Much Glitter; Little Sewing

I'm trying to get this post up at a reasonable time, so I'm typing it up ahead of time. If you're reading this on Sunday afternoon I"m back at the Festival shop working on another Christmas tree. It's been a fairly busy week. Our team is now about a third of the way through the needed items at this point.

We're all about to start traveling though, so it's good that we got this great head start. Productivity is about to tank for a month or so. Here's the sneaky peak collage of non descriptive close ups.

In case you're wondering why I'm not sharing the full photos, we don't want our designs copied until after our local Festival of Trees is over. So I'm only sharing glimpses. I plan on sharing some of my favorites once everything's been purchased and delivered.

I've been asked before how long it takes to build one of our trees. Well it depends on the tree and the type of elements we've chosen. As examples, here are some trees from last year:

This whimsical 2.5 foot tree took about 3 hours or so. That includes adding extra lights to the tree (there are rarely enough on pre-lit trees) and wiring all the ornaments in place. This tree didn't use much in the way of floral picks or stems though. Only the top really has them.

My Pinwheel tree (that I made for myself) on the other hand contains quite a bit of floral elements, so that can add another hour or two, if you're creating your own units like I do. (As an aside, both of these 2.5 foot trees were my own design. I wanted to show an example of how one designer can work comfortably with different themes and structure too.)

Building units like this not only means you have to figure out how you want it to look, but you have to wire all the pieces together and wrap them in floral tape.

If you're working alone, this process gets time consuming. And the bigger the tree, the more elements you need. Even in a group with everyone pitching in it takes time.

One of the trees we just finished this year is 4.5 feet tall and took over 5 hours to decorate because we used 5 different floral elements. And there were four of us working together that evening. A similar tree to the one I just described could look like this:

And then the 7.5 foot trees take 5-6 people and take an entire late morning to early evening to build. 

That one wasn't too bad, but it was light on the florals.  I will say that any floral heavy tree design for a 7.5 foot tree has their floral units made well ahead of when we come together to decorate, sometimes with wine and cookies. Otherwise we'd never get home to sleep! It's taken us 8+ hours to do a floral heavy 7.5 tree before. But the results are stunning!

That's all for this week. I hope you enjoyed this look at some of last year's trees. We're not just decorating Christmas trees. We're making works of art (to a variety of tastes) and the proceeds benefit children in our community. We're also having an absolute blast doing it too!

Cleaning, Baking, Decking, Etc...

Been a busy week here. My adopted nephew wanted to surprise his mm by showing up while he was on leave from the military... along with his new fiance... and they enlisted my help in the surprise.

So FuzzyHusband and I cleaned, baked, and waited. Of course FH didn't know who was coming to visit... he just knew we had to clean everything. Nephew asked that I keep it a surprise for all.

I baked some cookies fr us to snack on once they arrived. These in the picture are all that's left! Or at least were left when I took the photo. ;-)

The surprise went well and many happy tears were shed. My "sister from another mister" is very excited to be welcoming a new daughter into her life and said young lady fits right into the family as if she was made for us.

Onto the hall decking... There's been a severe run of drought for the last several years, so the availability of real trees for the holiday were slim to none. I managed to find this slim profile artificial tree on sale and picked it up. It will be a nice back up until we can have real trees again. Plus the little tree I put together will sit quite nicely next to it, making a tiny festive grove.

And Pixel really likes the box it came in!

Ellie also has a fondness for boxes and claimed this one that the new light sets arrived in.

That's all for this week. I've got a sewing commission that needs finished before Friday, so I'll be making up for time spent with family this weekend. See you later!

Do You Hear WHO We Hear?

With A Little Help From A Bean

An Ellie Bean, of course. ;-)

The place we normally cut our trees from has experienced drought for the last few years, so pickings are slim. And I'm waiting for larger trees to drop in price before I go after the one I have in mind for a new, big artificial tree. Using all my crazy Fesitval skills, I put together a new "table top" size tree for us.

If you can get a well done lit tree on clearance, do it. But I liked the look of this little tree that was unlit. One 100-light strand of twinkle lights was more than enough for it, but bigger trees can get pricey to light on your own.

Lay our everything you've collected for the project so you can see what you're working with. You might decide to nix some items and you may have forgotten what you purchased already.

Always make your own floral units. Way cheaper, more fun, and you can get more for your money when they're on sale. And before you say you can't do that, yes you can. You may need to practice and play for a bit, but I have faith in your creative abilities. Larger bushes of flowers or greenery can be cut apart to add a bit more oomph to a unit.

In this case, I had the gold magnolia leave and berries picked out, but decided to and sprigs from a frosted greenery bunch. Gave it more of a winter feel as opposed to fall.

Don't be afraid to think outside the box. The larger candy cane was actually a novelty pen that I found at the pharmacy 3 for $1. The smaller ones I aid a lot more for at Michaels. Also leave yourself some stem lengths so you have something to anchor the units to the tree branches.

Do a dry run for your topper to see what you like and don't like. Take some time to play around and have fun!

If you fall in love with a ribbon that isn't wired, make sure you pair it with a wired ribbon to make your like easier during bow-making. And make sure you have a good length of wire when securing the bow so you have leverage when placing it on the tree.

Always work with a single element at a time so you can get even placement. Work from the inside of the tree outward, because it's easier to layer that way. I preferred to add my feature ornaments last on this tree, because they're fabric and needed to be towards the ends of the limbs. I found the tutorial for the fabric ornaments here, and made them in several sizes. All of them came from 2 fat quarters of fabric.

Enjoy!

A Post With Text?!?

My crazy busy season is now complete. The fall burlesque show was last night and went very well. The bras held up (pun totally intended) beautifully during the ladies' dance number. The picture isn't the greatest, but cameras are not allowed backstage for obvious reasons. The Fuzzy Husband was working security for the show and was all the way in the back of the theater when he took this. There will eventually be better photos posted on Lock and Key Burlesque's Facebook page.

And today was the final day for our local Festival of Trees, which is a charity auction that benefits our local crisis nursery. This is the event that I helped out with a dollhouse for the past two years. Then I was asked to join the design committee for trees, which was amazing. I met and worked with some lovely ladies and I cannot wait for our next season of work to start!

Here's a few of the 47 trees that I helped design and create. The 8 wreathes, and "I lost count of" centerpieces were mainly worked on when I wasn't int he shop, so I don't have pictures of my own of them. We started work in late June and finished the last and largest tree last Monday.

I'm kicking myself for not being at the shop when we finished the tree these handmade ornaments went on. One of our committee made the prototypes and three of us made three sets (only 2 sets pictured) of these lovely card ornaments. They're high resolution scans of vintage Christmas cards that we layered with glittered cardstock. Was so much fun! Cookies and wine might have been involved as well.

Sadly, the economy here has been affected by a certain major employer moving jobs out of the area, so some of the larger trees did not sell. But this was the best looking Festival in the nine years that it's been held, so hopefully we will figure out the sweet spot with our new economic normal. Plus we're getting the word out to the public that the event even exists, so ticket sales to come in and view the trees will go up more and more.

Finally I started work on a new dress for myself. It just needs a hem at this point, but it has pockets!!!

An this is what happened when I was marking the dart for this bodice section. *cough* I didn't plan it, but the comedic effect was too fun not to share! ;-)

Now all I have left is to finish my dress, make the bolero that coordinates with it, make a waistcoat for a commission, and play with whatever strikes my fancy until the end of the year.

Minis In the Tree, part 1

It's sorta busy around here right now. FH and I are busy taking it easy and trying not to stress about the holiday.

I need to get back to it, but first I thought I'd share some of the decorations in our Yule tree.

The first is a bag I put together especially for this tree. I used the piece of bag that I cut away as part of the interior decorations. I bought the fireplace and fireplace tools, but everything else cam out of the stash.

The colors fit in well with the new ornaments this year.

I was having so much fun seeing minis out that I haven't seen for a while, I scrounged up another small bag and put this one together. I made the wreath, but th other pieces were stashed.

I also went and brought up "Joy!" which has been in hiding since Artie like to steal minis that aren't behind plexi-glass. It fills up the largest gap in the tree's branches quite well.

I haven't dug out the tree skirt, or wrapped packages yet. But here's the tree, complete with some of Mercedes' toys underneath.

I have two more mini scenes to finish up and add. I'll post about them next week. Until then, I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday!

Not Even Halfway

But it's a start! Here's what I'm putting into the storefront build. The boxes are from the blog,  Amber's House. She made the printies for personal use only. Poke the link to see her instructions and check out her other tutorials while you're in the the neighborhood.

For the icicles, I ended up using metallic embroidery floss. It's laid out evenly across a piece of double-sided tape, which is attached to a scrap of cardstock. The cardstock is glued directly to the piece of transparency film I used to close up the box.

The boxes of "snow" have a section of glitter-covered scrap booking cardstock showing through their openings. I thought the glitter looked enough like fake snow and I wouldn't have to worry about it leaking.

There are still more boxes to fill. Most of the others are made though. But I've got a long way to go yet. Only one box of lights is done and there are many more ornaments to make.

I doubt it will be finished by this Christmas, but it will be a fun thing to work on and maybe get finished in time for next year.

Right now, I've got a commission that is taking up my time. Quilting miniatures for a friend's mother-in-law. I'll try to have them finished by next weekend. See you then!

Belt for My Dad

FH and I made this belt for my dad.  We used a pre-embosed belt blank to start off.  He did the color work, finishing, and added the conchos.  I picked the colors, did the sizing, and shaping. 

The conchos are riveted on and the buckle is removable/changeable.  He used a yellow leather dye with a brown hi-lite to get the warm brown tones.

Puzzling Presents

Not really, but the alliteration was fun. ;-)

This Yule my stocking was stuffed with these fun little puzzles.  FH had some help from my mother in this, for which he is grateful.

I put the puzzle ball together after we got home from our 1000 mile journey.

It came with a little loop of cord so it can hang as an ornament.  So much fun with this!

A Blue Streak...Or Flame Perhaps

Our little brother (little is an operative word, he's 27 and bigger than FH) has an old beat up wallet with blue flames stitches on it.  It's horrible looking but well loved.  When they were here for New Years last year I traced the flames and took pictures for color reference.  FH was supposed to make him a new one, but got distracted by another thought.  Instead he made a more grown-up gift.

 

 

 Here's a picture of the flames in better light, before the black hi-lite was applied.

This is another project that we both worked on.  In this case I painted the flames whilst FH was at work.  He did the remainder.

A Prancing Pony

One of our best friends has an affinity (possibly bordering on an obsession) with a particular car maker.  To that end, FH and I came up with an interesting Yule gift for him.

One prancing pony, carved in leather.

I'm not sure which he liked better.  The finished result or watching FH do the carving whilst seated in his kitchen.  In the time it took me to fry chicken and make mashed potatoes, FH had this marked, cut, and tooled. 

He will be making a frame for this piece himself as he's our favorite woodworker.  I'd link to the posts featuring the pieces of his that we're proud to own but they're lost in the blog, tag-less.  Maybe I'll have time to dig them out of the darkness but not today.  I have a ton of projects in the queue that need finishing and a few that need to be started with definite deadlines.  The next several blog posts were written all at once and scheduled to post.  I'll be officially back sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Tiny Baubles

Some of the gifts I made this year for family were earrings. Namely both of my moms and Auntie Rose. 

Artan may have kept me from putting my most delicate treasures on the tree this year, but he didn't do anything to these.

These were such fun.  I think I may play with these beads again when I have some time.  Maybe make some for next year's Guild auction.