Covered Jelly Jar

Here is a fun and easy project for jazzing up your homemade jars of jam and jelly for Christmas gift-giving! At Practical Scrappers, they will be sharing a new Christmas project EVERY DAY, so be sure to visit often so that you don't miss all of the amazing things that will be shared there until Christmas!

We went to a local apple orchard in August and came home with a huge bag of Gala apples. I made apple butter and cinnamon-apple jelly and I thought that they would make super gifts for my neighbors this year. So, I decided to make some fabric jar covers to turn them in to festive gifts!
For this project I used a piece of fabric from my fabric stash basket and some ball-edge trim. I bought a yard of the trim, because it was only $.45 a yard.
I used a saucer to trace a circle onto the fabric. I just used an ink pen to trace with. Then, I cut the circle out and sewed on the trim. I did not turn the edges down on the fabric. I guess it would have made the back side look cleaner if I did that, but I am hoping that no one will turn this over and inspect it and say, "Wow. She should have finished this side by turning the edges under!" lol It honestly looks just fine with the edges raw and the trim covers it up anyway on the front side, and that's what's most important!
I did use one of my special feet for my sewing machine to sew the trim on. It is open on one side so that the balls on the trim had room to go by as I sewed. I didn't use any pins or anything.....I just sewed a long very slowly and adjusted the trim on top of the fabric as I sewed a long. I think that this kind of trim was the easiest, because it was easy to make the sharp curve of the circle with out bunching up or anything like that. So, I would pick out a trim that is very flexible for this project.
Here's the finished fabric piece! You can see a bit of the red fabric showing through the top in this photo. I took some sharp scissors to trim that off as close to the stitching as I could.
Now for the fun part! The circle that fits in the lid....... ;-) I traced around the outside of the metal lid onto red card stock and then used my circle cutter to cut a circle just a little bit smaller than what I had traced. This way I know it will fit inside of the lid. Then, I made another circle but out of white, watercolor paper. I made this circle so that it is about 1/8-1/4 inch smaller than the inside circle of the metal lid. I stamped the image in a chocolate-brown and colored it in with a blender pen and my Stampin' Up! markers and then I sponged red ink around the edges of the circle. I then centered the fabric circle on top of the jar, placed the red circle of card stock inside the lid and then screwed the lid ontop of the jar. Next I adhered the white circle in the center of the jar lid. I wrapped some green, gross-grain ribbon around the lid and adhered it together with some glue. I folded the ribbon over so that I was able to create a small loop of ribbon to hang the tag off of.
For the tag, I cut a rectangle from red card stock and wrote "Apple Butter - made with Honey" on one side of the card stock. Next I cut a piece of green, gross-grain ribbon, attached one end to the tag, slipped the other end through the loop on the lid and then adhered that end to the tag, so that the tag is now attached to the jar. I punched out a big snowflake and added it to the side. Then I punched a small circle, stamped the stocking on it and colored it in and then went around the edge with red ink on a sponge and placed it on top of the snowflake.

And there you have it! A cute and festive jar of preserves! I hope that all of my directions made sense. If you have any questions, please ask! And also please share if you make some of these, because I sure would love to see you're creations!

Wedding Pillow - Practical Scrappers Challenge

The challenge for this week at Practical Scrappers is sewing. I was going to make something new but with it being Thanksgiving weekend, my time got a little lost doing other things! Then I remembered that I had this pillow that I made years and years ago and I thought that it worked just perfectly for this weeks challenge! The idea is from an old Family Circle or Women's Day magazine. I cut out a big heart shape from a paper sack and used that as a pattern to cut two pieces of fabric. Then, I started sewing on all sorts of goodies to the top piece. Ribbon, lace, buttons, ribbon flowers, etc. I then made a frame from some flat lace to hold the photo. I sewed the front and back together and there ya go! A fun memory pillow! The picture is of me and my husband right after we got married and one of my all-time favorite photos of us. I've had this pillow on my bed for a LONG time! lol We will be celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary this June!

I hope you're all having a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Delight in the Day - card - Practial Scrappers

This weeks challenge at Practical Scrappers a sewing. For my card, I cut out several circles of patterned fabric and then used my sewing machine to sew them together in what I can best describe as a wagon wheel spokes. I added a button to the center and use adhesive to attach it to the card base.

I hope you are all having a wonderful day! I am writing out my grocery list right now and then it's off to the store! My mother is driving up and should be here later this afternoon. It's going to be a wonderful and busy week!

Sweet - layout - Practical Scrappers weekly challenge

The challenge this week at Practical Scrappers is to sew and here is my layout where I used my sewing machine. I went around the edge of the circle paper twice in an uneven pattern. I really love using my sewing machine on scrapping layouts and I really need to do it more! My problem is that I don't have room to keep my sewing machine out in my scrapping area, so once I put it away, I tend to leave it there for awhile. If it was sitting out, I'm sure I'd use it more.

This is my little GG last Christmas. Once she tried a candy cane, she was hooked! I can't believe that it's already almost Christmas-time again! Where did this year go? I'm sure that I won't be able to put candy canes on our Christmas tree this year......I have a feeling that they will start to disappear one by one!

I hope that you all have a wonderful Monday! It's Thanksgiving week! I have so much to be grateful for and so many big dreams for our future that we are talking about..... :-)

Honey-bee card

Here is a card that I had made for last weeks challenge at Practical Scrappers to use acrylic paints. I meant to share it before now, but having the flu last week really threw me off my groove!

I received a special package from my mom a few weeks ago and my goodie was wrapped in some bubble wrap. (It was my favorite vanilla fudge in the whole wide world from Branson!) I had been trying to think of something to do for the acrylic paint challenge and as soon as I saw that bubble wrap, I knew that I had to try using it and paint to make a background for a card or layout. I had heard of people doing it before, but had never tried it myself. Well, it was super easy and so much fun! The first thing I thought of when I looked at the bubble wrap was honey comb, so that's what I decided to do for this card. I'm not sure if anyone else picked up that I was trying to make it look like honey comb, but that's what my muse told me to do so that's what I did. lol

The flower is a wide piece of wire-edged ribbon. I pulled one of the wires to gather the ribbon into a circle and then added a small Prima flower in the center.

I am hoping to take some photos tomorrow of how to do the bubble wrap techinque, so that I can share it here with you all!

What a week.....

Wow. This week has been something else. I woke had the stomach flu Saturday night through Sunday and then my little GG started throwing up at 10:30 on Monday night. I stayed up all night with her and didn't get to bed until 5 a.m. on Tuesday. I am so grateful that my husband is able to work from home, because he stayed home on Tuesday, so that I could nap awhile and to help take care of GG. She is just now starting to feel better. I felt so badly for her and even worse because I gave her the germs! I must admit that I am still not feeling great and I haven't been able to eat a meal since Saturday. Actually, the one thing that sounded good to me and the only thing that GG ate today, was some homemade potato soup. I made a batch of it last night and it really hit the spot! It's such a simple recipe, too. I'll have to share it soon. This stuff is really icky and I hope and pray that no one else gets it!

I need to get to work scrapping, too! I have next weeks focus to work on for Practical Scrappers! It's a great one, too and I'm really excited to do a layout for this one!

I hope that you all are all doing well and are staying healthy and warm. It's feeling like winter is coming here in the Heartland. I am totally shocked that next week is Thanksgiving! I have been working on my menu and pulling out some new dessert recipes to try. I will share with you all, if they turn out super yummy!

Love-Doh - layout for Practical Scrappers weekly challenge

Good morning everyone. Wow. I am surprised that I can sit here. Well, I barely am. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. Sunday with the stomach flu and this is the first time that I've been out of bed and sitting up since then. It was awful! lol But, I sure am glad it's over. I just hope and pray that no one else in the house gets it. Especially my little Gracie.

The challenge this week at Practical Scrappers is to use acrylic paint. For this layout I simply dry-brushed some white acrylic paint onto the red card stock. After the paint was dry, I added all of the other elements and there you go!

I would love to write more, but I'm honestly not feeling too well!

Take care!