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Here’s a project that took so much longer to complete than I thought it would! I bought 8 round craftwood placemats and set about adhering these cute red and white Mozi paper napkins to them to make Christmas placemats.

First, seal both sides of the placemat with Gesso and leave it to dry, then spray paint one side with the white gloss. When all that is dry, carefully peel apart the napkin so that it is only one ply and use your gel medium (or Mod Podge) to coat the underside then stick down and smooth over the placemat. Then coat the top of the paper napkin as well for good adhesion. You need to be really careful not to overwet the paper with the glue (gel medium) as it is prone to ripping when wet. Don’t worry about the little creases in the paper napkin - they give the piece some character.

Leave it to dry and spray with a sealer. Once my sealer was dry, the placemats were looking great but they were still a little sticky and I wasn’t convinced they would stand up to much use. I came up with the idea of applying some Contact paper to seal it further and give it a nice protective layer. Contact is that clear self-adhesive plastic book covering stuff - I think it may be called Shelf Liner in the US. Trace around one of the placemats and cut out your 8 pieces then carefully smooth them on. Once the Contact was applied, I needed to do something about the edges, so I took some red bias binding and ran it through my Xyron to apply adhesive to it, then wrapped it around the edges.

Voila! Christmas Placemats handmade for the table.

I’ve been busy.  I’m sure you have too, with Christmas just around the corner.  Thanks so much for your lovely comments about my last post, but in the end I pulled the canvases back off the wall and had a little tweak.

I covered over the owl which was there for no reason, and added another colour on Paul’s advice - a little bit of green to spark it up.  I also added another red and white paper (Mozi napkins which will also appear in the next post) and pulled the elements together a little more.

I think they are done now.  Still not sure about the white in the top left corner of the one on the right.  You have to stop some time though.

I met up with Kim and Rebecca for some art and chat last Thursday night and completed these two spreads in my art journal. Art journals are fun cos you don’t have to think too hard - just make art!

In other news, I bought some cute new sneakers - all ready for the annual dance party for New Year’s Eve!

Paul and I don’t get to party hard much any more, living in the Canberra ‘burbs with three kids, but we try to have a huge one for NYE each year.  This year, our regular party-goers (Dan and Yvie) will be away so we are going with another friend Rob.  We are going to a Masquerade Ball in Melbourne and following Yvie’s recommendation as she scouted a few options for us!

She says:

NYE Masquerade - Green Ant is one of the crews putting this one on - we went to a few of their parties in Sydney, most notably the Green Nuns of the Revolution! Tickets are $30 or $50 on the door; it’s a bit more alternative in terms of the crowd; techno, electro, proggy music, probably a bit like Freaky Loops,  and there should be a wider age range - this is definitely my pick for NYE

We went to many a Freaky Loops when we lived in Sydney and LOVED it so looking forward to it.  Sounds good to me!

Look!  Emma had a haircut!  Bye bye long hair.

Time flies when you’re having fun! Christmas is coming up so fast and I’m really enjoying all the preparations and excitement and fun of the season. For the first time, we are hosting the family Christmas lunch at our house and I am really looking forward to it. We have been tidying up and getting things organised and sprucing up the place.

This year, we decided it was time to buy a new Christmas tree as our old one was a bit of a cheapie and only quite small. We bought a really nice one that is 7 1/2 feet tall and just about touches the ceiling so it is definitely tall enough! It is so perfect - I just LOVE it. It’s everything I wanted it to be. We have decorated in silver and red with lots of bells and baubles.

I have been having fun testing out my new digital SLR and Lensbaby Composer lens. Here are a few shots I have taken with it:

The Lensbaby gives a very small area of focus, throwing the rest into a lovely soft focus effect.  Great for portraits but I haven’t had much chance to try that yet, so these will have to do!

Here is a shot of Emma on the merry-go-round in Civic and it was hard to pan and get her to look at me - I took a heap of shots and this was the only half-decent one:

Speaking of Emma - guess who took the scissors to her own hair yesterday?  I was so mad!  Yes, I know we’ve probably all done it as kids but her beautiful hair!  Luckily it was only a tiny snip - have a look at her two cm fringe:

Handmade Market on Saturday was just awesome!  I have done a few markets around Canberra and not always with the best results, but I have to say that this one was THE BEST by a long way. 

 

The organisers were simply wonderful, friendly and supportive, always ready for a chat and to ask how we were going.  They even had two cute-as-pie little blondies (the 8 year old daughters of the organisers) who larked around the place all day, visiting and thoroughly charming the stallholders. The crowd was HUGE and amazing, such great shoppers, and SO many people through the door.  The weather was simply awful (glad I wasn’t outside) but they still came out in droves. 

  

And I made a packet. We all did - every stallholder I spoke to well exceeded their expectations and was very happy indeed!  Personally I would have been happy if I had made half of what I did.  I have never sold so much at one market and I have never had such a friendly, happy and relaxed market.

 

These zip purses were very popular, great for stocking fillers I guess.

 

Button jewellery and paper stitched cards were good sellers too, as were the handbags.  This photo (above) was taken in the afternoon when I had to spread everything out because it was all going fast. 

So a huge thankyou to Julie and everyone else involved - you really know what you are doing and I’m so glad Canberra has you.  Read Julie’s account of the day, and read Lisa’s post too - they have better photos of the crowd that I do. 

I was lucky to be opposite Lisa from the wonderful Canberra’s Got Style blog and she was just awesome as well.  So happy and cute.  EXTREMELY EXCITED to say that I just discovered the post after her market post sent me into PALPITATIONS AND CAPITALISATIONS!!!  If you are an IKEA fan who desperately wishes Canberra had it’s own IKEA store, then go and read an exciting new development.  No, not a store opening here (dammit) but the very next best thing.

Since the v. successful market, I have had a bunch of cash burning a hole in my pocket.  Check out what I have bought for myself:

I am SO excited, and can’t wait for it to get here.  I bought it off eBay so I am hoping all is well.  I am also waiting for one of these to arrive:

I know, a bit indulgent but like I said, the money was burning a hole.  Oh my god, look what just jumped into my shopping cart as well.

I know, I know.  In my defence, I have been drooling over these things for well over a year now, so I thought, why not?  Happy Christmas to me. 

To be honest, I feel kind of sick about spending so much money.  And I feel worse telling YOU about it (whoever you are) but I earnt it selling my stuff and if you can’t enjoy it then what’s the point eh?   *breathe*