kept making little beaded petals all day long. Rosemary used her wicked cool Cricut creativity to cut out matchboxes with acetate windows and brought an awesome stack of vintage images for us to fashion adorable Valentine's decorations. I hung them up right after I got home to show them off! I had bought a stack of chandelier ornaments after Christmas at Target (love Target!)for 50% off. I had a stash of honeycomb wedding bells because I always go to the party supply store for something like napkins and can't help but peruse the wedding & baby aisles for art supplies. Take some Paris slide images, vintage sheet music and a bit of glitter to alter those chandelier ornaments and they become gilded bell ornaments for Valentine's Day.
One of my favorite things to do (it seems), is to create holiday projects with supplies that aren't holiday themed. A few years ago, I bought a stack of Foofala papers from a friend who was having a scrapbook yard sale. 100 sheets of fun. None of them holiday themed, but some of them with a romantic, dusty palette that was ready to be fashioned into a Valentine.
I always sketch card designs or layout designs in my notebook. If you ever see my scribble-scrabble, you will look from sketch to finished project and wonder to yourself, "I don't see the resemblance." It helps me thing and work through the design process. For this card, I sketched (ha!) it out and started to measure, fold, play with different patterned papers, etc. I pulled in the grade school trick of folding paper in half to create a heart and used that as a template to cut a heart from a page torn from a vintage German book. I printed and distressed a love poem to use as the card sentiment. Added some bling, distress inks and vintage crepe paper and hope it fulfills the romance quota. But even more than the projects, it is the decision to take the time away for the purpose of creating, sharing and oh, the laughter that is food for the soul. We really did laugh over some funny Valentines. And I can't wait to come up with an excuse (perfectly good reason) to do it again!

These goodies also go perfectly with the latest Opus Gluei challenge. If you haven't checked them out before, head on over. Low pressure, high-octane creative fun! Come as you are and be embraced by the Poobahs. :)

Fabulous Fifteen!

Oh wow! Just. Wow.

My baby is turning fifteen this Saturday. She was a blizzard baby, born right after the crazy blizzard we had in 1996. I remember my neighbor, who was a firefighter, freaking out when he saw me shoveling snow. I was ready for her to ARRIVE.

He very kindly offered to help me deliver her should I go into spontaneous labor. I think after I picked my jaw up off the floor, I thanked him and said something to the effect of "I will walk to the ER in snowshoes before you deliver this child because no way would I ever be able to look you in the eye again."

Fortunately all the roads were cleared of snow and the skies were full of stars on the night she came into this world. When I remember the night of her birthday I always think of this line by Shakespeare, "There was a star danced and under that I was born."
And she is a star. Happy Birthday Baby Girl! (I made this very girly card for her. She's starting to actually like bling-bling, so I'm milking that for all it's worth!) So much glitter on here. And rhinestones, pearls, Glimmer Mist, paper lace, old tulle, vintage seam binding, etc. It's an homage to a young lady who is growing up on me, but it still very playful at heart.

Return to the Roots

Long, long ago, a friend tricked me into scrapbooking by asking me to host a Creative Memories party to help her launch her new business. LOL Little did I know that as I was cutting wedding photos into star shapes and smattering them with sticker sneezes that I would become so hooked.

But I was.

It was a tether back to the creative little girl that I had been; who had been choked by the weeds of life, the real world and the admonition to 'grow up'. (as I type this I can't help but think of the John Candy movie, 'Uncle Buck' where he tells off the principal who wants him to crush the spirit of his imaginative niece, what a hilarious and sweet moment that was. Look it up!)

To all those who think scrapbooking is something soccer moms do in their myriad hours of spare time, I'm sorry you feel so negatively. I've met incredibly talented women (and men!) with rich, full lives who pour their creative spirit into documenting a life well-lived. Some are married, some are single. Some have 10 children, others have no children. Some are doctors and others are stay at home parents. ALL are valuable.

And yet, as much as I enjoy it and continue to invest in new product and/or tools, I hadn't scrapbooked at all in quite some time. I made a lot of art that I had a great time creating, but I'd gotten away from the heart of what got me back to creating in the first place: scrapbooking.

So, while others dressed up to go out and party on NYE, I pulled on some yoga pants, brewed some hot coffee and went to the studio to play.

And I loved it.

What I did isn't elaborate or newsworthy, but it was nourishing and renewing and most of all, it made my 2 oldest feel treasured because they are the subject of my time and effort. They laugh and weakly attempt to hide it from their friends, but then they pull all the old scrapbooks out and spend hours looking through their own lives. Lives well lived. (forgive the cropping of the photos. I'm still trying to figure out my new camera and its photo editing software!)

Upcycling En Masse

Elsie Flannigan and Rachel Denbow are about to kick off a year of repurposing, remaking and renewing old, worn or damaged items. In other words, they have tapped into a passion of mine: Upcycling. Join in the effort here...Project ReStyle - A Beautiful Mess

Go against the grain of New Years exclamations of Out with the Old and In with the New. Embrace a new resolution of In with the Old and Who needs the New!

Making Merry Revisited

During this time of year when, in general, women all over the world are busy doing, going and buying for others (and quite happily too), I invited Rosemary and Kim over to put the breaks on the Christmas crazy and spend an entire day Making Merry. What better way to recharge and refuel in the midst of the Christmas season than to indulge in a bit of top notch retail therapy and ultra creative play?

We went to one of my favorite places to get decorating inspiration, Chartreuse and Company and then we stopped in at a new store down the street from my home, Wild Rose and Co. that also does an amazing job of merchandising the goods.

Then it was back to the house where we said hi to the City Chicks and then got down to the business of creative play...

Rosemary had brought the motherload of Christmas stashes (I want to go shopping in her studio!) as we embellished wine boxes. We were so proud of our accomplishments that they all got an impromptu photo shoot (mine is on the far left).

I decided to give mine away to my mom (She never reads my blog, so I'm safe. Did I tell you about the time Mom went skinny dipping with my Dad when I was a little kid? hehehe) and put some very delicate, breakable Christmas ornaments in it. Voila, perfect vehicle for a fragile gift.

Then we stopped for snacks, nom, nom, nom. There shall be no art without serious carbo loading.

After that, we started on my very long, very messy project. Let's just say that cotton batting, cotton balls, glue and mica make incredibly gorgeous finished clouds and snow scenes, but the process is like you gave a kid a roll of duct tape and a bottle of paste then told them to go to town with it. The final result was a snow laden cloud with a vintage Christmas light to lead the way through the dark night with a vintage goodie laden tin in tow (or that's what I hope it looks like).

The inspiration were some vintage cotton batting ornaments, some 'travel' related ornaments my children have the involve zeppelins, or cotton batting sail boats and another project where someone used a vintage tin as a balloon basket. (I've come to the conclusion that a truly original idea, if it should ever suddenly hit me, will probably happen long after I've gone gray and senile) After all that creating, we were wiped out, so it was dinner time! Tim, otherwise knowns as Pizza Boy, took our orders and made us homemade pizzas which was followed by more carb loading because being covered in glue and mica burns serious, um, brain cells?


For our final creative endeavor, Kim taught Rosemary and I how to make flowers from ribbon. Both Rosemary and I kind of shivered with intimidation until Kim guided us through beautiful petals, leaves and more. Seriously we had no idea how cool it could be and all of the amazing projects that can be done with ribbon flowers!


Of course, I don't have a photo of mine because we didn't finish. Our spirit was willing, but our bodies were weak. I've had my pieces in a basket by the sofa so I can slowly put it all together, but I think Kim enabled us to explore yet another new creative outlet!


(And I think we ate some more as we packed away all of our projects. Who are we to waste perfectly good carbs?) As we hugged each other goodbye, cries were heard of Making Merry to all and to all a Good Night!

The Circle o'Vintage

My old house has something that often foils my attempts to hang things on walls: loads of windows and plaster. I am determined that this beauty IS going up this year rather than languishing in obscurity. I may be scaling back, but I still love the shiny (oooh, shiny). Sweet angel on her cloud...Love this bell! Full of vintage love. It will go up. I may crack some plaster, but it's one of my projects for the day. And I carved out some time to play with Opus Gluei for their current "Getting Frosted" challenge. It was like carved out while watching Jimmy Fallon late at night carved out, but I was having too much fun for sleep.

When I make stuff purely from old stash I start to feel bad about shopping for new goodies.

I mean, really, really guilty bad.

For about a minute.

And then I'm over it. :)

But, I do quite love pulling together a project from old stash and creating something new.

This wintery, frosty card uses old Heidi Swapp, Ranger, Martha Stewart, Making Memories, Basic Grey, vintage flowers and I used vintage tinsel to make a nest. If you figure out how to removed my camera covered face from the reflection, let me know. I'm not fluent in Photoshop, so it'll stay there for now. ;)

Opus Gluei Challenge

Yeah, I managed to squeak in another Opus Gluei challenge this weekend! I probably went off the color palette a bit by throwing a blue in there, but when it feels so right, how can it be wrong? :) I pulled from MME, Heidi Swapp, 7 Gypsies, Ranger, Basic Grey and Target $ Spot for this one. It's not too complicated, but it is cute (I hope).

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Wonderful I hope! Now on to....

Christmas Crazy!

Ok, if you've been here before you know I get totally geeked out over Christmas. I'm insufferable really. To that end, I have put the Christmas playlist back up on the bottom of the blog. If you don't like it, mute it. If you do, turn up the dial and sing along!

And, I'm losing sleep in the name of merriment. As in Making Merry! A couple of friends and I are getting together for a little holiday experiment. If it works out, we may expand it to other holidays as well. As it is, I'm can't wait to share my project with them; a little vintage chic with a bit of a nod towards Steampunk style (Loved that Steampunk storyline on Castle a couple of months ago!)

Time to get back to decking some halls...

Merry Inspiration

I think it's fairly evident by now that Christmas is upon the horizon. I knew it was here the moment I polished off my first bag of Candy Cane Hershey's Kisses (drat you Hershey!). When the Cadbury Mini Balls showed up at Target, I nearly had a happy seizure (Did you know in Canada, they have these all year round? Dude, no fair!)

Just a few links to get you in a merry mood...

Inspired Ideas, The Christmas Issue OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS, this online issue is full of Christmas love. I know at least one idea that I'm tweaking from this and about 10 more ideas that are on my 'must-do' list!

Holiday...with Matthew Mead Seriously, I danced a jig when I opened my mailbox to find this gift in it this evening. A flippin' full on jig, I tell ya! (while holding eggs in one hand too) I haven't even gotten past the first few pages and I'm already salivating at the joy contained in the pages of this lush magazine. Only 'magazine' isn't the right word for it. It's a revelation of Christmas pleasures supported online by links to patterns, recipes and more. You can only get it by ordering online or from a store that specially ordered a box of this goodness.

I have followed Matthew Mead's creative trail for years and he's assembled a fabulous team that has put together "Holiday" so thoughtfully that you won't regret getting a copy of your own.

Joli Paquet Back for another Christmas with free tutorials (and these are GOOD tutorials too) and teasers about their famous kit sales from a group of talented artists, make sure you don't forget to check Joli Paquet often.

One Pretty Thing Here you will find ideas, inspiration and free downloads on a daily basis. If you can't get excited about something on this site, the Whos from Whoville need to grow your Grinchy heart a size or two.

Opus Gluei, the Gratitude Edition

I hope Rosemary and Jana haven't kicked me off the rolls for Opus Gluei. I know I've been a bad artist. Having my entire studio flooded and torn apart for months really threw me into an art funk (in a bad way). It's still not completely put together, but I had to get in there and do what I could to pull a Tim Gunn (make it work). (And I will digress here and say this about Project Runway: Mondo got robbed. Humph.)

Then, to just totally throw me for a loop, my trusty camera went kaput. It began putting out images that looked like negatives from the film reel for the original Excorcist. I don't care what Tim Gunn says, I could not make that work at all. I frittered away for months using only my camera phone to capture shaky images.

When dear hubby and I were about to leave for vacation, I stomped my little feet (or long, wide, plantar fascitis plagued feet) and announced via text message whilst at Costco, that I WAS getting a camera before the trip. Remind me of my behavior next time one of my teens gives me attitude. Who was going to believe I was viewing lava if I didn't have the proof? (Uh and I still don't have proof. They wouldn't let us that close to the lava. But I do have a 'Beach closed. Shark sighting.' photo!)

So folks, I hope this means I'm back in the business of creating and occasionally participating in some Opus Gluei fun!

Their latest challenge was Attitude of Gratitude. Someone recently went above and beyond for me, so I wanted to give her a little somethin' somethin'. She loves herself some good chocolate. That can be had from the store, but it needed some presentation, some panache, a little something extra. I pulled from the gorgeous fall palette for color inspiration and glued a lush Prima flower that I'd been waiting for the perfect project to use it because it was THAT special to a golden organza bag.

For a card, I did several scalloped circles held together by ball chain embellished with a glass leaf charm, a silver letter charm and some vintage seam binding. Then those teensie circle letters from Jenni Bowlin nestled into the little scalloped to spell 'Grateful'. I wrote her a note of thanks upon the circles and will be giving it to her this weekend. Since she never reads blogs, I think I'm safe in showing it here in advance. I hope!

Happy Lurve Day!

Once again that day of the year again that is sure to inspire thoughts of love or sure to bring sad & lonely disappointment is here: Valentine's Day. My hubby is out of town all weekend, will be home for only one night (a late one at that) then leave to go to LA for the rest of the week (poor baby, his team has a rented beach house, lol), so I won't have much Cupid-like activity. I do have my 3 children home for Valentine's Day though, a rare treat since 2 of them are halfway out of the nest already. As usual, in the morning, they'll find a few surprises waiting for them.

I made this lollie (above)after being inspired by a tutorial on the House of 3 Inspiration blog done by Rhonna Farrer. She also did a great tutorial on making blossoms with coffee filters, so when hubby gets home, he will need to run out and buy more. Whoopsie! Hey, I got carried away! To make our Valentine's weekend more festive for the kids, I hung a few banners and paper lanterns. All of the pink even catches the light and reflects a soft, romantic light around the rooms; an unexpected bonus.

Friday night, I took my daughter, her boyfriend and I went out to see the new movie, Valentine's Day. It was frothy and cute. No big, deep life lessons, but I got to hang with my girl, get to know her young man better and laugh at the crazy parking jobs in the snow around the theater. The government had declared a state of emergency, schools were out and our mail never arrived, but by golly, that theater was packed to the last seat. Cabin fever had everyone aching to get out!

Look what was outside of our 'cabin'...a supersized and scary couple of icicles. We have very tall windows, so these would be lethal should you be under one the moment they decide to break loose from their perch. Had a bit of a "Psycho" shower fright when I opened the curtain to see those! Maybe, just maybe, at this rate the icicles and snow may melt in time for summer break. I hear we're supposed to get more snow on Monday. Noooooooooooooooooooo!