Today was one of those days when creativity just isn't easy. It didn't matter what I touched as this day began - nothing seemed to work the way I wanted, or needed, it to. And, since today is only the second day into my promised 'idea-a-day-until-Christmas' I was a little panicky. Actually, I was alot panicky. But then, someone mentioned candle decorating, and we sat down with some blank candles, Stockmar wax sheets and beads, brads and scissors to see what we could do.

Everything turned around from that moment on.

Candle decorating turned out to be a lot more fun than I was expecting. It also turned out to be a really fun thing to do with friends  - a good idea for a pre-Christmas get together! (In fact, as I was working alongside my studio-mates, I was thinking that this would make a very fun workshop - let me know if you are interested.)

The idea here is very simple:  for Christmas gift idea #2, personalize candles for gifts to share with coworkers or neighbours - or gather your children and have them decorate candles for teachers! We used Stockmar wax sheets - and this made decorating the candles super easy. Stockmar wax sheets are thin wax sheets that come in alot of colours. Easy to cut in whatever shape you want with scissors or cookie cutters, you warm the wax in your hands and stick it to the candles as you wish - and voila! Presto decorated candles!!!

There are other ideas for candle decorating though if you don't want to use the wax sheets. Acrylic paint works beautifully on wax candles - use a fine brush to paint on the candle of your choice. Or you could use an engraving knife to carve a relief carving on your candle. Or if you think that the candle will be used more for display than for burning,  you could use push pins, brads and beads to add a little bling.

Wrap your finished candle in some clear cellophane with a ribbon, and you have a very beautiful, and very personal gift!

This is an easy idea for all skill levels, all ages, and can be tailored to your time needs. Is candle decorating something you would try?

Okay, so I took a glance at the calendar and there are exactly 2 months less one day to Christmas. I know it is hard to believe – but it is time to start thinking Christmas. And I believe that giving handmade – from the heart and hands – is a really great way to celebrate with family and friends this year. Not only is making more practical in a tough economy, but handmade and homemade is a way to give a very personalized gift to each of your loved ones.

So – in order to (hopefully) inspire you, I am going to share a new idea for gifts every day until Dec. 25th. Some of these ideas will be quick and easy, and some will be more involved, but I hope that maybe, just maybe, you will give something a try.

To start off this epic (can we call it epic?) gift giving idea extravaganza (okay, so I don’t think that it can be called an extravaganza either, but what am I going to call it?), I want to revisit the Rose Throw Cushion from last week. As you may recall, it needed some changes before I was going to be happy with it, so I made a few changes, and I am over-the-moon pleased with it! (The before picture is on the left).

This, then, is my first Christmas gift idea of 2009: the Appliquéd Throw Cushion.

And, in case you were scared off by the whole inspirational journey of the rose, and are thinking that a throw cushion is a big commitment of time and energy, I beg you to reconsider. In fact, to prove that this isn't the case, I took 2 hours to turn some vintage patchwork quilt squares into 2 very lovely pillows.

I left the quilted squares just as they were, but added some hearts that I cut out of the trimmings from the square. These hearts were edged with a zig zag stitch, hand stitched in place, then a ribbon was added. The pillows are backed with white broadcloth to match the size of the quilt square. Beautiful. And not nearly as complicated as the rose pillow was.

I guess the real story is that if you like a lot of handwork and want to spend a lot of time on a pillow, it will look great. But, if you want to try something a little less involved, an easier pillow project will look great to. Have I convinced you to try it yet?

But then, today's blog takes another turn. I finished the stitching, and I even sewed the square up into a throw pillow just as I had planned. The problem is that I am just not sure that the pillow shows off the beautiful rose to its best advantage. I think that there is just too much plain white around the rose. What do you think?

I can't decide at this point where to go next. I really do think that there must be a re-think involved. Maybe this rose wasn't meant to be a pillow case at all. Maybe it was, but it just needs some more quilting or maybe it needs to be framed in a colour border....

I don' t know.

At this point, I think that I just need to take a little break from the project and, as my mother would say, "come back at it with fresh eyes". And, since it is Friday, I can't think of a better time to take a break than a weekend.

But...

If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them!

And...

In case you didn't catch our Facebook Status this morning, I am starting to countdown to Christmas next week. Because Daylilies is all about being creative, I want to offer a new Christmas gift idea every day from now until Christmas - It is my hope that you will be encouraged to try and give home-made this year. There is nothing better than giving from your heart and hands. I hope that I will share some ideas to encourage and inspire you.

Until then, have a great weekend, and if you have any ideas for my rose, I can't wait to hear them!

Well, I would like to say that I have been busy with all sorts of exciting things and new ideas, but the real story is that I am still stitching. Yes, it is taking me a long time to stitch the rose throw cushion by hand, but I am still convinced that it will all be worth it in the end (at least that is what I keep telling myself as the clock ticks by and I am still stitching). So, while I am busy finishing up this project, I thought that I would offer up another couple of cute ideas for Halloween next week.

Last week, a friend of a friend of a friend on facebook (I am sure you know how that goes) shared a link to a really fun little idea for a kid’s craft (although, I might be tempted to give it a try, and it has been a few years since I was a kid) that was posted on Crafts-for-all-Seasons.com. This little skeleton is made of Qtips! Who knew that when you put Qtips on a black background that they could look so Halloween-y?

The other neat idea I came across was an invisible lolli-pop. This is a truly fantastic idea for any kind of Halloween party (although if my imagination runs away with me, I can also envision these lolli-pops as favours for Christmas, New Years, Birthdays, or even just a really cool gift for that person who has everything) or for something to do with the kids to keep them busy during the long wait for trick-or-treating. These lolli-pops are posted on MarthaStewart.com. It is almost mindboggling the things that you can put into one of these lolli-pops. If you really want to disgust someone, I am sure a plastic bug would do the trick, and I like the idea of Halloween candy, as posted on the instructions at MarthaStewart.com, but I keep thinking that there might be other funky things to include too… the possibilities seem endless! What do you think? What would you be tempted to display inside a lollipop this Halloween?

It was a good idea.... but...

My idea was that I would colour my circles to match the original cross stitch napkin. This, is a good idea. The hitch came in when I couldn't decide what to apply colours with. Paint? Markers? Crayons?

I really didn't feel like getting into the mess of paints, so I ruled that out. As it turns out, I don't have any markers in my studio that don't bleed on fabric (I am going to have to fix this), so I ruled that out. Crayons, it was.

Crayons, it shouldn't have been.

I have mentioned before how I like the beeswax crayons here in the studio, and since I was definitely working on fabric, I figured that these would be the best choice for this project. I admit. I was wrong. But I learned from my little faux pas. Apparently these crayons are perfect for kids, perfect for large areas, and perfect for a lot of other things, but because of their larger and easier-to-hold size, they are NOT perfect for small detail work - like the dots in this project.

I also admit that I am a slow colour-er, but between the large crayons and the slowness of my colouring, this little design took me over 2 hours to colour (I know... crazy, huh?). It looks really good though - but the real question is... would I do it again?

The answer would be a categorical NO! - not with those crayons anyway ;) The project itself has definite merit. Next time, I would  definitely use markers - something like a Sharpie or a fabric marker.

So - now that I am finished colouring my design (onto a piece of  broadcloth - did I forget to mention that?), I have decided that it will make a very pretty throw cushion. The only problem? Again, my crayon choice. I like it. I really do. But the reality is, that if I had chosen to use markers to colour in the design, my edges would be crisp and clean, and I could have sewn this design into a throw pillow cushion and gone on my merry way. But I didn't. And the crayons did not leave a clean crisp edge.

I suppose I could have ignored the fuzzy (okay, not fuzzy exactly, I might be exaggerating a little - but less than crisp for sure) edges and sewn this design up into a very nice throw pillow cushion, but I know that this little design deserves more.... and so I enter into my next folly of the project. Handstitching.

And again I say, don't get me wrong... the handstitching looks great, but will take me forever to finish. I don't know where I went wrong... originally, I was prepared that this project might include some final overstitching, but in my head, this was all done on the sewing machine (quick and painless). What I didn't think through, is that these dots, at this scale, are too small for the sewing machine foot to get around without much cursing (mine). So - if you are looking for me... I will be in the studio... stitching.

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This is a fairly long and involved story, but I will try and make it short.This little rose reminded me of some really pretty hand cross-stitched napkins I found at an antiques store (I thought they were beautiful when I bought them, and I also thought that it was such a shame that some woman had probably spent a lot of hours stitching these things and there they were thrown casually in a bin in the deepest corner of the store, so I took them home). I don't know why I was reminded of the napkins - of course they are both roses - but I think that it was more the shape and colour of this particular rosebud. They were almost a match.

But - so what if I was reminded of these napkins....?

Well, my first thought was that maybe I should duplicate the design somewhere else, but I was quickly reminded that my cross stitching skills leave a lot to be desired.

Then, I thought that I was much better with the paintbrush than I was with a cross stitch, and maybe I could just paint a faux cross stitch copy of the design. But then I thought of all the really bad painted cross stitch look alikes I have seen, and rethought this.

Hmmm....

Undecided, I thought that the next best step was to draw out my own version of the napkin rose, and figure out the rest as I went. So that is exactly what I did.

And, while I was drawing this sketch, it all came together. I had caught a glimpse of 'Valerie Pringle has Left the Building' on CTV last weekend. I don't really know where Valerie was, but think she was in some remote section of Austrailia, not too far from the Barrier Reef. In any case, when I saw the show, she was sitting down with an indigenous artist. They were using a dowel-like object to make circular painted imprints on the paper, forming the overall image. With this in mind, I knew that the cross stitches were meant to be circles.

Where did the project go from here? Tomorrow is another day, and blog...

My theory is that this happens more when mundane household tasks take us out into the great outdoors, but this is just my humble love-of-gardening-and-all-things-outdoors theory.

I don't know why I have been putting off the garden maintenance (it seems kind of strange because I love to garden, but procrastination has been my main gardening practice for the better part of the summer), but October is here, the frost has come, and soon the snow will follow. It was definitely time to get outside and do a little fall cleanup.

I suppose I could break out into some mantra about the beauty of the coloured leaves and the depth of the blue sky and all the great things about fall (I could, except fall is NOT my favourite season... okay, but even I must admit that the sky was a brilliant blue), but I won't. Instead I will say that my creativity was peaked when I stumbled across the very last rose of the summer.

There it was - sitting all alone - a beautiful pink bud.

It was at that moment that everything changed for me. This was no longer drudgery work! There were still really pretty flowers out in the garden (even if I had to look a little harder for them). And I was going to find them and bring them in to adorn my dinner table. In the end, I actually had enough flowers for two simple arrangements: my last rose of the summer is sitting by my computer as I write this (and it is a really beautiful reminder of warmer summer days), and I managed to fill a whole other vase with a few other miscellaneous flowers.

Not only was this a creative way to make the chores go quickly, but now, I have a little creative inspiration sitting near me as I work (and I had some fun taking the photographs too!).

Cut flowers are, for me, one of the best reasons to garden. And I intend to enjoy this one last burst of my garden for as long as these flowers will survive.

That - and it is probably a very safe bet that this pretty little rose will serve as great inspiration in the days to come. What is your great inspiration lately?

Yup. I said potatoes.

I know - you want to start right in and say that you remember doing potato stamping when you were in kindergarten or that your children just did that last week in school - but hold that thought for just a minute! Potato stamping is a fabulously fun way to spend time together - it is an all ages project - but it is also a very good way to get that 'one time only' stamp for a fraction of the cost of a brand name scrapbooking stamp (you know the one I mean - the one you think is cute, but costs more than you want to spend for the one time you will probably use it).

I have seen a lot of really great work come from a humble potato stamp. Anything is fair game - walls, fabric, furniture, cards, journals, wrapping paper.... if you can imagine it, your humble potato stamp will stamp it.

So I let my imagination get to it, and of course I came up with Halloween (you can't spend a week in the studio making Halloween costumes and not find yourself caught up with the Halloween theme, right?). I started out with grand ideas and plans and sketches of cats, pumpkins and words, and they all worked out well, but my very favourite had to be the potato that I carved as if it was a jack-o-lantern. It was kind of a joke in the studio - sort of a 'what is that? that won't turn out good' kind of thing - but it turned out really funky (although I think that the bright orange paint helped).

So just what did I end up stamping today?

Not much, really. I just had a lot of fun experimenting. I did alot of printing on scrap paper. And I made a greeting card or two, but today was more about having fun with the supplies (this is where my husband would usually butt in and make a comment about mess-making). But things have been a little more serious in the studio lately, and a definite change was needed.

So - bring on the paint!

I really liked the way that the 'Boo' stamp worked on the card. And I loved how fun the jack-o-lantern face was to create. I can't wait to grab another potato and experiment some more.

Just a note though - when you grab your own potato: I learned that new crop potatoes can be a challenge to carve just because they are really soft and juicy. So - if you are working with children, I would give them a new potato because it is soft and easy to carve. If you are looking to have a stamp with more detail, definitely choose an older and drier potato. Also - if you are carving words, remember to carve the mirror image unless you are printing on vellum like I did for my card (the paint is on the underside of the vellum in this case).

This is definitely a worthy project and a really neat way to personalize Halloween party invitations or decorations.

Is this something that you would do? What kinds of things have you used potato stamping for in other projects?

Happy Stamping!!!

And that is exactly why this little lamb even exists.