Santa Wreath

I'm sure I saw this on Pinterest, but I apparently didn't pin it because I can find it on any of my boards! Good thing I remembered how to make it!

To make this Santa wreath you will need red and white feather boas (I had to use 3 6ft white boas and 2 6 ft red boas; go figure), wooden letters, black and gold/yellow felt, and a hot flue gun. Oh, and a wreath form.

 Start by wrapping the wreath form with the boas, half white and half red. I cut the black felt into 2 inch strips. It took three strips to make it all the way around the wreath. Hot glue the ends of the strips so that it fits snugly around the wreath. For the buckle, cut the yellow felt into a 2 1/2 inch square, a 2 inch black square, and a 1/2x1 1/2 inch rectangle of yellow. Hot glue pieces together and glue to belt.

Paint your wooden letters; I choose silver. I hot glued these on. You may find it necessary to secure them with thread that is the same color as your letters. Hang it with some ribbon and you're done!

Riddles In The Dark

So, as mentioned in my last post, we had a scavenger hunt at our Middle Earth party based on the Riddles in the Dark. I noticed as I was preparing the images for this post that two of the riddles got run together and I only carved one stamp. Oops!

Here is the riddle sheet they were given. Once they figured out the riddle, they could then look for where the stamp might be. For instance: "wind" was behind a fan in the kitchen and "teeth" were in the bathroom. Two of the stamps required the guest to give the answer to Carma in order to get a clue to find the stamp. This brought our love of letterboxing into the mix.

Here is the sheet again with the answers filled in and the stamps inked on the page.

We were having a problem trying to figure out where to put the fish. Out of nowhere, as fun ideas usually come, I thought: "We should put a bowl of candy fish out for the guests with a sign that says Smeagol's Food and put the stamp behind it!" Needless to say, once people found the stamp, the bowl of candy disappeared fast.

I also carved an additional two stamps to put on salt dough and clay tags/ornaments. The salt dough was too porous to stamp an image on well but the clay tags were perfect. The images are of J.R.R. Tolkien's symbol and the White Tree of Gondor.

I hope you've all enjoyed what we did for our party! Hopefully I've given some ideas for anyone planning a party of their own!

A Middle Earth Party

Well, the party came and went and I'm still exhausted! I still have pretty much everything to put away from the party! It's always well worth it when everyone has a good time. I'm going to just get right down to what we did!

I had two wonderful co-hosts, Carma and Amy. Amy made some great signs for around the house (thank you Mom and Dad for letting us use your house!), and she also made made a wonderful backdrop for photos. I'm sad to say we didn't get around to taking photos in front of it, but it made for excellent decoration.

Amy also had a large map of Middle Earth printed up, which we did use for photos.

Photo by Becca Robins Photography

I'm sure dwarves wore bandanas, right?

Photo by Becca Robins Photography

I had made some dwarf beards for props. We also utilized the invisibility cloak from our Harry Potter party so that it could be an elven cloak. My nephew was kind enough to let us use his bow as well for photos.

The Crafts:

I prepared four crafts to be done. I had them make an arrow, which turned out to be the hardest craft to make. The guests definitely have a good idea of how hard it was to make arrows and they understand why they would retrieve as many as they could after hunting or a battle.

I found a tutorial for the arrows on Entropy House. The only thing I did differently was the tip. I had my amazing father cut the notches in the dowels for me. I had him cut a notch in the end for the tip about 1/2 in deep. Instead of using foam, I found some wooden hearts that we painted silver and then hot glued them into the one end.

The hardest part was getting the feathers glued on strait. I had prepared the feathers per the tutorial so all the guests had to do was glue them on then wrap the thread around, but the feathers were slightly curved. It ended up taking one person to hold the dowel and one person to glue the feather on. I somehow managed to do mine myself and my feathers ended up strait!

Another of the crafts was making leather stamped bracelets. I had a list of Tolkien quotes that they could choose from.

"Not all who wander are lost." -J.R.R. Tolkien

The third craft was to make magnets. I printed out maps of Middle Earth and had them place flat backed marbles over the names of places. They traced the marbles and cut out the areas they had selected. They used their finger to wipe E6000 (glue) onto the back of the marble and place the marble on the cut-out of the map. I had round, flat magnets there that they then wiped glue on and put the marble on that.

I could not get a clear picture of the magnets. I tried different angels and surfaces, but this is the best I could get. They're the four round ones in the center. 

The last craft was to make the mallorn leaf wrappers and lembas bread. This tutorial, along with the recipe for the bread, can also be found on Entropy House.

Making lembas bread

Games

We didn't want everything to be crafts, so we came up with a scavenger hunt based on the Riddles in the Dark. I will do a separate post next week on this called "Riddles in the Dark."

We also had a raffle for a $10.00 movie gift card and a replica of the One Ring.

Food

Our party went through the lunch hour, so we decided to have stew. Our reason behind this? Po-tah-toes! Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew! So, that's exactly what we did!

For dessert, we had cupcakes with these cute rings in them!


Everyone had fun and went away with a bag full of crafts. Carma and I will now be planning our next big party: Hunger Games. I warned her that someone would ask us to do a HG themed party, and sure enough, my sister asked!

Letterboxing Address Books

Back in April (this is how far behind I am on blogging my crafts!), I made address books for Carma and Joyce's birthday gifts. Of course I made one for myself as well. I couldn't just use a regular address book, or rather I didn't want to, because in letterboxing you use an alias known as your trailname. We do this for safety reasons because of the internet, and also because it's just fun to have an alias! My trailname, for those who don't know already, is Music Chick. So, back to the address books, because we usually don't know other letterboxer's real names, I wanted to make books that said "trailname" instead of "name".

The address area has room for the boxer's trailname, real name, address, phone, and an alternate e-mail (we have our own e-mail on Atlas Quest that you can contact other boxers with).

In the back are two extra areas. I use the first to list out the LTCs that I'm currently working on and what stage I'm in on them. The second I use for keeping track of when the due dates are for different trackers or groups that I'm in so that I can get things mailed out on time.

It's been really handy to have. Atlas Quest has an area to keep your contacts in, but I really enjoy having something tangible.

Below is a picture of the front. It's really hard to see because there are sparkles all over it, but it reads "Amanda's Letterbox Contacts".

I got roped in again

I told myself after the Harry Potter party that I wouldn't do something on that kind of a scale for a very long time. Guess I lied.

About a month ago, one of the youth at church asked Carma and I if we would do a Lord of the Rings party to gear up for The Hobbit (in theaters December 14th). My first thought was "no way!", but as you might have guessed from the post title, the party is on!

This is going to be a Middle Earth Workshop. We'll be making numerous crafts and hopefully playing some games. We also want to enjoy some tasty hobbit foods.

So here's my plea: Does anyone have any cool Middle Earth related crafts? Any good recipes? Games? All of the Middle Earth/Tolkien parties I've seen on the web have been geared towards children. That's all great, but I'm going to have a wide age range in attendance. I've already got a list of ideas, but don't want to miss out on a really great idea that's floating around out there.

I look forward to your suggestions!

July 4th Altered Pringles Cans

I've seen pins on Pinterest where people have altered Pringles cans to look like pencils for teachers gifts and snowmen for Christmas. I decided to make some into fireworks for the Fourth of July.

Altering Pringles cans can be very simple. I bought scrapbook paper with fireworks on it and cut it to the same height of the Pringles can. I used Mod Podge to apply to the paper.

I then went two directions with the decorating. I was taking some to church and didn't want to decorate the lids (I thought they would be too much of a distraction for church), so I simply wrapped some patriotic ribbon around the cans.

The ones I took to work, I went ahead and decorated the lids. I wanted it to look like sparks flying out of the firework. I found a centerpiece that had red, white, and blue wires with stars sticking out of it. I simply took some wire cutters and cut them out of the cement base of the centerpiece. I folded them in half and sewed them onto the lids. Then I just had to spread them out a bit.

The black tube sticking out of the top is a red, white, and blue glow stick necklace. I cut a hole on the edge of the lid and stuck it through. It worked really well, making it look like the fuse.

I threw some goodies inside. Twizzlers, firecracker cookies, and firecracker poop. The recipe for the firecracker cookies calls for an 18.25 oz box of cake mix. I couldn't find that size and so I used the smaller size (15 point some odd oz) and they turned out just fine.

It's just so great to give to others! I love seeing someone's face light up when they receive a gift. There are few feelings better than that of giving and service.

What is an LTC?

I've mentioned before that I'm a Letter Boxer. I carve my own stamps as part of the hobby and sometimes make LTC's with the stamps before planting them in the wild. So just what is a LTC? A LTC is the same thing as an ATC, which is to say that it is an Artist Trading Card, or, in Letterboxing terms,  a Letterbox Trading Card. The only thing that truly separates a LTC from an ATC is that LTCs must have at least one hand carved stamp used on them. The artist is free to embellish the card however they want. Some cards are very intricate while others very simple.

I wanted to share a few of the LTCs that I've created with you!

"Pirates Ahoy: Captain Jack Sparrow"                                         "Disney Movies: Will Turner"

The cards shown above where made using the same techniques. I made the background papers using alcohol inks. I wanted Jack's background to be gold because, well, he's a pirate! For Will, I wanted it to look like water. I was very pleased with how both backgrounds came out.

After the paper was made and cut to size (standard LTC size is 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"), I took my hand carved stamps and embossed them onto the paper. I use a VersaMark Watermark stamp pad and detail black embossing powder. You can learn more about embossing techniques with simple searches on youtube, just expect to have to play around a bit to find what paper, ink, and powder work best for you.

Both of the cards above were made for trackers. Trackers are set up so that people can sign up and share their cards easily with others. Trackers usually have a theme and the owner (whoever set up and is in charge of the tracker) sets guidelines for all who join to follow. Everyone in the group ends up with a card from all the members.

Below are my Characters of Avonlea cards.

Gilbert Blythe                                                Anne Shirley                                               Diana Barry

These cards were not made for a tracker, but for individual trades. All three cards have info on the back about the character. I've always been a fan of Anne of Green Gables and wanted to make some LTCs with the three main characters.

Each card has three hand carved stamps. The names were carved and then embossed onto the background paper. I carved the picture frame used on each card and cut it out and glued it to the background paper. The characters were carved as well and embossed, colored with copic markers, cut our, then glued onto the frame.

I was going for a picture on the wall look. I wanted to use background paper that looked like it could be wallpaper.

I have many more LTCs that I hope to do posts about. I would like to create a LTC gallery on the blog for everyone to see.