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Three Fun and Crafty things to do from Home this Christmas

Like many, we’ve spent a lot more time at home than usual this holiday season. We have, though, managed to keep up the holiday spirit while maintaining our social distance. With Christmas only a couple days away, I’d like to share a few of the fun and crafty things we’ve done this season. The best part is, you don’t have to necessarily be very “crafty” to do these things.

1)    Make Peppermint Garlin

Bryonna discovered this one while watching a Netflix show; I believe it is called Mr. Christmas. For this craft, you need a few bags or so of peppermint and a hot glue gun. We had two bags of peppermint, which wasn’t quite enough for our tree (but I think I made it look okay with what I had). I would suggest picking up three bags of peppermint to make a string long enough to wrap a few times around a large Christmas tree. On the show they used peppermints that had the plastic wrapping twisted at the ends. Ours were flat; they still worked, but I think the twisty ended ones would have worked better. So, use the peppermints with the twisty ended wrapping if you can.

The process is simple. With your hot glue gun, put a dab of glue at the edge of the peppermint’s plastic wrapping. Then, press the edge of another peppermint’s plastic wrapping to the dab of hot glue. Create a chain of peppermints by repeating this process. The plastic wrappings tend to hold well together with the hot glue. 

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2)    Make a Gingerbread House

This one could be as simple, or complicated, as you want to make it. For the real baker out there, you can probably pull this off from scratch. For the rest of us, gingerbread house kits are available at many retailers this time of year. We picked ours up from Five Below, so it only cost us $5.00. 

The gingerbread house was pretty simple to put together; which makes it a fun project (I recommend a glass of eggnog while building your gingerbread house). Once the four walls and roof are secured, it’s time to decorate the house. I find it tempting to try to follow the picture on the box, but the real fun is in coloring outside the lines. As you can see by the picture below, we went a little sloppy with the icing.

 Next year, we might make two of these!

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3)    Make Christmas Cards

It might be a bit late to send out Christmas cards, if you want them to get there by Christmas that is. It doesn’t hurt to get some handmade cards ready for next year, though. Bryonna is the papercraft savant around here, so I was pretty happy with the designs she came up with. Bryonna put together a video recently about making Christmas cards. The video is linked below; use it for inspiration when making your cards. Do a few test-run cards. Get comfortable with making a basic card, then add to your designs. 

 Check out the video below for some card making inspiration!

 And Happy Holidays!

Binding a Coffin Book

This week we’ve come to the final installment of our Halloween themed video series. This week’s project is an homage to the classic movie monsters. Bryonna show us how to create a decorative coffin for the Spooky Photo Album. The coffin holds a flip-book full of classic movie monster portraits (drawn by me, G.J. Sieck). Bryonna also shows a number of crafting techniques. Have you ever heard of Japanese stabbing? If not, you can learn about it in this week’s video!

Happy Halloween!!

If you would like to see the classic movie monsters being drawn, check out the video below!

Medusa and Her Babies

In this week’s video, we return to the Spooky Photo album. I was unaware that Medusa hatched babies from eggs, but I guess that’s a thing. Sounds creepy, so I’m into it—perfect for Halloween! Moreover, Medusa and her unhatched children are great inspiration for the next page of our Spooky Photo Album. There’s so much in this video. Among other crafting techniques, Bryonna shows a bit of sculpting, hand lettering, and even some painting.

Check out this latest video for even ore Halloween inspiration. Create your own Spooky Photo Album to keep in your haunted library!

Ghost in a Mirror

As we continue further into “Spooky Season,” with our Spooky Photo Album in hand (see last week’s video), we crank the creepiness up a notch. In this week’s edition of our Halloween themed video series, Bryonna shows how to put a ghost into a mirror. Well, not really. Actually, Bryonna makes a ghost mirror; it’s not only a really fun Halloween decoration, but an appropriately ghastly edition to the Spooky Photo Album.

There’s a good chance you already have much of what you need to create a ghost mirror. As usual, though, links to necessary tools and materials can be found in the description beneath the video. And be sure to hit the subscribe button as not to miss the next update in the series.

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