Gingerbread & 50

Here's the "merry" banner with gingerbread for the base.  Working at a public school, gingerbread has become the default theme for December.  We've gotten pretty into gingerbread on my floor, especially in my room!

The massive amounts of gingerbread exposure has trickled into many of the houses of my colleagues.  After seeing the banners I made for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, one teacher friend asked if I could make a Christmasy gingerbread banner for her mantle at home.

I jumped at the chance to play around with the idea!  I played so much I ended up making something like 4 or 5 of these.  Some got sold, one was a gift, and the rest got loaded into my Etsy Shoppe.

These banner gave me a chance to play with lots of different goodies I have been hoarding for ages.  Ya know, that stuff I "had to have" and then left on the shelf to stare at instead.  It was a joy to see it all come to life by adding personality to each gingerbread person.

Eee, so yummy cute!  Can't wait to get started on some valentine themed banners. 

Gotta stop thinking and start making.  That's the 50 part of this post.  I'm gonna try to see how close I can get to making 50 creations in 50 days.  I've already started, now I just need to get them posted. :)

 

Gingerbread, Gingerbread-Yum ,Yum, Yum

Every December (so far) I have taught reading to my students through various Gingerbread Man (or at least gingerbread themed) stories.  I take photos of each student reading their favorite story and send them to their parents as a first grade keepsake.  Last year the cards looked like this and here are this years versions...

Being the great visionary, I had the general idea of what I wanted to make this year.  Being the poor planner, I didn't buy all the supplies I had planned on using.  Being dumb lucky, I had a variety of brown scraps, ribbon bits, embellies, and glitter to "get 'er dun" on Sunday afternoon.  So this is the variety pack that I came up with this year. (Thanks to my MIL and FIL for making dinner happen on Sunday so I could make these gingerfolks happen!)

I used this Tim Holtz die cutter to make my 20-some gingerfolks.  It was probably more fun because I used scraps than if I had made them all from the same papers. :)

Here are most of them drying after I added liquid pearls, Stickles, or just glue & Martha Stewart glitter (she really does have the best glitter).  Some of the gingerfolks had some sad looking faux icing that needed repair so they missed the photo shoot. LOL!

I stuck with the same basic sketch for all of these cards and then "spiced" (pun intended- I crack me up, hee-hee) each card up with different ribbon, paper, and assorted embellies from my stash.

 

Here are a few more close-ups...

 A couple more...

The quadruplets...(poor #4 got cut-off).

The twins...

The other twins (it is the age of fertility you know ;) )...

The "Age of Aquarius" fellowship...

Last, but not least, is my new ornament!  This was made and given to me by my former student mentioned here.  I have it hanging on my workroom tree.  Yeah, I added another tree to this.  It was $5 on clearance at Target.  I simply adore Christmas lights!!!!  I may leave this up all year with Fitz and my Christmas donkey photo (no his name isn't Dominik).

I'm cooking up some fun with these cards here:
Papertake Weekly- Anything Goes
The Shabby Tea Room- #41
City Crafter- Vintage Christmas
There She Goes- Button it Up

 

Gingerbread!

As some of you know, I'm a Reading Specialist in my other life and I have the privilege of working with students who are just learning to read. Every year I read lots of gingerbread stories with my students. On the last day of lessons before the December break, I always read them Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends. I also usually take a picture of each child reading their favorite gingerbread story and mail it home to their family as a surprise memento. The kids got really into all the stories this year and I was excited to see Papertrey Ink's Holiday Button Bits adorable gingerbread man! Here are a couple of the cards that I made to mail out with the photographs tucked inside. The cards came out so cute!

The card base and red ribbon are both Amuse. The scallop tag I made with my Cricut. I added to the icing with a Stardust gelly pen and I believe that the gingerbread paper is from Bo Bunny (please tell me if I'm wrong, I used it all up!) I used Memento ink for the gingerbread fella and got the buttons from my stash.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Spread joy to the ones you love and don't forget to leave a comment (comments spread joy too! :) )

Moriah