Karen's Muse and Musings

A Heart Leaping with Joy

I'm not exactly sure my heart is leaping, but I am feeling very grateful. I'm grateful for a truly delightful Thanksgiving Day here at my house with 13 in attendance. I'm grateful that the holiday is now over, and I am taking a break from all the cleaning and cooking I did in preparation. Since I now have some time to breathe, I have been catching up on art projects, including this skinny page for Leslie in the OhMyGothic group. Her preference for her pages is shades of white and neutral with splashes of color. As usual, I created the first page as the front, but after completing the second side, I liked it best. The second side is above, and if you look closely, you can read the little words "heart leaping with joy." The first side is below. Now I can't decide which I like best. I'll let Leslie decide which is the front and which is the back.

Christmas Cones

Recently the very talented Nancy Maxwell James, a member of the PaperWhimsy design team, created some Christmas cones and a pdf tutorial explaining how to do it. (Click here to see Nancy's scrumptious cones.) I instantly fell in love with them and knew I had to make some. About the same time I was rummaging through my fabric stash and found this long-forgotten but really pretty Christmas fabric.

Rather than making cream-colored cones as Nancy did, I decided to use this fabric. This is such a fun project. I've made two of them today and plan to make more. So you can see more of the fabric in the cone, here is the back of the cone pictured at the top.

And here is my second cone. I handled this one a little differently in that I free-motion quilted the fabric before rolling it into a cone.

Christmas Welcome Banner

You may remember the fall welcome banner I did a few weeks ago. Well this is part of a welcome banner for Christmas hosted by my friend Kathy McElroy. Once again, I have the O. Each participant has a different letter of the word "welcome". I like getting the O. It seems to have the most creative possibilities. Last time I did a pumpkin, and now I thought a wreath made of old buttons would be fun. My fall welcome banner is hanging in my foyer, and the plan is to replace it with other banners marking the seasons.

Christmas House Ornament

Even though it's a dark, gloomy, rainy day here, I borrowed my husband's camera (much better than mine!) and managed to get some better photos of the project I showed you last night. I used a house-shaped box to make a Christmas ornament.

I'm putting one of those little battery-operated tealights inside to glow through the vellum window.

To see another project in which I used one of these boxes, click here.

Sneak Peek

Here's a little peek at something I've been working on for a while. I'm having trouble getting good photos of all angles (and I do mean angles, not angels), but I will try again in the morning.

There's Challenge and Then There's Challenging!

So, this week's theme at Sunday Postcard Challenge is Day of the Dead. When I first read the theme, I groaned. This is SO NOT my thing, but I did a little research into Dia de los Muertos and learned about the rich heritage of this special Mexican holiday. It is a day set aside to honor friends and family members who have died. They celebrate with bright colors, sugar skulls, flowers, food and celebration. After studying photos and images online, I tried to meet this challenge with a combination of rubber stamps. Definitely not my usual style, but I learned something and tried to meet the challenge.

The stamps I used are from B-line Designs and Layers of Color.