Tis' the season! Some techniques, thoughts, ramblings and a printie for you!

Hello fine folks of the world about!

We are getting closer to the winter solstice here and lots of stores have started the classic Christmas stock up.

While we don't all celebrate Yule, Christmas or the Solstice the same, I think some classic ideas and decorations apply regardless of your celebrations.

I have made a few things recently and thought I should post some ideas for inspiraton and a few techniques for you to try.

I know where ever folks reside in the world one of the classic gifts would be some form of gift basket.

My daughters Seasonal basket for her white witch house quickly done with cheap supplies!!

This basket was done very simply with some of the same techniques we've gone over in the last few years ....of course scraps, extras and cheap bits.

I like to use nail polish bottles for shape as it is easier to remove the glue and string off of the glass when dry.

Wrap a bit of tissue around the glass.

Slather with glue and wrap the string around the surface.

Extra trim for the top can be triple wrapped string.

Let this dry and you can remove the basket shape. trim the paper, paint, add a bit of wood or paper to the bottom, or drape some cloth as a decoration and base.

The pine boughs can be done very simply as well if you don't have Lycopodium, using pipe cleaners.

Just mix a glob of glue, dark green paint or green and back on a piece of plastic. Your going to run the pipe cleaner through that until saturated and the fluff sticks together to look more like needles.

The result can be pretty promising using cheap supplies:

Jars can be done with beads and jump rings for lids

Simple bags and boxes with a snippet of labels or some printies you can find anywhere: <links

Here is one of my most recent creations for Etsy. You can see some of the leaves done on the piece are random but I done have a lot with punches. I just re-cut some of my old punches to recreate new leaves.

So in that picture I have misletoe, ivy, holy all cut from simple stamps.

Rethink your old punches a bit when recreating leaves. You can see with a bit of crimping I made the ivy, the holy leaves and some small oval leaves by re-cutting the stamp.

Polymer clay, wood, wire, paper,paint, beads..

Alrighty.. enough rambling.. 

Here is a printie for you to play with. I have put on a few cards, labels, wrapping paper..

Obviously do not sell these, they are just captured images from the net. "Right click" Print the page in full or open in "new tab" print. Check the little square for 1"x1"

Enjoy!