kattitudes

Oh lovely lovely. Christmas is all about dreams and magic and mystery and wonder and fantastical things like this. Wonderful wonderful things like these.

And this Christmas stocking captures some of that magic just right. I just cannot help but hear the Jiminy Cricket song from Walt Disney and want to sing about “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true”.

Yes yes, I know that those are little fairies and not Disney crickets running all over this stocking, but still, either way, it would be an easy stocking to duplicate.

Again, it is felt with embellishments cut out in advance. Find a fairy outline that you like in advance and cut out enough to fill your stocking with delight. Remember that you can check the sidebar for embroidery help to get the words and wand sparkles in there.

Now this stocking is just precious. I love the little village. And the cutwork would not take that long to design and piece out. You could design your own little village or even duplicate your own neighborhood or street if you felt like it.

This was made with my current fabric fascination, felt, which of course makes it so easy to put together. Felt just keeps its shape so well, and forgives so many little errors.

I just love the little village church and the village Christmas tree. Now this is one stocking that I think i will be making multiples so that I can share the wealth with friends and family. I just love this idea. Of course it does have that primitive country Christmas vibe going on which I am not so thrilled with, but meh, I still love it.

Boy, if you really wanted to put some work into it, you could make a set of these for the cowboy in your house.

You know, I live here in the heartland of the South. In the very buckle of the Bible Belt, and I gotta tell you, these do absolutely nothing for me. And that is actually a shock to me, as reigning Queen of the stocking obsession.

And yet I know there is someone out there that will see these and absolutely fall in love and want to make them. I say more power to you and definitely go for it! It seems like adding the seam details makes all the difference in this particular stocking (just like it does on the boots themselves).

The stockings are really nicely made, I must admit. I am just not a Southwestern decorating type of person. But all in all, a nice example for those that are looking for this type of thing.

These are so easy to put together, with just a little ric-rac trim and some pom-pom trim. I absolutely adore the different colors used and the deviation from the traditional standard colors of Christmas.

The embellishments are easily sewn either by hand or by machine. And any quirkiness or funny looking bits in the sewing only adds to the incredible charm of the handmade stockings.

I am so in love with the Christmas tree theme and try to add as many trees to my house as possible, without going too terribly overboard on actual trees. I am trying to keep the actual number of trees with ornaments down to a handful, but pull the rest of the decorations around the house together by tying them with a general tree and stocking theme. Love it.

Although I never went into my marriage planning this, I have ended up with new stocking for us each year. It was not intentional. It was the stocking fetish. I still have yet to decide if that is going to happen this year. I have a few contenders, but we are still waiting to see how it shakes out.

Remember when I said that painted Christmas ornaments were all the rage? Here is yet another example. And the prices asked for these things are so incredibly silly. Just bend yourself over and belly laugh silly. I am not paying fifty dollars for something that I can do for literally twenty five cents worth of paint and five minutes of my time. No. Just no.

And if the cost is that high, then I can sit down, paint an entire box of ornaments and start gifting them to my friends. I might not be a Picasso, but I can hold the right end of a paintbrush.

So many of the winter holiday motifs are easy to duplicate. Just check your clipart library in your computer. Which of those do you think you might be able to easily repaint on an inexpensive single colored Christmas ball ornament? Sales on boxes of cheap ornaments are happening now, and you can pick up boxes of these for just pennies.

Consider checking out your clipart collection for easy holiday shapes that you think you could paint. And if you do not think you could paint, do what we did last year. Buy yourself the massive package of permanent marker Sharpies. We went to town on those last year. I think between my baby sister and I, we decorated some 10 to 15 boxes of plain ball ornaments. We had - if you will excuse the expression - a ball!

This is such a pretty ornament and I love the color combination. In fact, I actually like it enough to go dig out all my Sharpies left over from last year and make some for my tree this year. And since these painted ornaments are so popular this year, this concept would be a fantastic hostess gift or Secret Santa gift for you to consider early in the season while your gift recipient has the time to really enjoy your talents.

Now who says we have to pay a kazillion dollars for someone to make a garland to drape all over the house and all over the Christmas tree? Why not use some of the reams and reams of junk mail that comes into the house (and the kids if you do not feel like doing all the cutting yourself) to make yourself a gorgeous garland to hang around the house and save yourself the high designer cost.

This garland was cut using a craft exacto knife and leftover cardboard box, then covered with glue and glitter and attached to a ribbon. I like the weight of the cardboard to make the garland drape just right, but if you do not want the weight, you could do the same with the lightweight junk mail that arrives every day. You would just need to ensure that the glitter covers all the silly advertising and covers it well.

This would be a fantastic craft for little hands to work with (as long as you are willing to clean up the inevitable glitter that will stretch from one side of the room to the other, but that is part of the fun). The resulting garland would look wonderful on the Christmas tree or decorating your Christmas presents. I wanted to use the heavy cardboard snowflake garland to decorate the kitchen cupboards, because I think they would they look remarkably like gingerbread cookies. Instead, I think I am going to end up using them to decorate Christmas present packages.

I have said it before and I know I am going to say it again. I am still obsessed with felt fabric. I am hoping that at some point, this obsession will end and I can move on to working with another fabric. I suppose it is just as well because my last fabric obsession was chiffon and silk. Let me tell you - that was like sewing spiderwebs.

This Christmas stocking is a breeze when cut and sewn from felt fabric. The snowflakes can be cut in any design that you remember from your childhood (and who did not make eleventy thousand paper snowflakes over their elementary days?).

Although I would prefer to stitch the resulting snowflakes onto the stocking before you sew the two halves together, it would be just as easy to attach the snowflakes with stitch witchery if you are not into sewing.

The edge of the stocking is reinforced with a gorgeous blanket stitch, but if you are not comfortable with using an embroidery stitch like that (remember that you can check the reference websites in my sidebar for both picture and video instructions on embroidery stitches), you can just sew the two sides of your stocking together and be done with it. The Christmas stocking would still be perfectly adorable.

I really love the snowflake motif here. Living in drought stricken Georgia state, the thought of snow is so far away from possible that it is actually hard for me to even decorate with snow during the holiday season. Someday. Someday I will have snow during the Christmas season. It snowed during Christmas when I lived in London and when I lived in Germany. Perfect Christmases, both. Just picture perfect.

Not everyone wants a Christmas tree or Santa Claus proudly adorning their living rooms throughout the winter season this year. It is nice to have other embroidered options available to make for yourself or to gift to others.

Here in America (although certainly not in the ghastly hot state of Georgia where the heat never ends and the drought goes on and on, even after our great and mighty elected Governor Purdue stepped up to address the problem… by asking us all to pray. For rain. But moving on.) the secular Christmas holiday season is accompanied by images, not only of Christmas trees and Santas, but snowmen and other wonders. And that is just what this pillow is chock full of - nine wonderful variations of Frosty Snowmen.

Oh, I have so many examples of embroidery for the Christmas season. You are going to be tired of seeing them! But that is ok. I will keep showing them anyway.

So easy to make, these should just be illegal!

You do not need a pattern, just sketch out a mitten shape and cut cut cut. If needed, you can find a clip art of a mitten and print it out on your printer, and use that as your pattern. Use a nice heavy fabric like a fleece shown here.

Sew your two halves of your fabric almost all the way together, but leave yourself a small hole that you can use to fill with your sachet fillings. I have a nice funnel with a good long neck that I can use to fill my sachets, but if you do not have a funnel, a rolled up piece of paper works wonders (and is amazingly free! plus it is a fantastic way to use up all that dratted junk mail that comes into the house free of charge to you. Did I mention the free part yet?).

So, we are up to the dumping in the sachet contents. Pour in whatever botanicals you have selected, then sew up the hole you left for your filling spot. And presto, you have the cutest season appropriate great smelling sachets around.

You could embellish them either before (so much easier) or after the fact with any kind of fabric embellishment that you have floating around.

These would make fantastic Secret Santa gifts. And if this tickles your fancy, you do not have to stick with the mitten shape. Check out your clip art collection and see what easy to cut out shapes are there. Maybe there are a hundred shapes just waiting to be discovered that you could make into sachets.

And these are not limited to just sitting in drawers making clothes smell good. Filled with lavender and sewn firmly shut (I use a very tight stitch on my sewing machine so I do not have to worry), I give them as dryer additions. Just toss into the dryer with your load and oh man, they make a load of clothes smell heavenly. Just fantastic!

If you have not done this, make yourself one with a good load of lavender and try it on a load of towels or better yet, a load of sheets. What a treat! The great thing about this experiment is that if you do not like the results … just rewash the batch! Easy to fix. But oh man - such a relaxing smell and so easy to do. It is one of those incredible touches that will make your family and guests think you are a miracle worker and all you did is toss a little pillow of herbs into the dryer.

As I have discussed before, the older I get, the more concerned I get at the Mountain of Greed (our personal family joke about the garbage pile that gets left over after all the presents have been opened on Christmas morning) that is thrown in the trash on Christmas Day.

This year, I really want to actively look for ways to give presents and holiday gifts that do not require so many layers and piles and bags and bows and masses and masses of waste.

This particular idea is one that I thought I might consider for some of my baked goods. Over the last few months, I have been posting a number of fantastic clip art and vintage labels that can be used for your own creative purposes. The idea that I had in mind was that you could use those labels to make things exactly like these particular decoupaged buckets.

Whilst these particular buckets have also been covered with glitter, they have been adorned with a simple printed colored label. If your printer does not support a colored printout, you can use the printers available at your local print shop for a relatively low cost. However, I would recommend checking the actual cost first if you do need to pursue that option. Many people do seem to have a color printer available in their homes these days.

For my use, I am going to bake my goods, add a low cost napkin or kitchen towel that I purchased during the course of the year and have tucked away in my craft armoire to line the inside of the bucket and use that to safely wrap the baked goods. Then I can put that wrapped napkin package of nummies inside the bucket and present it to everyone. And then there you have it - a completely reusable, no waste products gift.