I painted up these tiny paper mache Jack O’Lanterns to make a spooky fall focus for our mantel! I finished these little cuties the other day and got them displayed this evening. Aren’t they adorable??

They sit just right on top of some battery-powered LED tealights (which you can find just about anywhere nowadays), giving them a flickering, realistic glow.

Ready for the how-to? Here we go!!

I finished a couple new craft projects over the holidays, thanks to my Silhouette Portrait!

First up were gifts for friends in our building — well, actually, gifts for Lola’s friends in our building. 😉 I made pop-up cards and gift boxes for each of them:

They turned out really great!

What was in the gift boxes, you ask? Homemade dog treats! I used this recipe, which went through a revision from one commenter, and I revised it further. (You can print a copy of it from the recipe details at the bottom of this post!) By all accounts, the treats were a resounding success…and Lola loved being my taste-tester. 🙂

I also painted a festive canvas to put on our fireplace mantel. I used my Silhouette to cut vinyl stencils, which I then applied to the canvas. I used pearlescent and glittery paint to fill in the blanks, and tada!

The glittery-ness didn’t show up quite as much as I’d hoped, especially not in the low light. Apparently I’ll have plenty of chances to get it right, since Peter has decreed I must now make a canvas we can display for each holiday throughout the year. 🙂

What did YOU craft over the holidays?

As promised, here’s the end result of my previous post:

I wish I’d have been able to add the types of sugar and flour to the labels, but it was easier on my brain to just use the larger letters. Maybe I’ll try a white or silver paint pen and put them between the lid and the acrylic window, but that will have to be sometime down the line. 🙂

Hope this inspired you to do a little painting of your own!

I bought a couple sets of these canisters from Target ages ago, and they’ve been awesome for storing my sugars, flour, tea bags, and loose coffee beans. I’ve been wanting to add labels to them for a while, but I couldn’t decide exactly how I wanted to do it, given the plethora of ideas out there (and by “out there,” I mean, “on Pinterest”).

Should I buy labels I can write on? Print and glue them? Mod Podge them? Freehand them? Find a stencil font I like and trace them? So many choices!!

I found a font that I thought would be ideal a while back: Captain Howdy. I fell in love with it when I saw it and knew it would be perfect.

The rest of the process? Not quite so perfect.

Here’s my convoluted crafting journey. Let it serve as a warning!