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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

It is TRULY the Christmas season - and many of you know that by the white all around you and others by the ioncredible amount of rain and wind that you are getting. Wherever you are - I wish you a Peaceful Holiday Season.
After moving across the country, and then settling into our new home in Alabama, I just haven't done ANY crafting as I have wanted to get everything all in it's place so it will be easy to find things when I do set about to craft. I think my Christmas cards will be a bit on the late side this year! :)
However, I am working on some other projects at the moment and have thought about THIS project since it was challenged on the Elizabeth Bell Challenge Blog

I LOVE her images and wondered how I was going to use Eden's 2nd Christmas (used on last month's project) for the candle. That image is a digital and it is a wee bit hard to pass tissue paper through the printer - SO, I used this image - which I have not used very much, but it is PERFECT for this time of year.
Now, putting an image on a candle is something I have NEVER even tried, but a friend of mine told me how to do it and it is QUITE easy that I think I might just do a few more of these in the future. Basically, you stamp your image on tissue paper and then color it. You can use markers, but I used my colored pencils and think that the image is just as bright as if I had used markers. Besides, I have MANY colors of pencils and not so many markers!! Then I tore the image out from the tissue paper - you want to do this for the feathered edges you get. I stamped the sentiment on a separate piece of tissue and tore it in the same way as the image. Then I placed the images on my candle - which is vanilla scented - in case you might be wondering! :) I then took a piece of wax paper and completely covered the image with it. I got out my heat gun and began heating in the same way you would do if you were embossing something. You can watch the image 'melt' into the candle - much the same as watching embossing powder go glossy. Once you have done the whole image - let it cool just a bit and then peel away the wax paper. Your image has become part of the candle and it is so AWESOME looking! I have left some room at the bottom of my candle for ribbon, or a candle ring.
I hope you have enjoyed seeing my project - which I have completed JUST in time to get it into the EB challenge for the month.

Happy Holidays
~Paula~

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Busy - non-crafting!

As many of you now know - we moved out of California and bought a house in Alabama - just south of Birminghan. It is a beautiful home, however, I have been so busy with unpacking boxes and settling things in that I haven't had time to craft. I have had alot of people ask me for pictures, so I have uploaded a few of them here for you to take a peek. These pictures were taken prior to us moving in, so it has a very uncluttered (think 'unlived in') look to it - but believe me, it is getting well lived in now!
So, come along on a tour of the downstairs! When you first arrive at my home - you might get the feel of stateliness - I did when I first saw the pictures, and well - it DOES look that way in real life. It is considered a 1 1/2 story house - I understand what they mean, the upstairs is not a full upstairs - there are rooms to the left and rooms to the right, but the space in between is all open. There is a bridge that connects the two sides of the upstairs - but we aren't there yet - we have barely come in the front door. We are going to walk straight ahead and off to your right you will pass the guest bathroom (or should I call it a powder room??) I must tell you, I do NOT like the color and intend on changing that fairly soon. Paint is cheap!! :) If you need to stop in there before we continue on our tour, we will wait. :) Now, continuing on into the livingroom you will see the beautiful fireplace. It is a gas lit fireplace with a fake log. We are talking about eventually replacing the box and putting in one with a blower, that way the heat that is generated - and believe me, it DOES generate alot of heat - will blow out into the air and gas is SO much cheaper than electricity for heating. I have already decorated the mantel with my Christmas village and my snowmen stocking hangars. I also have a clock above the mantel that has snowmen on it and it plays a Christmas song every hour. I found it in a little shop southeast of us. Now, if you turn to the right, you will see a doorway that takes you into the masterbedroom suite. This picture was taken after they repainted. There was a leak in the bathroom, so they fixed that and then had to replace the carpet in the walk-in closet and repaint. I was able to select the carpet, flooring and paint color, so I went with this light lavendar for the walls and a darker for the drop down part of the tray ceiling. I didn't think the bedroom was that large when it was empty, but now that it has our furniture in it - well - it is quite spacious. I won't show you the masterbath or closet because there isn't anything real special about them - just a counter with two sinks, a tub and shower. The closet is a walk in, with wire hanging shelves on all four sides. It is quite full now with all my crafting stuff! So, back out of the room and across the livingroom to the kitchen. I LOVE my kitchen. It is not too large and not too small, just perfect. There is a 'eat-in' portion - which is actually not IN the kitchen itself but just to the north of the counter. It is a spacious area and I have placed my Precious Moments display cases there - the figurines are still not out of the boxes - maybe later this week. We took the white refrigerator out of the kitchen and replaced it with our black one. The stove is black, so it fits well with the white and black color scheme.I have already had the pleasure of cooking several wonderful meals in my new kitchen and even serving guests.Now, continuing through the kitchen - wafing with wonderful homemade scents of yummy stuff, we come to the formal diningroom. Now, until this past weekend, the table was not set up in the formal diningroom. Now it is not only set up, but it is also set for a formal dinner. We have enjoyed one meal in there already with our friends James and Lisa - who put up with us for a month at their house while we were waiting to close on our house.If you walk out of the formal diningroom, you will see that we are back in the entry way and if you turn and look back toward the livingroom, you will see the staircase to take you to the upstairs. I have garland and ribbon to decorate the banister rail - which is 16 steps from the entryway to to the top - and then the railing across overlooking both the livingroom on one side and the entry way on the other.
So, there you have it, a tour of the downstairs of my lovely new home. It still doesn't feel real to me - but I am sure it will become more so as time goes on.

Thanks for stopping by today - I hope to have some other items of a crafting sense to share with you later in the week. I REALLY need to get my Christmas cards started!!
Have a beautiful day wherever you are.
~Paula~