Why does it take so long to get back to "normal" after the holidays? It seems like the holidays linger in small ways. The tree was taken down days ago, but there are a few ornaments still hanging on doorknobs, Christmas cards in the basket, peppermints nougats still fill a candy dish, cookies "hidden" *ahem* in the cellar, and the collection of Christmas books still on the side table. It usually stays like this until the end of January. I like this, it keeps the winter season cheerful.
I did a lot of making this holiday season, and today I'll show you one craft we started last fall, and finished just before the gifts were to be given to Colin's teachers. We used the instructions from Amanda Soule's book, "Handmade Home" to make the paper mache bowls.
Sorry this is so blurry, I was in a hurry to download the photos to the computer, and didn't check them very well...grrr...
Anyway, the whole process was a lot of fun for Colin and myself. After we made the bowls, we collected leaves from the woods to imprint with paint on the sides of the bowls.
Each leaf was painted first, then very carefully, we placed them on the side of the bowls, and pressed them down with our hands.
I love the leaves when they are colored with paint - so bright!
Once they were all painted, we used a solid bright color to paint the inside of the bowl. We used yellow, orange and red. Then to seal the painted bowl, I used Mod-Podge. Whoa, I just dated myself in a big way. Did anybody grow up in the 70s and use Mod-Podge for decoupage? Yeah, that was me. *sigh* Moving on...
Since these were gifts for teachers, we made little ornaments out air drying terra cotta clay and cookies to fill the bowls. These were equally fun to do. I have a nice collection of cookie presses and springerle molds. We picked a nice mold that would work well for an ornament, and pressed the clay onto the mold. Then I pressed in a paper clip, and let them dry. Added a black ribbon - done.
Handmade gift tags.
And simple wrapping complete the gifts.
Sweet.
