Twelve Days of Christmas and Happy New Year

Hi Bloggers...
Bet you thought I had dropped off the Earth...Nope just up to my eyeballs in Christmas creating and teaching at The Little Blue House.
This year I have resolved to blog on a regular basis and also to do a couple of other things that will help me get a little more organized as well as get some of MY creative stuff done.  But first I wanted to show you a project that I created with my friend Hilary.  Each year we do a special Twelve Days of Christmas for our Moms and a few other special folks in our lives.  Usually we create a cute tag and the I create poems --yep-I'm a poet too and we gather together some cute little gifts that are somewhat related to the Twelve days of Christmas verses.  But this year I decided to adapt a project I did at the Collins show in Houston this summer.  Yep the project was taught by the man himself - Tim Holtz!!
He taught us how to make one of the configuration boxes...so much fun and so creative I decided this had to be the Twelve Days Surprise this year. 
So Here It IS!!

The box is covered in paper from one of the Ranger seasonal paper stashes then coated in Glossy accents and sprinkled with a combination of Sugar Dust and Diamond Dust - I love this stuff--so sparkley.  The tree is just one of those green bottle brush trees sprayed with gold spray paint and then glittered with ultrafine gold glitter.  You do it Shake and Bake style...spray the tree and while it is wet dump in a ziploc bag and add glitter and shake.  The pears are the petals from a silk hydranga flower

The bird cage is from Idea-ology and has two miniature doves in it.  Day six is a beautiful origami swan that Hilary folded and sits on a lake of blue glitter.  The laid eggs are just little plastic eggs covered in ...you guessed it..antique glitter.  Now box three is the French "N's" - get it not French hens--Okay it made my Mom laugh!!

Check out the miniature phone in the bottom left hand corner--calling birds !!??!!

Box 5 is the Golden Rings - yep those little bells do ring and Box 8 makes sense when you read the poem that comes in the bag - here it is
The eight maids were a milking
But little did they know
If they left the milk on the porch
It would turn to Christmas snow

Here's a close up of the origami swan

The Ladies dancing are just cupcake toppers...and box 10 Lords a leaping --here's the poem to explain
The ten leaping lords have vanished
- Oh No –
Could something be amiss?
Nay…the princes will return
It will only take a kiss

Hilary created these cute bagpipes from tartan plaid ribbon and part of a styrofoam ball.  The pipes are woodlike pipecleaners I had in my craft stash.

We had an extra box so we added the title..
And the Twelve drummers..well this one makes sense

We ended up making six boxes and then my friend Laurie W saw them and she is going to create for her family this year.

So thatis one of my Christmas projects..

NOW THE NEW YEAR's RESOLUTIONS

I have just a couple..One is Declutter...I am just tired of not finding stuff and keeping stuff around that I really don't need or want and some of it others might use.  And as part of this process I am gathering all those unfinished projects and I resolve to finish one a week.  Some are just layouts that need pictures added. My first one is a canvas I had not finished at the Collins show.  I got it out and finished it.

This was another Tim Holtz class.

The tiles were made using shrink plastic and melted Utee powder - inked with alcohol inki and then backed with images.  It has been sitting in the bag from the show.  So I finished it and even put it on the wall.  It feels great to get something even if it is small accomplished.

For household decluttering I am using Beth Dargis' declutter calendar.   I am a little ahead of schedule - but this weekend cleaned out my closet - now I am not a shopper or a person who has a lot of clothes ...but I pulled out 82 items to donate ...and get this 175 empty hangers-AMAZING how much room I have now.   I have so many hangers because I iron almost everything and my DH has his work clothes drycleaned so I have had a never ending supply of hangers.  The guys at the cleaners will be glad to get those back...

A task was also to clean out expired medications- can you say cold medicine from 2004 REALLY!!  I was told by my BF Holary that you can put medications in used coffee grounds and it breaks them down. 

Anyway...thanks for putting up with this LONG post.  I will chat next week with a new finished project and let you know how the decluttering is going.  I hope you have a blessed week and make sure you smile-it adds SPARKLE to the world.

Elaine

PS Excuse any typos-not going to sweat the small stuff when it comes to blogging!!