The Twelve Snowmen of Christmas, 2024

The preparations for the 2024 Deck the Trees fundraising effort revolve around the theme of "Winter Wonderland." While the image above is only of five snowmen, a complete set of 12 have been finished for this season's Tatted Tree.  Some years ago - 2011 to be precise - Palmetto Tatters Guild's Tat Days Conference had a similar theme: "Tatting in a Winter Wonderland" which had artwork in the Logo that included a snowman.  This has prompted the idea that snowmen would be an outstanding addition to the snowflakes, angels and bells that have been gracing the Tatted Tree for the past 13 years. 

Patterns for snowmen are a bit of a challenge to find, but Sandy Scales and Barbara Foster have written  a free one that can be found on the Handy Hands Tatting site here.   It is cute and fairly straight-forward to carry out.  Another such design is Wanda Salmans' "Button-centered Tatted Snowman" written in 2015.  This one, too is simple but effective.  Monica Hahn included 2 snowmen patterns in her Dover Needlework publication entitled "Christmas Angels and other Tatting Patterns"  Debbie Arnold sells a pair of patterns in her Etsy Shop and a completed tatted snowman is available for purchase from Tatted Dreams by Jolene Etsy shop.  That was for the most part the extent of what I found.  If I missed anything, it's on me, but armed with these patterns I set to work.  

It took several months to finish them, but to date, I have completed a total of 12 snowman bodies from 3 different patterns including ones with button centers and an older pattern that I have modified so that it went together more smoothly.  If a hat was part of the pattern, such as in the Scales & Foster pattern, the over all appearance seemed rather stiff.   Some of the patterns did not include hats at all. So off to the land of images went I looking for something I could use to add whimsy to the finished products.  I found a few that I though might be suitable, printed them out, re-sized them as necessary and came up with 3 options that I thought might work.  They looked like this:

Craft foam sheets are cost effective and easy to cut through.  They are useful in many crafting applications and really fit the requirements in this case because they are light weight, solid construction and not translucent or transparent.  I traced off the reapective outlines for each design and cut each out so that I had hats that looked something like this once a hat band was added:

The hats aren't very big some smaller ribbons were in order.  Since I am confined to our camper until the house is finished, I have to rely on what craft supplies I can find in our storage lockers unless I want to purchase items I have no room for.  Each hat that was worked up ranged in size between 1 inch and 2 1/2 inches wide and no more than an inch high.  If the ribbons on hand were too wide, I cut them down to a suitable size before adding them to the craft foam "hats."  

For the most part, the items were something I could use easily, but the ribbon with the red pom-poms was going to require greater modification,  I cut off the red pom-poms for use as "buttons" reserving the white band for use on some hats themselves.  

With the 12 hats and respective bands ready to attach to the tatted snowmen, I used a fabric glue to put the parts together.

Any of the snowmen that did not have a face as part of the tatting or pattern was going to require adding sequins for eyes and mouth and something to indicate buttons on the "body."  

The hats taken from snowmen images really added a touch of fancifulness to these snowmen!  Lastly,  ribbon scarves and embelishments are added to the hats as well as hangers to mount them on the tree at the Monte Vista Hotel the first week of December.  More to follow once the date has arrived.

A New YouTube Channel for me

 Stumbled across a YouTube video that truly suited my tastes in Nature, DIY and decor pursuits.  Brandy at Making It My Own DIYs truly struck a chord with me when I watched her create beautiful SUNcatchers.  You can see the video here .  This is not the only Natural-typical creative video this channel has to offer, but overall I found her topics and presentations very pleasing and easy to follow!  

Spring is the ideal time to enjoy the lengthening daylight hours, so suncatchers are right in time with the season.  At the moment, all of my crafting supplies are packed away for our pending move, so I have nothing to use for follow through in creating my own similar designs.  But that will be for the future. . .

Moving to More Tatting

 I haven't created a post here in quite a while.  It has been quite a journey from late January to today.

The door on the art barn has been replaced thanks to our friend and HandiMan Alex.  The building is now secure and weather proof!

Meanwhile, I hit a problem in one of my tatting projects: it involved a pattern printed originally in Norwegian, I believe.  Once translated, there were some linguistic obsticals to overcome.  I am not sure if I made a mistake or if there was an error either in the pattern or in the translation, but something had to be re-arranged.  Sometimes, in cases like this, shifting emphasis to something else is beneficial.

One day I saw a Facebook post about a flower that had been created by Krystyna Mura based on a 1920 publication in German by Eleonor Endrucks.  Someone had suggested that the pattern might be suitable for a 3-D version.  Since that looked similar to other 3-D flower patterns I had tatted, noteably those of Linda S. Davies of England, I decided to divert my attention from that which was overwhelming me and give this a spin.  The resulting pattern is this one.  

The next several weeks were spent tatting the specimen, creating the pattern using Inskscape, testing and re-testing the written pattern and reaching the final outcome.

The project is known as Endrucks 1920 Project and is housed on Facebook.  It was begun in 2015 when Tatting Expert Georgia Seitz approached another Tatting Mentor known as Muskaan to tat one of the patterns pictured in the publication.

There is a particular twist on this story: Eleonore Endrucks' work is printed in an Old German Gothic font and rather than giving written patterns, the publication consists of mostly photographs of the works and a rather general description of the way she created each piece.  They are unique in their own right.  But with directions that are challenging to first read and then to carry out, the creation of each design is largely left up to anyone who can look at a photo and carry out the design.

The group was formed and was joined quickly by Ninetta Caruso, Martha Ess (who first scanned and donated the publication to the Antique Pattern Library, in the public domain), Vicky Clarke and many others.  Since that time, a wealth of patterns has sprung off the nimble fingers of many of the 2000 members.  To date, I have contributed several patterns or variations of patterns myself.  The most recent one being completed with the help of Muskaan during the past winter months.  It's titled "January Snowflake" and complete pattern can be found here.  

Since this pattern was completed, my husband and I have begun migrating our posessions to storage while we prepare to relocate nearer to our son and his family.  I do so miss my craft space which has been dismantled and tucked away for safe keeping.  But tatting is quite portable and I have good projects to keep my "crafter's urges" satisfied.

Transitions

 After spending a goodly amount of time renovating the Art Barn to make it more weather-proof and comfortable, we find that we are moving.  The process has begun:  we have our site selected, the land has been tested for septic and water systems and we have our building permit.  We have been packing like crazy and that also means purging unwanted items from EVERYWHERE!  

One of the first things I came to realize was that many of my acrylic paints were only about 1/2 used and truly were not my primary media.  Paper crafting was accomplished either with alcohol, dye or pigment inks or watercolor.  All things acrylic that had not been used for a year or more was packaged up and sent to the local charter school that concentrated on the arts.  In addition to the ancrylic paints, colored pencils, some of the less costly or professional brushes and papers for drawing or coloring were included.  In today’s environment, teachers often have to provide their own supplies for the classrooms, and I was met with gratitude from the school when I appeared with several boxes of the supplies.

Yarns and threads, patterns and instruction books, tools that will have uses later on, paper materials, stamps and dies have been (for the most part) grouped and put into storage.  My concern for my inks, dyes and paints is  that once stored in an unseated location, they might freeze.  While cleaning out the garage, I found a thick, styrofoam container that had once held a gift of fresh seafood that our children had sent for a gift.  This I packed with all the alcohol inks, resist sprays and bonding solutions.  Alas it wasn’t enough!

Through persistence, similar packaging solutions have been found by appearing at local pharmacies and grocery stores which also receive shipments of medicines or seafoods that require being kept cold in transit.  The efforts were well worth it! Next, the ink pads - both dye inks and pigment inks - will go into the newly located styrofoam containers.  During the summers, such containers are a bit easier to find, but during the winter months, no one needs coolers!  Once packaged up, I’ll leave these in climate controlled conditions until the VERY last minute before moving them to the unheated space.  Perhaps it will be far enough into the year that freezing won’t really be an issue.  Meanwhile, I’d rather be safe and not have to replace any that I don’t have to.

 Yule has come and gone.  It's still the New Year, but most of the celebrating is behind us all.  For the first time in many years, I did not get everything I wanted to accomplish before Christmas done.  Tree up, yes; decorating, for the most part, yes; but cards, not nearly!  So I am in the Art Barn, today,  fabricating cards to send even belated wishes to friends and family.  This is one year that the notion of “Better Late Than Never” is holding true!  However the cards created this year may just be stored for next year. . .

My original intention was to create about 20 cards for sending out this year, but it looks like it is going to be more like 15.  I have a number of sheets of deco foil that I wanted to use but the transfer sheets seem to have gone by the wayside.  Black 8.5 x 11” toner sheets that are sold in a 2-pack are available from several outlets.  Because of their size, they are very versitile and one version of them comes as "Peel-and-Stick" so that shapes can be cut from them and adhesive is already on the back for precise adhereing to the card or other object.   

However, these days the Gina K Designs Deco Foil decorative transfer sheets are mostly unavailable except for those that allow the creation of sentiments and none of them were available with Christmas / Yule / New Year greetings.  Time to re-evaluate once again.  

 

The transfer and toner sheets both do well if you are going to cut out a design accent for the card, but I was wanting to “use what I have” in the way of cut-outs and I didn’t have many “Merry Christmas” sentiment dies either.  Shapes were one thing, words another. 

I tried finding more design transfer sheets both from trusted retails and from Ebay - a usally suitable source.  It seemed odd that there were just NONE to be found.  Then after watching a YouTube Video by Jennifer McGuire Ink I learned that ThermoWeb and Gina K Designs have jointly developed a new product called Poly Glaze Sheets that you can reserve your order for them here or directly from Gina K Designs here.  They are designs only and a limited selection of sentiments at this time and claim to offer a more consistent seal between the glaze and the foil sheets.  I can see these in my crafting future!

Another method for using the foil sheets was to  fill in a stencil with “transfer gel” after it has been lightly adhered to cardstock using a low-tack spray created for this purpose.  I had some that was intended to hold quilt batting in place while the quilted top was prepped for the actual quilting process in which the stitching would go through the quilted top, the batting and subsequently through the back.  This turned out to be a bit too sticky and took more effort to remove than the product called “Pixie Spray” which was indeed created for this purpose.  

It worked beautifully and I was able to create several examples this way.  I used the low-tack spray to stabilize the stencil before spreading on the Deco Gel.  It's not a great image, but this is what you get:

The stencil used is Candlelight Stencil (SC-175) from Picket Fence Studios.  I allowed it to dry over night before applying first Deco Foil sheet called Iridescent.  This gave me a wonderful shimmering quality that while wasn't quite as wide as my card base, was what I was looking for.  I completed the card with a dark blue plaid card stock from the DCWV "Winter Basics Stack" accented by a thin stip of one of the sam manufacturer's Holographics Mat Stack collection.  The end product looked like this:

I also tried layering different colors of foil on the same stencil that had been pasted over with the Transfer Gel.  It is a bit more tricky to get the fine layers of foil into the proper position but the outcome was certainly acceptable for a first attempt:

There are 4 different colors of foiling used in this sample, but the gold-tone used in the flames doesn't show up the way I had wanted.  Also the cardstock was somehow stained and so I'll end up having to fussy cut this image out and re-mount it.  But that's what makes them "hand-made cards," isn't it?

According to some of my card-making mentors, a technique that involves foiling over embossed sentiments is another choice that I had considered.  The first time I tried it, I was unaware that the image or sentiment actually had to have embossing powder heat set over the stamped word or shape, so this ended in failure.  The next attempt went better and a third attempt followed, but still didn't give the results I was hoping for.  It seems in order to carry out this effectively, the sentiment needs to have a little more distance between the letters so that the sentiment will show up well.  Here's what I foiled compaired with simple embossing with metallic powder:

 

I find that the simple embossing is much easier to read, at least so far!  Oh and note the fussy-cutting around the multi-colored stenciling on the 3rd example!  Worked out just fine for a "hand-made card!"

Technique for card making using banner die

 I needed a birthday card for a man.  Most of the components of the card were readily on hand, but the one central idea was held in the word "THOUGHTS" as in  "Some Birthday Thoughts for You."  I already had a clever sentiment for the inside, but needed some tease to get the recipient to OPEN the card.  I searched high and low through my stash of sentiments and came up with nothing.  This meant that the element on the card was going to have to be created.  Creating is what crafters do best!

First step was to determine HOW to create the word Thought so that it would stand out and at the same time fit the card.  A piece of vellum that had been inked through a stensil was available and looked very good over a lighter color of craft cardstock.  So far, so good!  I have several sets of alphabet stamps and alphabet dies for cutting out the letters.  Not wanting to use an all caps font, I chose the Calligraphy style of Altanew's alphabet stamps because I had both caps and lower case letters.

I tried stamping them in a straight line, but wasn't happy with the final appearance.  Back to the drawing board.  I had some all-occasion stamps with banner dies (Hero Arts Ribbon Messages): 

So I pulled the larger ribbon banner and cut several of them from some co-ordinating color card stock.  These I glued together in a stack to create depth.  But how was I going to get the stamps to fit since they were just letters that had to be shaped onto the curve of the ribbon banner?  My solution was to trace the inside of the ribbon banner onto a scrap piece of card stock then stamp the letters to see how they would fit and if they were going to be too big or too small:

The next step was to take a piece of the cardstock from which I had already cut one of the ribbon banners and place it ON TOP of my stamp positioner with a piece of white (maybe I should have used the lighter colored craft) cardstock lying IN the stamp positioner directly under the template created by the cut-out lying on top of the stamp positioner's lid.  

This way I could see exactly where to place the stamps to create the word and to keep it within the curves of the banner. Each letter had to be placed individually because the script style of the letters allowed them to flow together as if they had been written.  This worked beautifully!  Then I was able to fussy-cut the word and glue it to the layers of banner.  

As luck would have it, Altanew has several sets of sentiments that complimented this Calligraphy font nicely.  This way, no conflicting fonts had to be used on the front of the card:

The one with the sentiments written out is called Painted Greetings.

  

A party hat sticker and some dots completed the front of the card.  Ta-Da! the finished card front with a cleaver sentiment inside that reads: "in Wine there is Wisdom, in Beer there is Freedom, in Water there is Bacteria"  signed Cheers!

It's not Hallmark. . .  It's a hand made card!  

Getting ready another Tatted Tree for Deck the Trees, Black Mountain

 For the past 11 years, a group I have been a part of has participated in a fund-raiser called Deck the Trees.  It's a benefit for the fuel assistance fund sponsored by the Swannanoa Valley Christian Ministries.  Held at the historic Monte Vista Hotel each year (except 2020 when Covid-19 was in its height), this benefit has raised in the vicinity of $100,000 to help families on the edge have enough fuel for our mountain winters.  The committee announced the theme for 2022 as "Let Heaven and Nature Sing" back in August, a theme that is bit more challenging than some have been in the past.  

I chose to acquire clear plastic ornaments that could be filled with not only tatting, but natural elements as well.  The journey to find the various elements began in September.  I first realized that the line "And Heaven and Nature sing" was from the Yuletide carol "Joy to the World" written in 1719 by Isaac Watts, an English Minister.  Locating the song in a hymnal was easy as was making copies that could be trimmed down to a reasonable size and used as a focal point inside the clear balls was a good place to begin.  One of the local charity shops had a hymnal lying on the counter the day I went in, and to my amazement, it was free for the asking.  I trimmed the copies down to the best size to fit the orbs and burnished the edges with a candle flame

The following weeks were spent looking for patterns that would create small snowflakes, musical notes and shapes that could also adorn the orbs.  Any that I couldn't find, I designed to the best of my ability.  Some time was spent looking around the neighborhood for acorns and pine cones that were small enough to fit into the ornamanets.  I also located lavender sprigs, hydrangea blossoms, moss and lichens to be used.  Here are some of the ornaments in various stages of completion:

Sewing project

 I found myself in the position of needing a costume.  Not just for Halloween, but for Swannanoa Valley Museum's Haunted History Tour.  Previously, I had introduced participants to a boarding house turned Bed and Breakfast as a guest of said boarding house in the 1920's.  However the property had been sold and had become law offices.  So a change in the story was in order.  To accomodate this change, I was determined to be a cleaning lady for the building that would give the history of the building since it had been built in about 1912.

There was nothing in the museum's costume holdings that would make this presentation beleiveable.  So a trip to the charity shop was in order.  I found not only a colorful skirt and sweater (think of Carol Burnette's cleaning lady from the 1970's), but also I was in search of an apron without having to create one from scratch.  A skirt with a flounce would do - so I found one and cut out the back of it out. 

My mother's Necci sewing machine, purchased in 1956, or there abouts had been my go-to for sewing since I had received it about 15 years ago.  But this time, when I attempted to fire it up, the motor would not turn the mechanism.  And so the nearly 70 year old machine would not be of any use to me.  Thank goodness for the modest Singer sewing machine purchased several year ago.  

Next was to find what whould make waistband and tying straps.  I found some fabric that I though might work:

 The border of this, if long enough would work for both.   And so it did:

I had enough to make substantial ties as well as a waistband.  This would create a suitable apron for our purposes:

All this created in just 3 hours including shopping.  Not IN the Art Barn, but a part of the creative process indicative of what the Art Barn is.

Hopefully, the Art Barn itself will be ready for using soon.  More to come!

Crafting without the Barn

 With the exterior construction, many of the contents of the Art Barn had to be removed to allow for enlarging the door frame and installing the light fixture.  What was left inside required covering to keep the dust off it.  That’s not going to get in my way!  Over the past week or so, I have managed to finish a project begun at the 2022 Palmetto Tatter’s Guild’s 20th annual Tat Days held in nearby Lake Junaluska Conference Center outside Waynesville, NC.  There I took Martha Ess’s Rick Rack Sunflake (tm) class and have completed it.  

This was my first experience with using Rick Rack as an anchor for tatting, but I was pleased with the way it came out.  Because of the way the fabric was sewn together, it has a tendency to bow a bit, but a healthy shot of steam from my steam iron seems to have taken care of most of that.  

Organization vs. Creativity

It has been said that we can organize or we can create. To a certain extent that is true. If our tools and supplies are in such disarray, when our creative urge strikes (or is harnaced,) we will spend all our time searching for the items we need rather than actually being involved in the creative process. This is especially true if our crafting space is small. Recently my Art Barn door has begun to deteriorate. When we built the space, we were using the most cost-effective (cheep) materials we could find. So this "exterior" door was indeed 36" wide, but only 77" in height. Add to this, the decision was made to have it open to the OUTSIDE, rather than to the INSIDE. The elements of nature are not kind to any door left open and swung to the outside for very long. While not left open constantly, the building is about 12 or 13 years old and time hgas taken its toll. Se we have made the decision to replace it. Standard doors are 32", 34' or 36' wide - not counting the door frame which comes with the "pre-hung doors" - and are usually 80" high - again not including the door frame. We have found and engaged one VERY brave soul who is going to take the necessary steps to remove the existing door and modify the opening to accomodate a new pre-hung door tht will swing inward. THIS IS EXCITING!! The door will arrive any day now! Once re-construction begins, I will have to be without my crafting space for a few days. That's not too much of a problem, however, I don't wany all my supplies and tools covered in sawdust and other nasties - hopefully they won't be wet nasties! So I am spending my time sorting, temporarily re-locating and covering my surfaces with protective barriers. While I would just LOVE to be creating with my Labor Day Weekend "free" time, that will have to wait for a bit. In the end, I will be glad this has been done! However, at this moment, I am ENDURING the process, all the while reassuring myself that it will be better in the end. It will be better in the end. . . It WILL be better in the end. . . IT WILL BE BETTER in the end!!