Happy Holidays 2013

Thank you for your amazing support in 2013. Your visits to the site, sharing your comments and joining Crafted Spaces Radio broadcast and social media has been greatly appreciated. I am blown away by just how much Crafted Spaces have grown this year. I am excited about the coming year and I look forward to connecting with more of you in 2014.

Best wishes to you and your family!

Yvette-Michelle Cottle Darby
Crafted Spaces

DIY Holiday Gift Wrapping

Wrapping gifts is a holiday favourite of mine. I love finding creative ways to present my gifts and I prefer to use materials that can be reused or is recyclable. I think that an important part of gift giving is the presentation and there are so many ways that you can present a gift.

I like to get my Christmas shopping done early, which allows me to take my time with the wrapping. Each Christmas I like to do something different so I generally give some advance thought to what supplies I would need. After I have gathered my supplies, I prepare an area that I can designate as a "wrapping station." This year I have kept things simple and have chosen basic Kraft paper, Kraft paper bags, jute, yarn and red velvet ribbons. I purchased a roll of Kraft paper from Wal-Mart and found Kraft paper bags at the dollar store. The red velvet ribbons are from Chapters and HomeScene. The jute and yarn are left over from previous projects.

Other great options are strips of vintage fabric or bias cut fabric, which I use as ribbon. I have also sewn fabric bags as an alternative to paper gift bags. Newspaper comics and regular news print are also fun alternatives to wrapping paper.

If you are looking for other great holiday gift-wrapping ideas, I have rounded up some of my favourites:

• Winter Scene Painting Gift Toppers
• Handmade Holiday Woodland Wrapping
• DIY Pintuck Plaid Gift Wrap
• Christmas Chalkboard Packaging
• Printable Chalkboard Gift Tags for any Occasion
• Handmade Holiday Gift Baskets
• Handcrafted Sugar Cookie Gift Sack
• Gift Toppers
• Photo Gift Tags
• Chalkboard Christmas Gift Tags and Labels
• Freebie Printable Christmas Wrapping Paper

Happy gift-wrapping!

Christmas Arrangement

I love natural flowers and during the Christmas holidays I really love getting natural red and white poinsettias. However, this year I decided to go for the silk version, given that my little guy loves to dig plants up. I made a Poinsettia Christmas Wreath and decided I will also make a few small arrangements.

Over the weekend my husband and I made a trip to Ikea and I purchased a pair of their SKURAR candle holder, which I used as my containers. Creating the arrangement was super simple and only took a few minutes. I gathered a few stems of silk poinsettia (thrift store find) in your hand, tied them together at the base with some jute and cut the length of the stems to the height of the containers. I simply placed the small bouquet of flowers in each container and put them on display.

I hope that this has given you an idea for a quick and simple arrangement for the holidays.

DIY Poinsettia Christmas Wreath

I have had the same Christmas wreath for a few years now and I really wanted to make a change. The wreath I had was artificial greenery with pinecones, which over the years I would freshen-up with new ribbon and other embellishments. However, this year I wanted something different with more colour. I decided to make a poinsettia Christmas wreath that will be the focal point for my front door Christmas decorations.

I reused the grapevine wreath from my spring wreath and I combined two types of poinsettias along with some gold glittered poinsettias. I removed my spring flowers, cleaned up the grapevine and attached the poinsettias with hot glue. I started hot gluing the poinsettias from top centre and continued anti-clockwise. I alternated between the two types of poinsettias and added a bit of shimmer with two medium gold glittered poinsettias. Having the different textures in the poinsettias creates more dept and contrast and prevents them from merging into the same shade of red. The two gold glittered poinsettias were glued close together to match the volume of the larger blooms. I finished off the wreath by adding a few of the poinsettia leaves; which I think adds more interest.

5 Large satin poinsettias

5 Large velvet poinsettias

2 Medium gold glitter poinsettias

Poinsettia greenery

Grapevine wreath

Hot glue

Hot glue gun

I hope that this project will inspire you to make your own Christmas wreath. I have several other projects I am working on for Christmas that I hope to share with you before the holidays.

Wising you all the best with your holiday planning!