Homemade Angel Tree Topper

I am so excited to share today's project with you.  I know it's a Monday, but this project made me too happy to rant!

Growing up, we always had an angel tree topper that my mom made.  She took one of those classes where they supply the parts and teach you to make it.  I don't have a picture for you, but it's mostly made of this crinkly, moldable paper stuff.  Just take my word for it - it's beautiful.  My mom said that when she made it, she wasn't planning on it being the tree topper our family used for the next 20 years, but that's what it became.

So this year, with our first tree, I wanted to do something similar.  I didn't want to settle for one of those dollar store glitter stars. I looked on Pinterest for ideas.  There weren't many good ones, but I did find this:

Really beautiful, right?  I like that it's simple, but elegant.  And it has no face.  I can't do faces.  :) 

The only problem was that the girl who made this just uploaded the picture to Pinterest and so there's no tutorial other than the parts she listed in the description.

So, I'm here today to give a tutorial of how I made this.  I did not create this project, so I take no credit for it.  I am, however, really proud of how mine turned out:

Supplies:

- 9-inch Styrofoam cone ($4 at Hobby Lobby)

- 2.5 inch Smooth-foam ball ($3.27 for a bag of 6 at Hobby Lobby)

- toothpick

- white fabric for the dress (I used leftovers from my wedding dress fabric)

- white feathers ($2 for a package at Hobby Lobby)

- gold pipe cleaner or tinsel

- acrylic paints

- sewing machine or a needle and thread

- knife (optional)

- scissors

- a flower or something for the angel to hold

Alright, I'm not so great at tutorials, but I'm going to try.

First, prepare your styrofoam pieces.  

You'll need to hollow out the bottom of the cone so that it can sit on top of your tree. I used a knife and scissors to do this.

The styrofoam ball had a hole in one side, so I thought about making that the bottom of the head, but there was also a ridge that would have run across the middle of the face that way.  I tried to smooth down the ridge, but it was still noticeable, so I put the hole in the back of the head.  I cut a little flat surface on the 'bottom' of the ball to make it easier to secure to the neck.  

I poked one side of the toothpick into some glue, and then into the bottom of the head.  I mixed acrylic paints to get a peachy color (you could also just purchase one) then painted the head.  By holding onto the toothpick, you can get everywhere in one coat.  Then rest it in a cup or something to dry.

Then you can start on the dress.  I cut a piece of fabric a couple inches longer than the cone, then hemmed one side in this pretty stitch:

I know that you'll never be able to see it, but it's so cute!  I then wrapped the hemmed side around the "neck" of the cone and used a few pins to hold it in place.  I pinned up the bottom in a way that I thought looked nice, and then hemmed up that part, too.  It ended up being curved.  I also made it a little longer than the cone so that the styrofoam won't show.

Once I had both sides hemmed, I hand stitched the dress together in the back.  I did not stitch or even glue it to the cone.  It's held on because it's tight at the top.

For the arms, I cut out another rectangle of fabric - wide enough to make two arms, and long enough to be the arm length I wanted plus a seam allowance.  I hemmed that side of the fabric.  I then cut it into two smaller rectangles along the width so that each piece had the hem at the bottom.  Each rectangle I folded in half (right sides together), then sewed sort of diagonally.  I started from the original hem and got closer to the fold at the other side.  I did not trim off any extra fabric here.  When I turned them inside out, all the extra fabric at the opposite end from my original hem kept it from being turned all the way inside out (making a nice shoulder), and made a sort of elbow when I went to bend it.  After I made two of these arms, I hand stitched them to the side of the dress.

At this point, the paint on the head was dry, so I dipped the other end of the toothpick in glue and stuck it into the top of the styrofoam cone. I had to add some more glue along the seam to get it to look nice.

For the wings, I hot glued a lot of feathers together to make two wing shapes, then glued them to the back of the dress.  I also burned my fingers a lot.  Woohoo!

For the halo, I made a circle out of one gold pipe cleaner and then hot glued it on in the back:

For the cheeks, I mixed pink and white acrylic paints to get a paler pink, then painted little circles low on the face with it.  I blotted those with a napkin so they weren't as bold.

Finally, I hand stitched the sleeves together and tucked the flower in the opening.  You could also stitch the flower in if that's important to you, but I thought I might want to change it out someday, so I left it loose.

I am so proud of this project because I wasn't really sure what I was doing going into it. I was making it up as I went along, and it worked!  AND we have a beautiful tree topper that cost under $10 and will last us many years (I hope).

What do you have on top of your tree?

Love and Halos,

Leah Joy

Not Really A Post

I promise you that I had a fantastic post today involving pictures of something I made yesterday involving styrofoam, leftover wedding dress fabric, feathers, and a toothpick.  I was even going to include a quasi-tutorial with no process photos.  I had lots of clever quips planned.  I had everything, in fact, but the pictures, and then my husband needed the camera today, so no dice.  Or pictures.  Or pictures of dice.

See you next week then, I guess!

Love and Hot Glue,
Leah Joy

Cleaning Cleaning Cleaning

I've spent this week in a (good) flurry of activity. Making and decorating mini trees (my floor is strewn with glitter, which my husband would hate if he noticed), wrapping presents (huzzah for oatmeal containers!), and working on other presents.

And cleaning.  It seems that no matter how hard I work on cleaning my house, I'm still days behind the mess. So yesterday, I decided to try something new - and it worked!  I set a timer for 15 minutes and started in the bedroom.  My rules were this:
1. I had to stay in the bedroom for 15 minutes cleaning and straightening.
2. I could only leave to put things away if they belonged in other rooms.

I got so much done and it looked so much better!  I then reset the timer and went to work on the living room, which was much messier, so it's still not perfect now, but much better.  And then again for the kitchen, where there was even more of a mess, so it's only barely passable right now, but that's not the point, since it looked like the aftermath of a war before (a war with a juicer, actually).

I realized that I can do just about anything for 15 minutes - and staying in one room forced me to focus on what really needed to be done, especially in the bedroom.  Normally, when I clean in there, I make the bed and call it good, but having 15 minutes forced me to clean out my nightstand, dig lost clothes out from under the bed, and even start cleaning my book shelves before the timer rang.

I think I still like my cleaning schedule, but for weeks/months when I'm really busy, this also works.  Do you have any cleaning methods like this?

I am off to my parents' house for the day to work on crafts.  I made a list of the crafts I need to finish there (they have the sewing machine, the acrylic paints, the Mod Podge [this is actually my sister's], and the table saw) and errands to run in their area (they have stores other than an overpriced 'food center').  It's a very long list.  Very very long.

Love and Tape Measures,
Leah Joy

How-To: Important Life Skill

It's December!

So, I'm sitting here trying to write a Monday Rant, but it's rather difficult when I'm sitting next to this:

It's our first Christmas tree!  And it's rather devoid of ornaments right now, but we'll get those up sometime this week hopefully.  In my family, everyone had their own ornament container and we were each responsible for putting our own ornaments on the tree (Jacob likes to put all his in one spot right on the front - minimal effort.).  That made it pretty easy to just grab my tin of ornaments this year.  In his family, I guess they keep them all together.  Anyway, they'll be decorating their tree hopefully sometime this week, and then we'll have Caleb's ornaments and we can put all our ornaments on the tree and EEEEEE!!!! CHRISTMAS!!!!

Oh yes, did I mention that once it's December I kind of let loose all the pent-up Christmas Spirit that has been bubbling up inside of me since, well, September?  It's December now, so Christmas is everywhere, and people are less likely to get annoyed by my figuratively-constant jumping up and down.

So, instead of a rant, here's an update on life.

101 Things Project: haven't touched it since I last wrote about it.  Well, we got a tree, and that was on the list.  I've got about 35 things left on the list, and while at least one of them is a Christmas present for someone so it will get done, there are many that just won't get done.  Which is totally okay.  Strange as it may seem, I learned a lot about myself from this project.  Example: I wanted to make curtains for about every room in our house.  I only finished the second bedroom and the kitchen (and I turned the pillowcase in the bathroom into a real half curtain - which wasn't on my list).  I have fabric purchased for curtains for our doors with windows in them, and part of the fabric for our living room curtains (getting really tired of people at church asking me what movie I was watching).  But I've learned that I need time to figure out exactly what I want.  For the kitchen, it went more quickly and was easier (blue and white short curtains, duh).  For the second bedroom, it was a little harder (Print or solid? What color? Lined or unlined?).  For the living room, it was really difficult.  What color? Print or solid? Roller shades or curtains? Hung outside the window or inside? How many panels? How long?  And I thought I had it figured out, and then I'd change my mind again.  I've settled on a sage green broadcloth (which I have purchased) and I'm going to use a thermal lining (not yet purchased) and there will be two panels on the regular sized window and four on the big window.  They'll hang just below the bottom of the trim of the window and be mounted on curtain rods just above the window.  Like this:

Wow, long paragraph.  Anyway, I'm not going to feel too guilty about what I do or don't get to yet.  I'm already thinking about doing this again next year, and I like the idea.  I think if I keep doing this, eventually I might actually come up with a good list that I'll actually do!  (Another thing I learned is that I can only do so many house projects in a year - especially ones involving paint, as the fumes make my husband ill.)

Thanksgiving: This is a fun story.  We've decided to spend one year with my family, the next with his (and then Friday with whichever family didn't get us for Thursday that year).  This year was with my family, and my mom was hosting for 12: an aunt and uncle, my grandma and great-aunt, some cousins, a dear family friend, and us.  On Wednesday, I got an email from my sister that Mom was sick and not sure she'd be able to host the next day.  Would we be willing?  Well, yes, but it'd be interesting fitting 12 people into our house for a meal like that.  Caleb got off work early (because it was the day before Thanksgiving), and he started cleaning the house (and even got two tables from church to set up in the living room so everyone could eat together).  After I got home from work, we both worked on hanging pictures (you know, the ones that sit around for a while before they get hung up?  No?  Just us?) and more organizing.  My sister had offered to come help clean the next morning if my mom was still sick.

Well, Thursday rolled around, and I got up early to work on cleaning my stove so that would be all ready for copious amounts of cooking, and then I got the call from my sister that Mom was mostly better and could host unless we really wanted to.  NOPE.  So, we had a lovely Thanksgiving with my parents and family - AND my house got cleaned! :)

We also got to spend Friday with his family (after picking out our tree) which was really nice.  Cinnamon rolls!

Christmas Decorating: Okay, so I've helped my Mom put up her decorations before, and at the apartment I hung string lights from the drop ceiling, but this is the first year I've gotten to decorate an entire house however I want (with deference to my husband's opinion, but he mostly approves of my taste).  Right now we have icicle lights outside and the Christmas tree inside, but I'm just getting started.  I've decided to make a whole row of mini Christmas trees (in various heights, from 6" to a foot and a half ish, and with various materials) to decorate our mantel.  My mom passed some of her collection down to me, and I picked up one of those shiny tinsel trees at the Dollar Tree (can't find them cheaper), but I'm planning on making most of them.  I have one already made from dollar store playing cards, and another one wrapped in red yarn.  I'll post pictures when I have more done!  

Well, I have so much to do today, so I'd best be off! 

Love and CHRISTMAS!,

Leah Joy

Another Day

So, I may be straying from normal crafting, photo-filled posts for this week at least, while I get back on my feet.  Yesterday, I washed Round 2 of the Mountain of Dishes (one more to go, I think), cleaned up my living room, vacuumed, tidied my kitchen (it still needs more), and made a fruit-fly trap.

I also hung Christmas lights outside, which is something I've never done before.  That was kind of fun, and mostly a reminder that we need to clean our gutters.  And by 'we', I mean Caleb.

Something else I've been doing this school year is learning Dutch with Rosetta Stone.  My sister is learning it for her foreign language for high school, and I wanted to learn, too.  I unintentionally took a week and a half off from that (I use my husband's computer and he had to take his microphone into work), so I did my first lesson back yesterday.  Because it had been so long, I had three review lessons before I could even start back up with the new stuff.  But I learned a lot of new words - like toilet, bathroom, kitchen, sink, and house, to name a few.

I also started working on Christmas ornaments.  You may recall from years past that I make one ornament in mass to attach with all my Cookie List gifts (and also give to family members).  Well, I'm not sure this year's ornament is as quick as previous years', but it sure is cute.  I've made four so far, and I've almost perfected the technique, so I'm sure I'll get quicker as I go along.  The good news is that it doesn't require tons of focus, so I can watch a movie or something while I'm working.

Well, I have more life to live today.  I'll write again later.

Love and Silver Thread,
Leah Joy

We Do Too Much

You might be wondering where I've been for the past three weeks.  If you didn't notice, don't worry about it.  You've probably just been busy.  That's where I've been, too.  Caleb and I had two weeks straight where we had something going on every day (I held up until Tuesday of the first week, then gave up blogging).  The third week, we had a major event at the end of the week for which I prepped most of the week (I also was trying to recover from the previous two weeks).  And then yesterday, I cleaned my kitchen.  Yes, it took nearly all day, because I hadn't cleaned it in two weeks.  Slight exaggeration?  Hardly.  I washed dishes once in two weeks.  I know.  So much shame.  I wouldn't even let my mother in the house because I was so ashamed.  And I know some people have very judgmental mothers, but I do not. I figure my mom raised me and has seen my worst (stressful times in high school and college - my room would slowly leak out until it covered half the living room).  But this was awful, and not how I wanted my mom to remember me.

So today, my kitchen is slightly cleaner (I have Round 2 of the Mountain of Dishes to wash and there are fruit flies hovering around my sink, but still, it's cleaner than it was) and I tidied a bit around my living room, and I can think again.

And it's not okay to do that to myself ever again.  I know that sometimes life happens, but it's not okay for that to happen for three weeks.  Everything to which I committed myself was a good thing.  But good things for three weeks straight is too many things.  If I don't have the energy to even wipe down my toilet seat with a Clorox wipe, something is wrong.  Very wrong.

I think a lot of us do this.  Someone asks us to do something, and we're technically free that day, so we say yes.  We need to learn to say no sometimes.  We're really good at saying no when we already have something scheduled that day, because, really, that's our only option.  But when the day is free, but we were actually planning on relaxing that day?  We need to learn to say no.

I guess that's the good thing that came out of this last month.  I never want to go through this again.

So, I don't know when I'll be back. I want to write more and post about Christmas stuff and work on my 101 Things project (which, yes, I have hardly touched in the last month), but I'm also going to be practical.  This week is far less busy than the last three, so we'll see.

Love and A Clear Schedule,
Leah Joy