Six days of handmade ornaments. Scrabble tile ornaments on a vintage ruler

Welcome to day one of six days of handmade ornaments. I can have a boxes full of ornaments, and yet every year, I end up making a few more to hang on the tree.  This whole week, I will be sharing with you easy and inexpensive ways to create your own handmade ornaments this year.

The first one I'm excited to show you is my scrabble tile ornaments mounted on a vintage yardstick and hung with plaid ribbon.

M&M; Candy Corn Cookies

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was hoping to make some changes here at Holy Craft. Good changes.  Nothing that will send you in a panic I hope. 

One of those changes is that I want to start offering some yummy recipes for all of you.  I have shared recipes with you over the years, but nothing consistently.  One of the reasons is because my kids are quick to eat everything in zero point two seconds! The other is because while I cook out of necessity, it's not really my favorite thing to do. 

Lucky for you, I know someone who loves to be in the kitchen!  I'm so excited to introduce to you Holy Craft's new recipe contributor Kate.  Kate is a super fun mom of two littles names Trevi and Harvey.  She's married to my husband's cousin Brett, and they are temporarily making a home in Pittsburgh while Brett is in school to be a nurse anesthetist.  

I am so excited for Kate to be sharing her talents here and I know you will be too! Especially if you whip up these yummy M&M candy corn cookies that she's sharing.  It's sure to be love at first sight! Take it away Kate!

Orange, white, black, chocolate, sweet treats, candy corn: what do these things all have in common? 

Halloween!

I am about to share with you the best chocolate chip cookie recipe you’ll have see! I promise you’ll never need a cookie recipe after you try this one. And the best part about it is that it can be modified into a ton of different cookies. My favorite is to add each seasonal M&M flavor.

Easy to make Fourth of July firework decorations

There aren't a lot of holidays that I spend a lot of time decorating for.  Fourth of July falls into that category.  I love red, white and blue and am quite patriotic, I just forget.  It kind of sneaks up on me every year.  I feel like here we are in June and I'm just getting used to the idea and BAM!

This year was no different.  Hello, It's July 1st and I'm just now getting a tutorial out to you about my easy fireworks decorations.  Good news is, they are so easy that you can whip them up today and have them ready for your festivities on Saturday. 

Incredibly easy patriotic berry dessert

I don't know about you, but I'm not a big themed food kind of person. Don't get me wrong, I love it when other people embrace the theme or holiday or whatever, it's just not always the first thing I think of.  

Last year, I threw this patriotic berry dessert platter together and it was a real hit.  It took less than five minutes to make and was easy to put together when we got to our party.  Today I'm going to show you how I made it.

Six handmade Easter gifts to make today!

Easter is early this year.  It sort of feels like it snuck up on me.  I collected six handmade Easter gifts that would be perfect in your kids Easter baskets so that Easter doesn't sneak up on you too!

A sock bunny from Little Blue Boo

Sleepy Bunny goody bags 

Easter cone with candy from The Sweetest Baker Bunny Bait free printable from Lolly Jane Marshmallow Bunny Plush from Dandelions and Lace Bunny food chocolate dipped pretzels from Jacks and Kate

Valentine pipe cleaner tree

We barely got the Christmas decorations down before I started thinking about decorating for the next holiday.  I found a few supplies that I had on hand and made these Valentine's pipe cleaner trees.

Vintage sheet music tree

I am obsessed with vintage sheet music and book pages.

Obsessed.

I'm always looking for ways to craft with them.

Today I'm sharing with you my latest vintage sheet music project.

You will need a 2 1/2" scallop punch

lots of sheet music

a Styrofoam cone

glue gun/glue sticks

Start by punching out your sheet music.

You will need far more than you think you will need!

I'm not going to lie, this project was very time consuming.

Once you have your scallop circles,

fold them in half and then in half again.

Take the tip of the sheet music and fold it up again.

This is where you will glue and attach the scallops onto the tree.

I started at the bottom and went around the base filling in as I went.

This is probably three hours into the project.

You can see how full it is though.

I finished by putting the scallops in a triangle pattern at the top of the tree.

Look at all that gorgeous sheet music!

You can make a tree stand out of books

 Or let it stand alone with some other vintage items.

I'm going to work on some Styrofoam balls next using the same technique.

It's time consuming but there are episodes of Gilmore Girls that I haven't caught up on yet!

How do you like to craft with book pages or sheet music?

Patriotically painted mason jars

I am attracted to mason jars like a moth to a flame.

I have quite the collection of jars and needed to start coming up with projects to do with them besides canning.  

I love putting cut flowers in mason jars, so I thought self, how awesome would a painted mason jar with cut flowers be?  Actually, I know I'm not the first person to come up with this idea,

 but in case you live in a cave,

this is my version of the painted flag mason jars.

I started by finding three of the same sized mason jars in my collection.

I spray painted them white and was actually quite impressed with how well the spray paint adhered to the jars.  Keep your eyes peeled, there may be more spray painted mason jar projects.

These are the supplies I used in this project.

I wouldn't recommend the foam star stickers that I used.  They didn't peel off the jars well, though I have read other tutorials where they had great luck with stickers as a stencil.

I used American acrylic paint and frog tape to make shape crisp lines.

Oh, and a brush.

You will need a paint brush for a painting project.

Duh.

If you are using stickers, this is when you put them on.

Again, my garage sale free box stickers did not work for me.

Maybe stay away from the foam kind?

Just a suggestion.

It's self explanatory, but paint your jars.

I used about twenty three coats of blue.

No exaggeration.

I literally left the project out on my counter and came back to it every five minutes between cleaning and errands.  Super fun, right?

Which is why I am thinking there will be more spray painting projects in my near future.

Because the stickers didn't work,

I hand painted stars on my jar.

Fill your jars with half dead flowers from your anniversary a week ago and you are set!

Next time, I will probably put something not quite so dead inside of the jars,

but hey, I used what I had.

I think these would be great at a BBQ holding silverware, or as a table centerpiece with flowers.  Fresh flowers. Be classy...unlike me.

Bunny burlap banner

I have been a little busy working on the one room challenge, crafting for the craft fair I participated in last weekend and prepping for my daughter's 12th birthday {where did the time go?!}.

I didn't want to let the time fly by without stopping to make an Easter craft though.

Since I work in my den, I like to decorate that mantle in there for the holidays.

I think this burlap bunny banner makes the perfect Easter decoration.

I started with this burlap banner 

{on sale now for only $3.99!}

from burlapfabric.com

I used my Silhouette to cut this bunny silhouette out of freezer paper.

You can see a more detailed tutorial  for using freezer paper as a stencil here.

Iron on your stencil

and paint using craft paint.

I ended up doing three coats of paint on this stencil.

Once your paint is dry, peel your stencil off.

Of course, bunnies need cotton tails!

I hot glued on this cotton ball.

I am obsessed with banners and this burlap banner is super easy to use and already made for you!

That's the hardest part!

The decorating is the fun part.

Think fun and order your banner.

The possibilities are endless. You could make a banner for every season!

Book page eggs tutorial

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of anything with book pages.

I have made a book page canvas

book page pumpkins

book page wreaths

this wreath

So when I found these foam Easter eggs at The Dollar Tree, 

I knew exactly what I was going to do with them!

These are the supplies I used.

I started by ripping out pages from my vintage book.

I don't like to have a lot of white space, so I would tear the white space off of my pages.

I used mod podge and painted the glue on the egg and again on top of the paper 

smoothing down the page edges.

Because you are working with a small space, your fingers will start to get a little sticky and you will start pulling the book pages off of the egg.

You don't want that, so work with half of the egg at a time.

After you coat half of the egg with your book page, dry your egg on wax paper.

Once it's dry, do the other side.

Once your eggs are dry, 

have fun finding every nook and cranny to display them in.

Another fantastic book page project don't you think?!

How are you decorating for Easter?