I love the deep reds and greens of Christmas, but this year, our decorations took an unusual turn…

It all started with me finding a set of five white, small lanterns in different designs in a store. I fell for them and bought them and my mind started reeling with ideas on how to use them for different table decorations.

We don’t have guests all that often (at least not for dinners fancy enough to require table decorations) so I decided to use them for Christmas.

I felt that the lanterns had a somewhat rustic feel to them so I decided to follow that and make a table inspired by old snow covered forests (yeah, my poetry sucks ). How well I managed to convey that I will leave to you to decide, but the way I chose to do it was as follows.

To lead the thoughts to snow and snow flakes, I folded a little over a hundred origami stars in white paper with a small relief pattern (my original throught was to fill in the relief with glitter, but I simply didn’t have the time). If you ignore the pain you get in your fingers after folding so many stars out of slightly too stiff paper, they are very easy to make. You’ll find my tutorial for them here.

For the feeling of forest, I bought white hyacinths and wrapped the bulb in moss and thin silver wire. This is also very simple – wrap the bulb with one sheet of moss and crisscross the silver wire in an attractive manner around it (fasten at the bottom). The hyacinths will manage just fine without water, but you’ll need to spray the moss so it doesn’t dry out (you can of course let it dry too, but I like it better fresh and alive).

I also stumbled over some really nice looking fake hellebores which I used as a base to make small bouquets along with a name tag for each plate. I bought some fake branches of mistletoe and a fake, snow covere pine wreath since that was the cheapest thing I could find.

It did, however, entail a lot of extra work. Firstly I had to struggle like crazy to get the twigs off the branch (thick metal wire that needed to be worn out rather than cut) and secondly I then had to make my own larger twigs by tying smaller ones together with metal wire (it did turn out great thoug – if I may say so myself).

I finished the bouquets off with a white and silver ribbon and a name tag (as in complete them – not kill them, despite the added name tag).

One problem with these bouquets though were that the fake snow on the wreath fell off everywhere which meant I had to make the bouquets outdoors. The problem with this was that I couldn’t wear my coat since that was too clumsy and because Christmas was literally just around the corner and there was no time, I had to make them in the middle of the night. It worked pretty well though, but between 3 and 4 in teh morning it was bloody freezing.

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My next Christmas project was inspired by an add for Sia Home Fashion where they had spray painted a fairly small (but still large to be indoors) tree white and hung long chains of differently shaped chrystals from its branches. I loved the feeling of winter and ice palaces it gave and knew I had to do something similar. I was originally planning to see if Sia were selling such crystal chains, but I quickly realised that it would most likely cost me a fortune (which the project probably did in the end anyway).

To make the crystal chains as cheap as possible, I kept an eye out at my favourite auction site and bid for old crystals from broken chandeliers. It turned out that these are rather popular though so it took a bit of luck and a lot of patience to get good looking crystals at a price I was okay with. (Moral of the story – don’t just bid on old chandelier crystals – first check on what level the prices lay.)

The hardest part with making the chains were actually to dissemble them, especially the old ones. The connections were increadibly well made and though it was easy to figure out how to get rid of them it took quite some time.

To reassemble the crystals the way I wanted them, I used clear fishing-line. The good thing with this (besides it being transparent of course) is that the crystals were so heavy that they locked themselves in place on the line so no need for knots on the crystals with double holes.

The end crystals with only one hole at the top provided more of a problem though since I not only wanted them as end pieces but also in the middle of the chains. I contacted several different glaziers, but while they all assured me that drilling extra holes would be possible, none of them were actually able to do it for me so I sat down to test some different methods.

In the end I settled with hanging them from the crystal above them with a short piece of fishing-line that I looped. I was a bit afraid that this would cause the top crystal to slide down the line, but it has held up just fine. Better ideas are very welcome though .

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The last Winter Wonderland project was actually not for Christmas, but for New Years. My white hyacinths were still there so I wanted to reuse them, but still create a new feeling and design.

To achieve this, I removed the stars and exchanged the lanterns for small tea candle holders in fake mercury glass that I got for next to nothing. I must say that I’m very pleased with the result.

The cozy, rustic feeling is similar to the Christmas decoration, but it’s pretty much a totally new feeling.

~*~

I hope you enjoyed my decorations (although I posted them way too late). Next up are the Christmas gifts and how I wrapped them.

As some of you know, Praveen has gotten a job at ABB and while that is great news (he has a job – and he gets to stay in Sweden!) it also means that he’s moving away from us here in southern Sweden and up to Västerås, about six hours away with two trains.

Praveen refused any talk of a Goodbye party since we, as he expressed it, “actually aren’t saying goodbye”, but of course we couldn’t leave it at that so we decided to throw him a Good luck dinner instead.

And of course we had to give him a little something so he won’t forget us now that he’s all grown up and important.

Yes, I know I usually only post craft related photos, but today I decided to make an exception. It's not every day one of your best friends move across the country.

With my usual sense for starting projects on time, I came up with the idea the afternoon before the party and of course I couldn’t let it go. – Even though I had to work, help mum with her computer course, help Praveen finish the cleaning and packing and then do the grocery shopping for the party (THANKS, Emmy, for saving me).

Anyway, a few weeks back I had found a quote which turned out to be absolutely perfect for what I had in mind:

We’ll be friends ’til we’re old and senile …Then we’ll be new friends!

I knew I wanted something more permanent (and better looking) than cardboard so I hurried by the shop on my way home from work and picked up a wooden board.

I painted it once with white matte paint because I wanted the wood and it’s structure to be slightly visible. I know some people prefere to cover the surface completely and then sand it in some places to give it a worn look, but I wanted my board plain white so for me this gave exactly the look I wanted.

When the paint had dried, I brought out the distress ink I bought when I made Eva’s birthday gift and added a tiny bit to the edges.

Since I didn’t have the time, nor the paint for making the owls myself, I printed them along with the quote and cut everything out.

Originally I hadn’t planned to cut out the individual letters, but the perfectionist in me kept insisting that it would look so much better if I did and of course the perfectionist was right. (Thank you Sara for helping me get a scalpel so I could finish it on time.)

I used decoupage glue to attach the printouts and man is that stuff sturdy on wood. I had originally planned to cover the whole thing in decoupage glue to protect it, but in the end I decided that it would look much better without (so poor Praveen simply has to be careful with it ).

And here’s the completed board. I must very humbly say that I love it .

Good luck, Praveen!

Remember my post from Saturday? About the hostess gift Praveen and I brought to Malin’s and Fredrik’s Halloween party? Well, that was supposed to be the hostess gift, but when I found The Cheese Thief’s Chocolate Covered Gummy Bears, I knew I had to make some of those too so I hurried by the candy shop after office last Friday and went home and started dipping .

The process is very simple, but I really liked the colours and the photos Praveen helped me to take so try to bare with me on the step by step photos.

Start by putting your gummy bears on tooth picks for easy dipping and melt your chocolate. (White chocolate becomes thinner than normal chocolate and also melts at lower temperatures so be careful not to burn it.)

Poke your tooth pick into something so that your gummy bears can dry standing. You can use styrofoam or cardboard, but if you go with the latter option, remember to poke holes with an empty tooth pick before you start dipping as this will make your life A LOT easier.

Let the chocolate harden (it was late and I was impatient so I put them in the fridge) and then melt some milk / dark chocolate. Give your ghost gummy bears eyes with a tooth pick dipped in the melted chocolate (or a food colouring pen, but that’s kind of cheating ), let those harden as well and you’re good to go. (You can of course remove the tooth picks if you like, but I quite liked them like this, plus the chocolate cracked at the bottom when I tried to pull them off.)

Oh, and I also made some small bags for them out of cellophane, sellotape and a printout I designed. If you’re interested you can download it in two version here: Trick or Treat Template

Also, if you have some more time than I did – dip them twice (cool inbetween) to prevent too much of the colours of the gummy bears to be visible through the white chocolate.

I doubt anyone reading this blog has managed to miss it, but Malin and her brother is throwing a belated Halloween party tonight. I wanted somthing fun and easy (especially considering the amount of work that went into the costumes I made for Praveen and I) to bring as a hostess gift and when I stumbled upon these Halloween Candy Vases at Simply Designing, I knew I had found it.

As usual though, we don’t get all the things here in Sweden that crafters in the US get so I had to be creative.

The glass candle holders I didn’t expect to be a problem, but apparently they aren’t in fashion and couldn’t be found anywhere so in the end I decided to go with unusually round wine glasses with a slightly chubby foot.  (I really miss having a Dollar Store here; the cheapest one we have is TGR and while they have some good and even great things at times, the selection is just so much smaller.)

And while I have realised that vinyl cut outs are huge in the US, they aren’t here so what I did to get eyes and mouths for my glasses was to buy a set of Window deco on sale and start cutting the bats and spiders (yes, they were already Halloween themed) into pieces.

Window deco are vinyl like plastic (or perhaps it is vinyl) that is treated on the back so that it sticks to clean gass surfaces, but can be moved and removed without leaving any traces – and they worked like a charm for this project.

These tasks completed, the next problem was locating some orange candy. And I needed bright orange candy, not the dull colours that you find in Tutti Frutti. (Another BIG disadvatange with Tutti Frutti is that each bag contain a mixture of colours which would have forced me to buy a lot of bags.)

In the end though I found exactly what I needed in a large candy shop in Lund that sell candy from God knows where. They had small orange and yellow candies in exactly the tone I had envisioned – the only problem was like I just wrote that they came mixed with yellow ones. Using the gold washer technique (i.e. take up a spoon full and try to shake off the unwanted pieces), I managed to almost empty their supply of orange candies and leave behind most of the yellow ones.

The yellow ones that insisted on following me home though, I put in my new glass jar (love it!) mixed with black candies of the same shape.

When I started to fill the newly washed and dried glasses I realised that even though I practically had emptied the store’s supply of orange candy, it wasnt enough. Not wanting my Jack-O’-Lanterns to only be half orange, I had to come up with a plan.

I grabbed an empty toilet roll and cut it into the right size (I used the same method for the yellow and black candy jar if anyone was wondering) and then covered the opening with paper, put it in place with sellotape and hid them in the middle of the glass and voilà, they were done.

And tomorrow I will tell you about the little bag of ghost treats I also made and brought .

Praveen likes owls. It might have something to do with the fact that he sleeps like one, but I will leave that unsaid… However, because he likes owls, I like to give him owls. (Just the other day I couldn’t stop myself from buying a pair of somewhat tacky, but very cute Christmas bauble owls.)

Anyway, when I found Chohoklad in a store in city centre I knew he had to have some (you’re welcome ). I didn’t want to just hand it over in a candy bag though so I decided to make a matching card.

I know that owls are really popular right now and cards with You exchanged for Ho are commonly found on the web. I wanted mine to have a bit of meaning though and so I Love HO You Are was born (isn’t that message just great?).

It’s a simple card based on a few pieces cut out from coloured paper and glued together. If you want to make your own, you’ll find the template (along with a print out if you’re feeling lazy) here: I Love HO You Are Template

(Please note that the template will make a slightly larger owl than the one I attached to the chohocolates.)

As I have mentioned before, Halloween is not a big thing in Sweden and when we do celebrate it, it’s somewhat missunderstood. This means that I had never encountered the concept of BOO-ing until I read about it in Kelle Hampton’s amazing blog Enjoying the Small Things. (If you haven’t visited before, start with the birth story of her second daughter Nella, trust me on this.)

I immediately fell in love with the concept, which is that you pack a bag or basket with candy, add a BOO poem (you’ll find one example here, linked from Kelle’s BOO post, and one here – okay, okay, I’ll stop with the links now…) and head out into the darkness of an October evening. You then place the candy by one of your neighbours’ doors, ring the bell and run away as fast as you can – without being spotted of course. Your neighbour will then eat their candy and send the BOO to someone else.

I realised, however, that it would be difficult to engage the whole neighbourhood in this so I instead decided to just make one for Malin and her family as a small thanks for all they have done for me and for Praveen. I rewrote the poem a bit so that the part of sending it forward was removed and made my own (hopefully a bit more adult) BOO sign design.

If you like the design – you can download the template (with both mine and the original version of the poem) here: BOO Template

I didn’t have any good bags so I put the candy in a plastic bag and wrapped it in brown paper and glued on my BOO signs.

The way Malin’s house is designed makes it very hard to ring and run so I opted for the boring method of putting it in the mailbox instead, leaving them to find it in the morning when they brought in the paper. I felt very sneaky, but somehow I ended up on their suspect list… I was in fact the only one on it!

Oh well, I hope they liked it anyway .

Long time no see, I’m afraid. Well, I’ve been so busy with Halloween costumes, birthday gifts and a few other projects that I haven’t had time to post them. Bad me, I know…

Anyway, I found a Halloween themed scrapbooking paper that I just fell in love with so I decided to make some Halloween frames.

I’ve seen ornate frames with different printouts with poems or just themed words all over the place, but they haven’t really reached Sweden yet. When I saw this paper though I knew that that was what I wanted to do. Some googling later I realised though that the kind of frames I had envisioned didn’t exist. I did, however, find some horrendous frames in metallic pink and purple that weren’t too expensive and since the design was about what I wanted I bought them – along with some spray paint.

I know spray paint is another thing that occures with alarming frequency around the crafts blogs, but for me it was my first time (if we shouldn’t count spray painting cardboard swords for Halloween a few years ago) and I learnt some valuable lessons.

1. You know those metal cases that most kinds of medicine (in pill form of course) come in? Well, they make excellent stands for what you want to spray paint to prevent it from lying directly on the newspaper and get stuck.
2. Spray paint is permanent which means it will take a shower and severe scrubbing to get it off your hands – not that I tried or anything .

This is not a difficult craft (hardly crafts at all if you remember my necklace rant), but I’m really pleased with the result. Now I just wish I had some use for them other than forcing poor Praveen to showcase them on his bookshelf in his very non Halloween decorated room.

And yes, there will be a post about the Love HO You Are Owl (with templates – yay!) very soon. Happy Halloween!