Snow Where it Rarely Snows

Once in a while I miss the snow. Not often, mind you. Especially without a garage. I would gladly take the deluge of rain in an Oregon winter than have to scrape my windows and preheat my car without in an apartment parking lot, but I do miss the gleaming sparkle of fresh powder early in the morning. You know those days; When you wake up and peek outside to see what things are doing and the air is crisp and still, the sidewalks, streets, and trees covered in a smooth sheet of white that glistens under a streetlight or as the Sun begins to rise. Oh, it is lovely. {Said while wearing sweats in a 70 degree house and contemplating making hot chocolate to enjoy the current lack of rain.}

I can appreciate the beauty of snow while also appreciating that I don't have to deal with it, right?

In keeping with my blinging up Christmas, I made this silly little sign rather spontaneously. This frame holds a simple Valentines Day sign I made last year and I just decided today that it would become part of the normal Holiday rotation.

As I often do, I started with rummaging through our recycling. This box was just the right size so I chopped it up and kept a piece that 5x7 inches.

Then began the highly technical process of painting the cardboard (paperboard? whatever it is) white and sprinkling with snow while it was still wet.

Yep, it looked about like that. I just put the school paper down to keep glue off my cutting mat. I let it dry for a while, and naturally the paper started to curl.

So I flipped it over...

... and put grad school textbooks to good use flattening it out!

Where I let it hang out for a while until it was completely dry. Then I grabbed this package of thickers:

And ended up with this:

Which was fine, but I didn't completely love it. I like the sparkle and the simplicity, and the grey letters which are more subtle in person, but I just looked at it and said "meh." Until I played around with different locations, added some glittery snowflakes, and ended up here:

Much better.

Now I've got a sparkly bit of Holiday cheer to stare at as I wash dishes.

About Me

Hello.

Nice to meet you. My name is Michelle, but a few of my good friends call me Micha. 

It's actually a nickname given to me by a client at work years ago back when I had disposable income and glamorous employment. 

I'm an "unintentional" housewife in that I really want to be working but haven't been able to find a job. For the better part of a decade, I worked in fine jewelry and have been fortunate to have my hands in multiple sides of the industry from wholesale to retail to custom design to appraising to overseas manufacturing to cutting operations to trade shows and so on. I'm a trained diamond grader and I love it so much. However, my wedding band is plain. It's not even a standard metal. I know too much to have affordable taste and I'd rather have nothing than something I will see fault in every time I look at it. (That attitude is both a blessing and a curse, btw.)

I spent 6 years as a single parent, at which time I went back to school full time to complete my bachelors degree. Squirt and I mooched off my parents while I became a high school science teacher. My area is Earth Sciences - which I actually came to love as a result of my time working with gems. Or maybe it's the other way around. I found some old report cards and it seems I've always had a knack for it. 

After graduating from college at 33 with a first grader, I worked my butt off to stay debt free, buy a house, and be on the doorstep to tenure (in an economy where most of my fellow graduates didn't get interviews) just to meet my now-husband, walk away from all of it  choose the better part, and spend my energy building our new family. 

The Hubs is in school for his PhD and I try to pass time by working towards my MS in Science Education, applying for every job opening I see, baking delectable treats, running to burn off those delectable treats, and trying to fill my crafty desires without spending any money. It's me, the Hubs, Squirt who is almost 10 and Munchie who just turned 6 and is with us part time. I dream of being a pro photographer, graphic designer, trained pastry chef, world traveller, new mother, and actually beating my husband at Just Dance 4. Dream big, I say. 

Kindly leave a comment so I can get to know you a little too. I really look forward to getting to know your story. 

{This post was prompted by the linky party over at 30 Handmade Days}

Craving Some Sparkle

I have long loved natural, rustic decor for Christmas but lately I've been needing a little more sparkle in my life. I blame it on a friend who's no longer in the Grad school world and has a lot of fun decorating her home. I'm determined to stick within my budget of $0, for a little while at least, so I tried to add a little sparkle using only what I could round up at home.

For a few years now I've had these foam cutouts from American Crafts waiting to be used:

That was my launching point. Since my tacky glue is running low, I turned to a staple in our house: regular washable school glue. Tell me I'm not the only one who stocks up on this stuff when it's on sale for a quarter...

I decided to try a couple different types of sparkle. First, was fake snow. I bought a bag of this a few weeks ago hoping to make snow globes but it hasn't happened yet. I love the mixture of textures and opacities in the bag and wanted to see if this would work.

After covering the snowflake with glue I buried it beneath a pile of "snow" and pressed down to make sure it was stuck pretty well. Then I just let it sit as a happy little haystack and dry for a few hours.

You may have seen this coming, but the snow stayed put in a bulky pile and had to be cut away for the snowflake shape to show. I don't have a picture of the cutting because I was a little all-consumed by it, but I'm sure you can imagine that part. And yes, it is very messy. I'm lucky my kids weren't home during this phase. Oy Vey. That would have been a mess and a half more than the mess I ended up with on my own.

Next, I tried a tube of silver Crayola glitter glue. My kids love the idea of those things but once it gets about halfway used they really struggle to squeeze the glue out and we have a bunch of half-used tubes hanging around. It seemed perfect, and not messy since there would be no loose glitter or snow floating around.

I found the glue really thick and tricky to maneuver so after doing this one snowflake I decided one was enough and moved on.

Which brings us to regular, fine grained, silver glitter of awesomeness. Seriously, who doesn't love a little glitter? In other news, this project got me to finally vacuum.

I love the mixed pile of glitter/snow leftovers all mixed together. You better believe I scooped that stuff into a baggie to use next time I feel like blinging something up a little.

Which ones do you like best?

I can't quite decide. I had more fun making the glitter snowflakes because the snow ones were a bit cumbersome to cut out afterwards, but I really think they are worth it. The texture is awesome from the fake snow, but the glitter bounces light around better. So, really, I like them both and keep changing my mind about which I like better. 

I mixed some into my garland just for a little bit of contrast and I really like how subtle they are. Then I used some for another project I'll show you tomorrow!

How do you feel about a little bling in your Holiday decor? I'm rapidly becoming consumed by it.

Today

Today is just one of those crazy days, that doesn't seem like it should be crazy at all. We are picking up our munchie for the Thanksgiving holiday and in typical fashion I decide that it's time to undertake a project. Never mind that I should have been doing laundry, vacuuming, or finally washing last nights dishes. Instead of getting ready to drive, I made pillows.

I couldn't help it. I was drowning in a sea of beige and needed to do something about it before the rain hits and all around me is grey.

See what I mean? Sea of beige.

A pillow back sofa makes it hard to add extra throw pillows without making things way too... Pillowy. I figured I could zip the covers off the small accent pillows and make new ones. On Monday's trip to JoAnn's I scored the decor fabrics I wanted for $10 total (3 yards in all!) and today I procrastinated my life responsibilities to get 'um done.

It's a start. The wall looks really naked now, but I like it so much better already just having just a touch of color. It still needs more. What would you add?