Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Happy New Year!

May you have a lovely wrap-up of 2009 and delight in welcoming in the new year!

And many thanks for helping to make 2009 such a happy place here at Paper Dali by sharing your comments and sending me sweet emails. I'm happy that you have enjoyed Paper Dali and hope to continue seeing you here in 2010.

I'll be on a blog break until Jan. 6, 2010. I'll be enjoying the rest of the holiday season with my family... as well as drawing up new collections for your paper-dolling fun. Time, energy and health permitting, I'll have new items in my Etsy shop soon.

Have fun printing and playing!
~ Vee

Monday, December 28, 2009

The Simple Woman's Daybook for Dec. 28, 2009

FOR TODAY:

Outside my window...everything is crisp and gray and melancholic.

I am thinking...that it's difficult to accept one's physical limitations.

I am thankful for...the scent of candy canes, little twinkling Christmas lights and the deep-red glass ornaments

From the learning rooms...I hear mostly silence since the 7-year-old is reading and the 9-year-old girl fell asleep at her desk. (She woke up with a fever, attempted school and passed out.)

From the kitchen...I hear the quiet rumbling of the dishwasher, which has been steadily used almost nonstop since Thursday.

I am wearing...blue running pants, a blue v-neck shirt and a black sweater.

I am creating...sketches of Greeks and little rabbits (not together) and also brainstorming a new sort of product to add to my Etsy shop.

I am going...to finish the Winter Fun collection this week and have it in the Etsy shop for the New Year.

I am reading...the Gospel of Saint Luke.

I am hoping... that tonight I'll have time to see one of the movies in my Cary Grant collection that I received for Christmas.

I am hearing...a four-year-old's heavy breathing due to his cold, my husband washing dishes from last night's dinner, the low hum of my old PC.

Around the house...everything looks like Christmas. We decorated the tree and the house on Christmas Eve, so it's all very new and lovely for us right now.

One of my favorite things...is brainstorming ideas and seeing if I can make the image in my mind match what I manage to assemble together.

A few plans for the rest of the week: rest, rest, rest. I have some illnesses, so sometimes, I hit a rough patch. Right now, I'm in a flare, so I'm all about peace and quiet.

Here is picture for thought I am sharing: (A few days ago, we had a little family "Elf" party. My daughter made signs that she posted around the house. We made paper chains and snowflakes to hang everywhere. We wore elf hats and recited our favorite lines as they happened during the viewing of "Elf." We also had spaghetti, though without maple syrup.)


Want to participate? Visit The Simple Woman's Daybook and blog by clicking here.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas


May the holiness and wonder of the Christmas season be with you and your family!

Amid all the shopping, baking, crafting, visiting and card-writing, it comes down to this: On Christmas Day, God became a wee child, and we may wrap our arms around him and love him forever.

Merry Christmas ... Feliz Navidad!









This is one of my favorite Nativity paintings. It is The Nativity (F. Barocci)

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

In My Crafting Space ...

Oh, this lovely season! It's the most wonderful time of the year. And I've been sewing and felting up a storm, though nothing is complete. I work a little on each project when that specific child is not around, so everything is half-done. I might just send them all off to bed at 4 p.m. tonight and finish everything up. And can I say how surreal it is to watch "Terminator Salvation" while crafting cute little snowflake ornaments?

The sewing needle and I are relatively new friends, so seams are slightly crooked. But I love the freedom of being able to put any idea into fabric form. So, without further delay, here are my current (i.e., incomplete) projects.

ornaments in a little felted bag: I wanted to make little ornaments for all my friends, but I got ornamented-out. The template is a basic circle, and then you can do whatever you'd like. The snowflakes were fun to do. After I finished the first four, I thought of a better way to do them and the process went quicker. I still need to finish attaching little ribbons to the ornaments.


The prince: This gift is actually for my mother who likes dolls. I made her a girl a while ago, and she requested the prince for Christmas. And she wanted him to look like my father. "You should see him," I told my mother over the phone. "He doesn't have hair like Daddy won't soon." She then requested hair for him. Sigh. Now, he's incomplete. My kids call him Robin Hood and the boys keep hinting that they want one, too.

Shark: This great white was very specifically requested by my 7-year-old son. This son is a very specific boy. He has Solid Ideas With Specific Plans. When I asked, "Do you want me to make you anything this year?" he said, "A big great white shark with huge teeth and a pouch so I can make him eat fishes and then take them out again." He supplied me with shark books. He showed me all the sharks that fascinated him, but was specific that it is the great white that he wanted in felt form. And he had to be big. After staring at shark photos for a while, I managed a decent-enough template. I still need to get white felt for all those teeth and do the pouch. (The shark is bigger than he looks. He could easily chomp up Robin Hood up there in the previous picture.)

Flannel Board Playset: This is actually a long strip of brown felt. The idea is that I'll make some felt figures for my four-year-old boy and he'll have cool little things to do on this roll-up flannel board. The house below for example, is only sewn on the bottom, so it can be blown down by the big bad wolf. The house right now has no means of getting inside it nor do any pigs exist or big bad wolf, for that matter. This project is requiring the most thinking. I think about this board before going to bed. Really. Like, what sort of curtains to give the house. And how to make the sign outside of the house. The only input that I received from the boy was that he wanted "blue pigs because blue is mine favorite color." It frees up my imagination ... It'll look fabulous. Eventually.

I am also working on a gift for my daughter, but I cannot post that. The girl loves to look through Paper Dali and read the going-ons here as well as offer ideas. She is the one who is encouraging me to draw some new stuff but, if you see this post, you'll realize why the drawing has slowed down just a tad. But I'll be in full force soon enough.

In about, you know, 8 days.
~Vee

HT to Amy Caroline for the idea of sharing what's in my craft basket. (I'll link, Amy Caroline, when you get that post up. *grin*)

Monday, December 14, 2009

The Simple Woman's Daybook for Dec. 14, 2009

FOR TODAY
December 14, 2009

Outside my window...the morning is taking its time in stretching out and dispelling the darkness.
I am thinking...that my list of gifts to make keeps growing.
I am thankful for...colorful wool felt, embroidery floss and an imagination.
From the learning rooms...the children are in the midst of their Advent lapbook.
From the kitchen...are the leftovers of my four year old's birthday cake.
I am wearing...lavender Nick & Nora owl pajamas. They are so cute and cozy, and made extra-special because dear husband put them under the tree for me on St. Nicholas's feast day.
I am creating...a great white shark in felt, snowflake ornaments, a prince doll, a roll-up flannel board and three little pigs in blue felt, a Winter Wonderland paper doll set and a list of Greek Olympic gods to draw.
I am going...to have a mellow week after weeks of work craziness, so I need to rest up, drink hot tea with lemon (I'm sick right now), wear my owl pajamas all day and craft once I unplug from work.
I am reading...the Gospel of John.
I am hoping...that my full-time regular job is less stressful than it has been for the last month.
I am hearing...silence for once, and it's a nice sound.
Around the house...bits of felt from my crafting project, piles of blankets and pillows from our family sleepover/movie night, little plastic cups of frosting for yesterday morning's cinnamon rolls ... Christmas lights sparkling their hello.
One of my favorite things...is Christmas lights and the manger. The manger is one from my childhood, and the figures are an assortment of other Nativity sets (the ones that survived my children's toddler years). It makes for a mismatched look that I love.
A few plans for the rest of the week: make children's Christmas gifts, finish the Winter Wonderland set for the store, see if I feel better and if so babysit a sick friend's child, go see a boat parade later in the week.
Here is picture for thought I am sharing...(The gal in the picture is not me. She's my more attractive doppelganger. I'm rounder and black-haired. However, these are the lavender pajamas I am wearing, and they are so comfortable that I needed to share them with you. They sold like hotcakes at Target, so my city is well-pajammed and cozy this winter.)

Thanks to The Simple Woman's Daybook for this meme.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Works For Me Wednesday: Felt Puppets

Aside from my love of ink and paper, I also love felt. It's cheap (unless you want to pay a tiny bit more for the good stuff for gifts. Or not.). It's colorful. It's so versatile. And it makes a relatively new sewing gal like myself happy with her efforts.

This week's "Works For Me Wednesday" post is about the magic of using scraps of felt and leftover embroider floss to make finger puppets. As St. Nicholas's Day approaches, I need some little gifts for the kids. I read about making finger puppets at The Toby Show and decided to try my own hand at them.




They ended up nice enough. And they'll soon be enjoyed by my almost-four-year-old. :)

All you need is a little bit of imagination, a handful of felt and some thread and a needle. For these little guys, I just picked out the leftover felt from previous projects and imagined what I could do with them. The shark was the most fun but required a little thinking. The light-blue creature did not. As you can probably tell. The point is to have fun and use up what you have.

Get more tips for inexpensive Christmas gifts at Kristen's We Are THAT Family blog.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

News


It's the grand opening of The Paper Dali Shop on Etsy. It's the place for my exclusive Paper Dali sets and whatever else strikes my artistic fancy. :)

For now, I'm opening the store with my two downloadable Paper Dali sets. My brand-new "Las Posadas (A Mexican Christmas)" features everything one needs to celebrate Las Posadas with the Paper Dali family, the Rodriguez family. The set includes outfits for all members of the family, lanterns, Nativity figures to carry, a guitar for singing and a pinata for celebrating. Click on the link for more info.


Thanks for supporting Paper Dali!
Creative Commons License ... and please do NOT offer my works as downloads from your site.