Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Do you have time for JOY?



Amidst the hustle and bustle, shopping, wrapping, school plays, and down right STRESS of the Holidays do you remember that this is supposed to be a joyous time of year? Sometimes it's very hard to remember, no matter what Holiday you celebrate. 

I put up the word JOY as a part of our Christmas decor because I though it would be cute, but also as a reminder to be happy amid the stress. 

I found the O at Hobby Lobby (my favorite craft store ever!) on clearance several months ago. I think I think paid 3 or 4 dollars for it. I loved it the second I saw it and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I didn't have the other letters yet, but I was working on it. 

I found the Y at Joann Fabrics. I believe I paid around 2-3 dollars for that one as well. It was a brown letter awaiting some creative love... 

(Yes, it's upside down. But I'm okay with that right now.)

All I did was add Washi tape around it. I found festive Washi tape at TJ Maxx recently. When you are close up you can see the overlap, but from far away you just see a cute polka dotted Y. 
 It looked a little plain so I added some thick twine and slipped on a brownish/gold glittery ornament. 


So, I was stuck on the J. I didn't like anything the I could find in stores. I was hoping to buy it because I wanted to take the easy out because I didn't have a ton of time. But I would rather take the time to make one then to be unhappy with what I bought. 

I had some foam board left over from another project and decided to use that. I drew out a J on cardstock for my template. You can print a J off of a word processor if you don't feel like you can free hand it. I traced it onto the poster board three times. Then I took a razor blade and cut each one out. 



I glued the three J's on top of each other to make it thicker. I just used white glue. I then painted the J with red paint. Only only had a dark barn red which was not the look I was going for but I used it anyway. I decided to pour some glitter on it while the paint was still wet. It didn't spread well so I used a lot of glitter. I used course and fine red glitter. The glitter covered up the darker red paint and gave it the look I was going for. Sorry I don't have pictures of this part or the next.

The edges were all raw from the razor blade and it didn't look very nice. I thought about it for a while and then decided to put Washi tape on the edges. In that pack from TJ Maxx came a pretty silvery glitter tape. It was the exact width that I needed. So it worked out perfectly. The tape adhered nicely and I didn't need any extra glue, but it could have been added for added security. 


These are all pretty poor pictures, but there it is. I forgot to take pictures of our set up while in the studio, but I am hoping to get some from the staff. I am still setting my Christmas decor back up in my house since filming. It's been crazy around here. When I get it all set up, I will post more decor pics. 

Until then, I hope that you can find time to enJOY your life throughout the next few weeks. 

Oh, and Hanukkah begins tonight at Sundown. Happy Hanukkah to all those celebrating. I learned a lot about this celebration this year. Hope you all watched Rabbi Weiner on Holiday Fun with Hillary on www.amherstmedia.org!


*Hills



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