Panda's Pot Pourri

Another from the Department of I've Been Wanting to Do This for Years. Panda, as I may have mentioned, has a rather keen sense of smell. There cannot be enough perfume, body spray, hand lotion and so forth for her to sniff out. Give this kid a gift card to Bath & Body Works and she's in Heaven.

Lavender is high on her list of favorite scents, and I planted quite a lot of it this year. With the roses in full swing, I thought we could try making some pot pourri.

The technique of drying flowers runs the gamut from hanging them upside down and air-drying, to using the dehydration setting of one's oven, if one's oven has such a setting. Mine does (smug smile). But in high-80's heat with humidity, I don't relish running the oven if I don't have to. Can you dry flowers in the microwave?

Quick consult of the Oracle of Google. Yes, you can.

Come, child, into the garden so that we may collect items of sweet scent.  Here's what we came back with:

Clockwise from top: rosebuds (Zepherine Drouhin, as they have the most scent) to keep as buds; lavender; lemon verbena leaves; carnations; roses to dry as petals only, and hiding behind them is a pile of geranium leaves.

Put some paper towels on a plate.  Working in batches, spread the petals in a single layer. Microwave a minute, to a minute and a half. Just keep checking on them, you'll know when it's right. Repeat with all the petals and leaves. We even nuked the rosebuds a couple minutes, but we left the lavender buds and leaves as they were.

Get a small, clean jar with a lid (I emptied out one of my button jars), and start building layers: some petals, some leaves, some lavender, a bud. Petals, leaves, lavender, buds. Until all is used. For fun we added one clove and one cardamom pod. You could also add pieces of cinnamon stick, a vanilla bean, or a drop or two of essential oil. Store the jar in a dark place with the lid just resting on, and every day open the jar and give the contents a shake until completely dry. Then use as desired. Panda wants to fill little bags and put them in her drawers.

Make sure you photograph the jar of pot pourri with a bouquet of roses and a lemon, because that's what all the cool people do.

Button Button, Who's Got the Button?

I love buttons. I have kind of a thing for buttons. I buy these mixed bags of them at Michael's and then I sort them by color into little boxes and jars and it's just so...sick, yeah, and I love them. But what to do with them? Especially around the holidays, there have to be some cool decorations or crafts to use up hoarded buttons. There are. I have three for you.

Button Votives

I saw this first on Pinterest (which is ruining my life, thank you very much) and tracked it back to Stephanie Lynn's awesome post at her blog, Under the Table and Dreaming. These were a cinch to make, you just need any kind of glass votive holder, hot glue, and buttons of any color or all colors. I went with all white as I'd seen in the post. Just glue them on, in a single layer to start, and then fill in the gaps. I absolutely love them:

Button Gloves

I've had this idea a while of sewing buttons onto gloves, specifically as a gift for my neeces (my neeces, of course, are the daughters of my seester-in-law). I found these at JC Penney, which came in cool colors. Now I just had to sew on the buttons.

So a few pieces of advice. Actually only two. First, keep it simple, stupid. Don't do what I first did and lay out elaborate patterns of buttons. Ambitious, yes, but it would've become too overwhelming. In the end I opted for just a row of buttons up one side of the glove, and a little pattern on the warmers. 

Second piece of advice is once you have your design laid out, dab a little Elmer's Glue under each button, avoiding the holes, and let dry. Then the buttons stay put for easier sewing, and it also makes the project transportable. I worked on these during Panda's Nutcracker rehearsals, and got the bonus validation of all the senior girls wanting to try them on. 

Button Bangles

This is a fast project that you can do in front of the TV, or at ballet rehearsals, or in Starbucks, or even in bed. I've worked on them in all those places. All you need is some 3/4" elastic, needle and thread, and buttons. 

Cut the elastic to fit around your wrist with a little overlap. Lap the edges and sew, and then start adding your buttons. Stay towards the edges of the elastic to hide them, and fill in the spaces between large buttons with smaller ones. It's kind of impossible to mess this up however I confess that THREE times I brought up my needle on one side of the elastic, and passed it through on the opposite side, effectively tying a loop around everything that can't be undone without snipping the thread. But literally in half an hour, you have something really cute, and judging by the reaction of Panda and one of her friends, girls dig these.

So go forth and push some buttons.

Christmas Crafts: Paper Ornaments

OK, I've never done an actual craft tutorial before. Some of the photos are going to be weird, if not outright bad, because most were taken lefty. Taking pictures of cooking is hard enough. For crafting you definitely need a third arm. I could've called Panda to help but she was reading. Let me repeat that.  She was reading. Which never happens. So I left her alone.

Also, I first thought, "Oh my God, before I do this post, I have to vacuum my office floor!" Then I figured you all would appreciate how things truly look around here, so here you go:

That's the state of the floor when I'm in the midst of Christmas card making, in fact this isn't even bad, last week was worse. I don't even attempt to be neat about things, I just let every snippet and scrap fall on the floor and then write my Dyson a check later. Then I have to push all this other shit I'm working on aside:

I know, I have problems. So, ANYWAY, the ornaments....

I discovered these last year and in my usual manner, I made like a thousand. No really. A thousand. Look:

But I love them, they remind me of the onion domes on Russian Orthodox cathedrals. And they really are quite simple to make.

You need:

• Designer paper (mine is from a holiday pack I got at Michael's.)
• 20-gauge jewelry wire (or 18 is fine, too)
• Beads (don't tell me you don't have any)
• 1/16" hole punch
• 1", 1/2" and 3/4" circle punches as desired
• Card stock to complement paper
• Wire cutters (or scissors you don't care about)
• Needle-nose pliers (and I found mine!!!!)

You can make the ornaments any length you want. The one I'm making here is 3 3/4". If your paper has a definite "order"—such as mine has little holiday sayings in it—you will want to keep the strips of paper in order as you cut them. Likewise if there is a definite "top" and "bottom" to your pattern, you'll want to keep an eye on it.

Start by punching circles from card stock for the discs that go at the top and bottom of the ornament.  Here I've layered a 1/2" blue on a 3/4" red on a 1" green. Affix them with glue stick or mono adhesive (I use Tombow) and then punch a 1/16" hole through all layers. Put those aside.

Cut your paper into 18 1/2" strips.  Ornaments smaller than 3" will only need about 15 or 16 strips.

Punch a 1/16" hole in each end of each strip. This step is bo-ring. To make sure I'm punching each the same, I made myself a little 1/2" guide out of cardstock. I lay that on top and punch through 4 or 5 strips at a time.

Cut a piece of jewelry wire. Give yourself wiggle room and cut it an inch or two longer than your paper strips. With the pliers, put a loop in the end. Slide on 3 or 4 beads and one of the cardstock discs.

Now start threading on your strips of paper, design side down (facing the table). If your pattern has a "bottom" end, this should be the end you're threading. Now take the last strip you threaded on, curve it up and over and thread it back onto the wire (if you cut your wire extra long you might want to trim some off at this point). Continue threading the strips back on and moving them over to the side, and the ornament begins to take shape.

When the last strip is on, thread on the other cardstock disc, and another 3-4 beads. Slide your fingers down until the ornament is as round or "squished" as you like. Holding it where you want it, trim the wire just above your fingertips. Grab the end with the pliers and loop it around. Voilà. You are a genius.

To make a "double" ornament, you would need an extra, single cardstock disc to put between, and another 15-16 strips in a shorter length.  Make the larger ornament as shown above, the slide on a single disc.  Then thread on the shorter strips and repeat, finishing with a layered disc and beads.

Careful, these are kind of addictive....

My craft supplies called....

...they want me back. Bad. I've been a little busy in the evenings. In a good kind of way:

I haven't sat down to make cards since I made Valentines in February. I just kind of stalled out in the crafting department. Come to think of it, I haven't actually worked at my desk this summer. I was mostly sitting at the dining room table with my laptop because my office doesn't have windows, and with all the work I do in the gardens, I want to be able to see them. Also it gets chilly downstairs and I hate to be cold.

But I wandered down a couple nights ago to clean up my desk. Next thing I knew, in a daze of must...create...now...stamps...paper...fabric...yes. 

Said daze just kept going on and on, and now I've got birthdays covered.  Is it too early to start Christmas cards?

This one is by far my favorite:

And I love making white-on-white cards:

And combining elements of sewing with paper was fun, too: