Crafting. Good for my soul.

I love decorating just as much as I love crafting.
And the two go quite well together! In fact... sometimes I have to craft because I can't find the perfect item to decorate with (or it's outrageously priced).

I enjoy themed decorating too - um, not so much parties although I love those too, but more along the lines maybe of seasonal decorating. So for instance when I think January I think blue and silver - wintery-New Years. February of course is Valentines but for my family it also means a trip to Hawaii so it's beachy. March - St. Patties. April showers bring May Flowers. etc. and etc.

Having a monthly theme around the house can get $$$ and there is also storage to think about. And as a military family I have to keep in mind that everything I store I also have to ship every 3 or so years. So when I find "background" pieces that are versatile I can quickly cut down on multiple items to change out and store. And that is a very LOVELY thing.

One of my most favorite versatility pieces is Partylite's Naturally Modern Votive Trio. This collection is no longer in current catalogs but they do have two very nice series called the Clearly Creative Collection and the Symmetry Trio. (the last two links are to my personal webpage where you can see decorating ideas - you can also buy these through me!! AND if you host a show you can get them for FREE!) Or if you're partial to the Naturally Modern Trio I happen to have 2 sets on hand if you need one for your house! (Leave me a comment and I'll email you with details.)

When we were living in Alaska my favorite nook to decorate was my kitchen window.

Ah yes... Good times. 

I loved that window - perfect size, close outlet, neighbors could see it! 

I love that season too - food, fire, family, fellowship, cold (hey, we've had 3 weeks of 100° + weather, of course I'm longing for Winter!)

You can't see my Trio very well (I didn't realize at the time that I'd use the photo 1.5 years later in a blog...) but I have glittery snowflakes in the tallest, pinecones and snowmen in the medium and candy cane mints in the shortest.
Do you seem my gel clings on the window? I have managed to collect those for just about every season too =)

Back to my window nook. Don't have that beautiful spot in OKC =( And for about our first month and a half my Trio had no where to go. This turned out just fine though because there were tons of other projects (aren't there always tho!) for me to keep busy with and once we got most of those taken care of the perfect spot for my Trio was located. *sigh of contentment* And just in time for JULY!

I had to do a little alteration... I decided to incorporate my gel clings and my Trio. This turned out well because I didn't need to go out and buy items for July to fill the Trio with (I love saving $$$) and my Gels didn't have to sit in a box unused because I don't have enough of them for my huge front window.

But a new problem arose... After July comes August which is back to school which is the beginning of football season. So, in an effort to save a few more bucks I decided that August and September would be football themed (less change/storage too, not having to swap items out EVERY month.) But again, a new problem... I didn't have football gel clings. I also couldn't find them online - and not for a lack of trying let me tell you... I did find these though - SUCH a fun site =) I even searched Hobby Lobby for material to make my own with no luck. And then Amazon pulled through for me again.

I'm trying to remind myself that in the LONG run, I will have saved myself money. And sooner than I can imagine baby-girl will be old enough to play with this amazing stuff with me, and it will be well worth it =)

Now I needed to make my football gel clings. I went to Google and searched Nebraska images for football, saved those images to my desktop, dropped them into Illustrator, resized them and printed them out.

After slipping them between page protectors and painted over them with the window paint. I did 3 layers, so it took 3 days to make these. And despite a couple air bubbles I really like how they turned out. They aren't as thick as Gel Clings, and it's a different material, but over all it's what I wanted the end product to be.

Of course this isn't where I stopped with my seasonal themed decorating... But since I'm still in the middle of my Front Door Project, I'll have to leave you here for now. =)

Happy Crafting!