Welcome back again to another edition of Fancy Friday! We’re excited to bring this month’s edition to you a week early. Our theme this month is Pretty Packaging and I can not wait to see what everyone has created! I’ve got a Pretty Packaging class coming up and I’m sure these ladies will be full of wonderful ideas for me to incorporate! Be sure to hop along to see what they’ve come up with!
My project is a fairly quick and cute one today and I hope you’re inspired to make some yourself! Here’s a little Handmade Holly that you can try yourself!
I have a little tutorial to share with you on how I created the Holly Leaves. You can adjust them to smaller or bigger ovals to suit the project you want to put Holly Leaves on. I haven’t put anything inside this bag yet but I think I might go searching for some fresh Holly to gift to someone special. Fresh holly is such a beautiful decoration at Christmas time. My sister-in-law taught me how to make the most beautiful ice bucket. I don’t think I’d fit enough to make the ice bucket into this little bag but maybe I could send some cute little holly shaped cookies?!
I do still have more photos but in case you’re curious about that ice bucket, here’s what you do to make one.
1. Find two pails of different sizes. One needs to be able to nest inside the other with a couple inches to spare all the way around. The ones I used were an ice cream pail (for the smaller bucket) and an industrial pail from the home improvement store.
2. Put an inch or a bit more water in the bottom of the big pail and let it freeze.
3. Once the water is frozen solid in the bottom of the big pail you will fill the smaller bucket with rocks or something heavy that will hold it down inside the larger pail when you move onto the next step.
4. With your small pail in place inside the big pail, stuff the space between the two pails with fresh holly and then fill that same space between the pails with water. Make sure that the water goes higher than the holly and that both the holly and water are below the top of the ice cream pail. Put it back outside (if you live in the great white frozen North like I do) or in a deep freeze on a flat surface to freeze.
5. Once the channel between the two pails is frozen solid (it will freeze to the bottom layer that you froze in step 2 above), take the pail out of the middle and ease the ice bucket out of the large pail. When it comes out, it will literally be an ice bucket with the beautiful colors of the holly berries and leaves showing through. We displayed ours on a large clear platter (it will melt as the evening goes on) with canned drinks sitting in it. It was a real frosted berry bucket and I can’t wait to make another. If I get around to it sooner than later, I’ll come back to post a photo. Let me know if you decide to try it!
I added a little ‘to and from’ tag to the bag.
Now here’s how to create the holly leaves. Once you’ve created 3 (or as many as you’d like) leaves, sponge them with Garden Green Ink and add some 1/2″ red glitter circles to make the holly berries. As I mentioned above, you can adjust the size of the holly leaves to be bigger or smaller depending on the size of your project, just use smaller or bigger ovals and circles.
I hope you enjoyed my project today! Be sure to hop along through all of the blogs for plenty of pretty packaging inspiration! Becky is up next and her project is sure to be fabulous!
