Courtesy of 2 of my fabulous friends….and by “friends” I mean people who have actually been in my kitchen and not just some random perverts from the internet.

First up are these insanely cute fortune cookies courtesy of Alissa.

See her tutorial here.

Next, we have these Ballard Design knock offs, courtesy of Lei.

See her tutorial here.

Speaking of Lei…she’s got a great giveaway going on now. Enter to win either this:

or this:

Leave a comment on this post by Friday. Or, don’t and it’ll improve my chances of winning!

And give me a day or two to get out from under this post trip insanity. I’ll get back to those of you that emailed ASAP!

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In case you were too tired to click on over for my guest post on Write It Down yesterday……

Here’s my ornament tutorial.

These ornaments are a re-creation of some my mom made when I was a kid. Hers were probably better, though. EVERY SINGLE OUNCE of my OCD tendencies comes from her.

(Just kidding, Mom. Kinda.)

Supplies:

Styrofoam balls. I used 2.5” and the template I have included is for that size ball.
3 elastics
Sharpie
Fabric scraps
Butter knife
Ric rac or ribbon
Straight pin
Glue

Stretch 3 elastics around the circumference of your ball, spacing them evenly so that the ball is divided into sixths.

Trace placement of the elastics with Sharpie.

When you take off the elastics, you should have something like this:

Cut 6 scraps of fabric to match this template. You can do all 6 different, all of them the same, 2 each of 3 different fabrics…whatever!

I should have pressed them at this point, but I have MAJOR ironing issues. Hopefully that doesn’t bother any of you the way it bothers me.

Place one of your fabric pieces centered evenly over one of the sections of the ball. You can see a glue stick in this picture. I used it to hold the fabric in place but I’m pretty sure it didn’t help and I didn’t actually use it on any of the other sections.

Take your butter knife and start tucking the edges of the fabric down into the ball along the lines you drew with the Sharpie.

Do this along both sides. Make sure to keep the tips pointy. You should have something like this:

Move to the next section and do the same thing.

Continue with the remaining sections.

Pick the ugly end and make that your top.

Cut a length of ribbon or ric rac about 7” long. Make a loop and stick a straight pin through to keep the ends together.

Put a generous glob of glue on the top of your ornament.

I used FabriTac because hot glue and I have a sordid past.

Stick your straight pin and the ends of your ric rac down into the glue.

Use your butter knife again to jam it down into the crevice (that word makes me giggle).

And…

Also, if you don’t adequately supervise your child whilst you’re blogging, this could happen:

Pretty sure he’ll be OK. He ate part of a KFC container once already.

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So, 3 years ago I was browsing the internet for a stocking for Keller. I came across some CUTE stockings with a price (hint: $60) that was a little (OK, a lot) out of my price range. I decided to make my own and here’s what I came up with:

This year, I decided to make one for Campbell, too.

Scour the clearance tables in the back of the fabric store for fabrics for this project. You don’t need a whole lot of any of them and weird fabrics work best. Seriously…who’d buy that green stuff? And that fur? Faux German Shepherd at best.

The pattern for the stocking and the claws can be found and printed here. I made slightly smaller claws this time around. If you want big claws like in the picture above, add about 1/4” on both long ends.

You’ll need:
24” X 20” of the main fabric
5” X 13.5” of the fur/top fabric
scraps for the claws
5.5” piece of ribbon, cord, etc for the hanging loop

*** ALL SEAMS ARE 1/4” ***

Print and assemble the template. Match up the hash marks. The pattern for the claw is on the first page, in the middle of the stocking piece.

Fold the main fabric piece in half. Pin and cut out your pattern.

Cut out 6 claw pieces. (Tangent: If your claw fabric is thin, interface it now. I didn’t and had to do that after they were all cut out….major pain in the butt.)

Cut your fur/top fabric to size if you haven’t already.

Take 2 claw pieces and put them right sides together. Sew, leaving short edge open.

Trim the point. First like this:

Then like this:

Repeat with remaining 4 claw pieces. Turn them all right side out. A dull pencil works well for this.

If you made the claws bigger, you may want to stuff them with a little fiber fill at this point.

Lay one of your main stocking pieces out, right side up. Place and pin the claws like this:

Put the other stocking piece on top of it, right side down (so right sides are facing). Pin.

See the claws sandwiched in there?

Sew, leaving the top edge of the stocking open.

Turn the stocking right side out (you might want to clip to the sewing line between the toes) and pull out the claws. Press, if you need to.

Fold your fur/trim in half, right sides together, matching the short sides. Sew the short sides together.

Turn the fur/trim right side out and insert into top of stocking. The right side of the fur cuff will be against the wrong side of the stocking fabric. Line the seam in the fur cuff up with the heel side seam of the stocking. Insert your ribbon or cord for hanging at that seam, too.

Stitch around the top of stocking.

Flip the fur cuff over to the outside and you’re done!

(bigger/stuffed claws on the left, smaller/non-stuffed claws on the right)

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