Presents for you, too!

Dear Shayne,

The weather here is still awful, so I haven't been able to take good photos of the goodies I got for Christmas. But I did take photos of the gifts I made you before I sent them, so here they are.

I made this birdie silhouette painting for you, using this tutorial from Anna Marie Horner (that link takes you to Martha's website -- there's a video as well as a written tutorial):


I loved this project, but I'll admit that this was my third try.

First try, the fabric did not adhere properly to the canvas, so I had bubbles. I used Mod Podge on that one.

For the second try, I decided to put down a layer of medium on the canvas, then put down the fabric, then paint medium over the canvas. For some unknown reason, I also switched form Mod Podge to Golden Gel Medium. This was a different kind than I usually use and I did not notice that it said, "dries translucent." Meaning, of course, not transparent. So that stuck down great... but it looked like hell, because it was kind of cloudy and generally Not Good.

Third try, I was armed with the knowledge I had gained on the first two tries:
1. Use Mod Podge.
2. Paint a layer of Mod Podge on the canvas before putting down the fabric.
Anna Marie Horner does not do this in her tutorial and hers looks totally beautiful, so she must be smarter and craftier than I am. But just putting the Mod Podge on top of the fabric did not saturate the fabric enough when I tried it. So there.

As for painting the bird, I think hers also looks a lot smoother than mine and I don't know why. She doesn't say exactly what kind of paint she uses, so it might be that. Also, I'm not a very good painter, so whee. You like texture, right? Right? ;)

All right. Now that I've talked that to death... what else did you get? Ah, yes... a little felted/fulled basket. This pattern is from the book A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting by Cat Bordhi. Hard to tell from this photo, but this is about the size of a very large grapefruit:


I made a bunch of these a couple of years ago for Christmas gifts, but this one never got gifted and got stowed away. Poor little basket. I found it again last month and thought, "Pink! Shayne!" This one was no surprise to you, as I checked in with you and your wool-ergies before sending it to you. I have one on my desk at work -- handy for holding little stuff!

Aaad... you also got a tissue holder. I made several of these this year for gifts -- I'll post the others soon, as well. I love the fabric I used for yours, but I realized after I made it that the hearts are kind of mismatched on the front. Aww:


However, if you pull some tissue out of it, you'll never notice!


See how I did that there? Huh? Huh? See that?

Merry Christmas!

love,
kelly