Christmas Countdown...

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday, lol!! We had a nice time away with family, ate way too much and did way too little.
I purchased this tree advent calendar at my LSS a few weeks ago and figured I better get going on it before it becomes a next year project! It is a pressed board kind of material and came in a complete kit, made by Kaiser. All of the pieces were first painted with acrylic paint so the back and all edges would look finished. I covered the tree and the number plates with MME paper, sandpapering all the edges and then distressing all the edges in Frayed Burlap Distress ink. I didn't have enough foam numbers in my stash so I opted for embossing them with vanilla EP instead. The wording on the bottom was done with a retired set of SU letters and chocolate chip ink. To embellish the tree I used Martha Stewart snowflake punches and a variety of buttons. This was a fun project that will now prevent me from answering the daily questions from my sons, "how many more days until Christmas."


I wanted to show off something my oldest son, Josh, made for gifts this year. In the spring he won a Jet mini lathe at a wood turners convention in Virginia (I know!! How cool is that?!!) We bought him some supplies to turn pens and he spent hours turning, sanding and polishing blocks of material into incredible works of art! Three of them are made of various kinds of wood and three are made of acrylic. He was so excited to give his gifts last week when the family was together and as you can imagine, they were very well received. He is only 12 years old!! I am a proud mama!!

I am working on that purse tutorial so stay tuned for that, hopefully tomorrow.