Let's Talk Turkey

Thanksgiving is almost here. Family and friends are coming to our house this year to celebrate and give thanks. If the weather is warm enough we will carry the tables outside and eat while enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful fall colors in the surrounding woods. If it’s too chilly we will eat indoors and after no one can eat another bite whom ever is feeling adventurous will grab bags and go for a walk in the woods gathering pine cones, evergreen boughs and whatever else we fancy for decorating for Christmas.

To keep the little ones occupied during dinner I thought they might like to decorate some bags to put the things we find into. I’m going to set these at their place setting along with a paper grocery bag and  some stickers.

I used pop dots for the turkey on the right and glued down the turkey on the right. 

Which do you prefer? Can you tell a difference?

I used Cricut's Sesame Street Seasons to make the box and Create a Critter for the turkey.

I only had 4 colors to put in the box and the original size holds 8. I wanted to keep the height but make it narrower for fewer colors. Using my Gypsy I set the height of the box to 4.35 and unchecked the ratio button, that’s the  little chain symbol between the Width and Height, I made the box width 4.77 without changing the height. I made the turkeys at a height of 1.82  I think the little ones are going to like these.

I'm going to share these over at FCCB's Pilgrims Progress Challenge and at Little Scrap Pieces for their Fun Friday. This week it's Animals. I also joined the fun over at Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap-Up.

Come in and see my etchings

November 13, 2012

Since the holiday season is upon us with several potluck dinners coming up, I thought this would be the perfect time to see if I could etch my name on the bottom of my casserole dish.  This is something I’ve wanted to try for a long time but had just never gotten around too. Hopefully, doing so will see the safe return of my dish should I forget it, or leave it someplace.

I used a scrap of Cricut Cuttable, adhesive backed, 3 mil, vinyl to cut out my stencil. I used the Cricut cartridge, Lyrical Letters, feature key Loop dee Loo, for my name. I manipulated it with my Gypsy welding the letters together and cutting it at 1.10 inches.  The vinyl directions said to set my blade depth to 6 and my pressure to 2, but when I cut out a small trial stencil, (which I highly recommend) it wouldn’t come apart easily so I adjusted the pressure to 3 and it worked beautifully.  Once the stencil was cut, I removed it from the mat, trimmed off the extra vinyl leaving about a 1 inch border around my name, this made it easier to handle. I carefully removed the letters from the vinyl, setting them aside for a later use. This left a stencil of my name. Be sure to leave any inside pieces of a letter on the backing. (Like with the letter B, the 2 half circles) Once all the bits I didn’t need were removed I covered the stencil with a piece of scotch tape I used as transfer tape, over lapping on both sides about one inch. This helps move the stencil to the dish in one piece with out twisting out of shape or folding up on its self. (I speak from experience here) I slowly removed the vinyl’s backing and then placed the stencil on the bottom of the dish where I wanted my name. When I got it positioned properly I removed the tape, smoothed out the air bubbles in the vinyl and placed the insides of my B where they belonged.

I followed all of the same steps with the decorative branch and bird I cut using the Cricut Serenade cartridge. When I removed the vinyl design I placed it on a piece of left over vinyl backing to keep to use in another project. 

I bought some Armour Etch, glass etching cream at Michael’s. I had a 50% off coupon so it was only about 6 dollars. I wiped the bottom of the casserole with a cotton boll soaked in alcohol to remove any oils, let it dry and then using an old paint brush, I applied a thick layer of the etching cream. The directions say to leave it on for 60 seconds but I had read somewhere else to leave it for 10 minutes. My casserole is cobalt blue and I was a little worried that this wouldn’t work on the colored glass so I left the etching cream on for the 10 minutes. Wearing rubber gloves, I rinsed off  the cream and stencil with water.

At first I thought it hadn’t worked, but after I dried it off there it was! Magic!

 As you can see the pan is an older, much used one. I can't wait to try it on my newer ones too.You could even add your phone number so people would know where to reach you if you left it at a gathering.

Wouldn't it add a nice personalized touch to a wedding gift of a set of casserole dishes?

Bed Skirt

I haven't had much chance to scrapbook lately. I hope I'll be able to remedy that tomorrow afternoon. This time of year is when I do my deep cleaning. We have family and friends over for Thanksgiving and it really revs me into a cleaning, get those household projects done, mode. That's why I made a bed skirt for the guest bed this week instead of scrapbooking.

   I needed to be able to hide all the junk we have stuffed under the bed. LOL. That's one of the great things about those old tester beds. They are high up off the ground and you can store lots of stuff under them.

There's a whole other household under there. What's under your bed?

Bravo for you if there are only dust bunnies. If there aren't even any dust bunnies call me. I'd like for you to come clean my house too.
 The bed skirt was really quite easy to make. I bought a twin flat sheet at the thrift store and 4 yards of eyelet fabric at Hancocks. The width of the sheet was perfect for the double bed and it's frame but I had to cut off about a foot on the length. I tore the eyelet fabric in two down the center fold and used the selvage edge as the bottom so I didn't have to hem it.  I then cut it into 3 panels. 2 for the sides and one for the foot of the bed. Each panel was about 1and 1/2 times the length that I needed so it had a little fullness but wasn't too frilly. I finished off the edges of each of the short ends so they would be neat. Then I ran 2 basting stitches along the torn sides so I could gather it a little. I pinned the fabric to the sheet Right sides together. I started out by pinning the first panel at each end and then put one pin in the middle, adjusted the gathers pinning more securely as I went along. Then I sewed it together. I did this for all 3 sides. When I was done sewing and pressing it I put it over the foundation mattress, put the top mattress back on the bed, adjusted the length and was done. 2 evening worth of work. It probably would have been less but I got caught up in a TV show and it slowed my progress. Abracadabra our camping equipment is out or sight, out of mind until next camping season.