Start thinking of 2016 Christmas.....REALLY??

I hope everyone had a wonderful 2015 Christmas.  Ours was very nice, spent with my parents, children, and grandchildren....can't get much better.

Every year for Christmas, one of the gifts I purchase is a Christmas ornament for each grandchild.  This year, I looked and looked for the perfect ornament and nothing tickled my fancy until I was in Michaels looking at the wooden ornaments and I thought I should create their ornament instead of buying an already made one.  So, in the basket went 6 wooden shaped ornaments.

 

Once home they sat on my craft table for weeks untouched.  I would go in and look at them and play around with ideas but nothing.  So I thought, well, maybe making the ornaments wasn't such a good idea. 

I made one more trip to the department store to look at all the ornaments and still none of them made me think of any of grandkids.  I walked away and decided I was done with the yearly Christmas ornament; no ornaments this year for the kids.

And then it hit me - I have all these fun photos of Christmas projects we have done this season and I want the ornaments to bring back fond childhood memories, so why not incorporate the special projects on the ornaments.  Finally, I was ready to create!!!

I printed photos onto regular cardstock then cut them to fit the ornament and glued them into place.  Once they dried, I sanded the edges of the ornaments and the photo so all was smooth and no paper edges were hanging off.

 

I painted the edges and the little bit of wood showing on the top of the ornament with acrylic paint.  Once, they dried, I sanded again to give a distressed look.  After sanding the second time, I inked over the top with Tim Holtz's, Distress Ink vintage photo.  The last step for painting, I coated the photo and wood with Mod Podge to seal and protect the photo.

 

 

 

After everything was good and dried, I glued garland around the edge of the ornament, added twine and a bow to complete the project. 

 

I forgot to take a final photo of the ornaments, so had to call in the help of my kids and have them send me a photo of the completed project.  One ornament, we are hoping is hidden in a granddaughters room.

 

 

It was a fun and easy project that I hope will bring back memories of Christmas decorating, baking and crafting.

 

(I am telling you this a little late, but now is definitely the time to stock up on crafting projects for 2016.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired or Copied

We create and design new items all the time, but where do these ideas come from? 

One of the dilemmas I have when designing, am I stealing someone else's design that I have seen at one point in my crafting journey?  Is what I just created really something I CREATED or did I copy someone else's idea.  Did I file an image away in my internal filing cabinet and suddenly, it came to the forefront of my memory when I saw this new beautiful paper.

So my dilemma - is it mine if I "designed" something that looks kind of like someone else's?  Then again is that what being inspired is all about?  Am I copying someone or did they inspire me, did they set my brain in motion for creativity?

Siri's definition of INSPIRED -
     adjective - of extraordinary quality, as if arising from some external creative impulse.
     verb - fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

I am going to stick with being inspired.  Rhonna Farrer recently said that none of our ideas are ours.  Good ideas come from God and that really struck true for me.  He is my inspiration and he has put so many wonderfully, creative, talented people in my life to INSPIRE me. 

I hope that I am able to inspire others, the way that God has inspired me.  This summer after scrolling through Pinterest, I was inspired to create a fairy book for my granddaughter.  Below is a photo of the photo book that I created. 

My granddaughter and I share a special fondness for fairies and fairy gardens.  This book will be filled with our fairy journey and as I told her, fairies are "FAIRY true".

Inspire to be inspired!