Merry Christmas and see you next year!

Hello, everyone! I'm signing off until the new year. Thank you, thank you for making the internet a friendly place and being such kind and lovely readers. I've appreciated every comment and email from you. May your holidays be merry and bright!

DIY paper Christmas ornaments

It's fun and easy to make these traditional paper ornaments, and there are lots of tutorials out there. I posted a how-to in 2006 and decided to make more for my tree this year. This time I didn't glue these modules into a star (which looks great; see the old post). I like them as simple individual ornaments, too.


To make cutting more uniform, here's the template I drew.
Large ornaments
Small ornaments

Print out a page and cut along the inner lines with an X-acto knife. (I freehand it.) Then cut out the squares.


Bend the center flaps inward.


Moving outward from the center, bend the next pair of flaps around to meet on the opposite side. Secure them with glue or tape.


Keep alternating the direction of the flaps until each pair is joined.

If you like, glue the points of six ornaments together to make a lacy star.

Make a tiny origami Santa

I made wee origami Santas. Each guy is folded from two 1 1/2" squares of red paper. Have the kids tuck one inside your Christmas cards or stick them onto gift tags. Make them green and they could be elves.

Learn how to make these easy origami Santas right here at HoikuAkira. The instructions are in Japanese, but I just followed the photos. Google translate didn't add much value; the pictures were enough to get the job done.

(Oops! Looks like that link stopped working. This YouTube video looks similar.)

Christmas music generator

If you need a holiday time-waster to finish out the work day, make some music with the Festive Funk Machine, created by the online printing company Moo. Turn the robots on and off to construct your own song.

Vintage brass figurine round-up

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm kind of getting into brass. Metallic anything is in style right now, and in my cave of a house with dark woodwork, a little sheen is nice. Yesterday I amused myself poking around eBay and Etsy for brass doorstops, paperweights, and other sculptures. I'm not sure who decided that tigers, camels, deer, and elephants are the best animals to cast in brass, but there are herds of them running around resale sites. Here's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to vintage brass figurines, available at Etsy and eBay.

Above: Giraffe, dancer, parrot and deer.

Above: Deer, woman with long hair, quail, and camel. I also liked this goat but forgot to add him to the photo collage.

Consider a brass Christmas gift for the mid-century animal lover in your life!

Cheap table makeover

Months ago we bought a $10 table via Craigslist to hold up a lamp in the guest bedroom. It was in sad shape:


So I decided to give it a quick paint job to make it look more fun. Sort of Jonathan Adler-esque, except for the curvy base that doesn't make much sense with the geometric design I put on it. But when a girl wants diamonds, she wants diamonds.

I'd heard about adding Floetrol to latex paint to level out the brush marks and asked my local Ace Hardware guy about it. He said it was an option, but instead recommended door and cabinet paint for my little job. It already has an additive similar to Floetrol in it to smooth out brushstrokes. It's latex, making cleanup easy, but it doesn't have the stickiness that latex sometimes does. (Which from experience, I've learned can be a pain. I painted latex on some wooden boxes to use as monitor stands, and our monitors stick to them, pulling off the paint when you lift them up.) The Ace fellow said oil paint is generally best for furniture, but since this table won't get much wear, latex is fine.

I had my choice of Ace brand cabinet paint or the higher-end brand they carry. I went with Ace since the table is cheap and I didn't want to invest much in it. Which is also why I didn't bother to buy primer.

The Ace guy opened the quart of white I bought, dumped out a little into a new can, and tinted that portion orange so I didn't have to purchase another entire tinted can for the tabletop design.


After painting three coats of white, the table looked decent. I loved the way the paint behaved. Brushstrokes really did disappear, and the coating is smooth and hard. Despite sanding, though, the table top's veneer was still damaged so the wood was a little bumpy. But it was a cheap table, so I didn't mind.

After the white was applied, I made a template for the shapes and taped around them. I started with Frog tape and realized it was too wide, so I switched to skinny tape. I applied a coat of orange paint and started pulling off the tape, which also pulled off flecks of white along with it. Awesome. Yeah, priming might have made the white paint adhere better; we'll never know. Heating the tape with a blowdryer seemed to help it come off better with minimal peeling.

The orange paint had squished under the tape in many places, so I touched up all the flaws with more white paint and they don't show.


I think it adds a little something to the guest room and looks better than a scuffed up brown table, for sure.

Step into my parlor

Guys, look, it's coming along! Here's the current state of our parlor.


The rug I've been waiting ages for finally came. I love it. It's the Momeni Delhi DL-51 Navy rug. I ordered it from Rug Super Center since they provide a free rug pad with your order (the pad is still in transit, so I'm not sure what kind it is.) We'll move the rug closer to the window so it's more centered in the room after the Christmas tree is gone.


We're still waiting for a non-broken chandelier to arrive; that will be in January. We also want to ditch the bathroom floor tile covering this non-working fireplace and probably paint the brick to hide some ugliness. Alex got out the roasting rack from his grill and put a couple logs in it, just to help the situation a little. We bought that firewood bundle circa 2004 for a campfire in Chicago that never happened. And then we moved it to Cincinnati this summer. Finally it has a purpose in life.

I guess interior designers would put lots of stuff on the mantle and style up the coffee table with deer antlers and art books that no one reads. I'll work on that.


In the meantime, I cashed in some Groupon credit and got this lovely watercolor print for free from art.com. Central Park West, 2011 by Peter Graham.


And I made a deal with Ms. Dana Gibson to get a discount on her awesome painted leopard pillows. They make me smile internally when I look at them. I was fixated on this funny tiger rug awhile ago with nowhere to put it, so now I have achieved my dream of owning flattened animals. (I don't count paper bookmarks. The comments on that post are hilarious, by the way.) Side note! Dana's great grandpa was the artist behind the Gibson Girl.


Also in here are the antique-mall lamps with shades I covered, the reupholstered Craigslist chairs, and the Abigail loveseat whose legs I intend to stain darker.


Yay! It's a room! I can hardly remember when it looked like this:

Holiday wallpaper downloads

Need to add a little Christmas cheer to your desktop or phone? Check out these freebies posted by kind designers around the internets. Above, one of a collection of sweater desktops at The Sweet Escape.


Find several calligraphy backgrounds at Fabulous K (lettering by Heather of Design Roots.


Help yourself to holiday iPhone backgrounds by Heidi Sonnenschein.

Origami diamond ornaments

I tried out Emma's directions for how to make an origami diamond from two squares of paper. Each half is folded separately and then the two pieces are glued together. The folding was easy but the gluing was a challenge! Getting all the peaks and valleys aligned at once took some fiddling, but the result is really cute.


After making these, I decided to hang them on our Christmas tree. I poked a hole in each end with a needle, then threaded a piece of wire through. I bent the bottom end of the wire into an acute angle so the gem won't slip off, then wrapped the top end of the wire over a pencil to form a hook.


If you already know you're going to make these into ornaments, you could make your life easier by adding string or wire to the top half before gluing the diamond together. Or leave the hanger off and put them in a bowl on the coffee table.

Find the tutorial here at Design and Form!

Free printable Christmas gift tags

Today I'm sharing some free, printable holiday gift tags you can download. Help yourself to these typographic designs.


I had fun trying out some Avery label stock the company sent over. I've always thought of Avery products as being for business use, but their stickers and tags can make some nifty holiday gift embellishments.


To make these tags, print the PDF at 100% size onto Avery 22802 Printable Tags with Strings paper.

The tags are perforated, so just fold the paper back and forth a couple times along the edges of the tags to break them off. The edges turn out neat and clean.




Then use the supplied strings with clasps that come in the package, or add your own pretty ribbon or twine to attach the tags to wrapped gifts, wine bottles, or the kittens you're giving all your friends this Christmas.

Download the PDF for Avery perforated tags here.
Download the PDF for printing on plain cardstock here (then cut out with a scissors and punch a hole in each tag).

(This post was made possible by free stuff from Avery. Thanks, Avery!)

Now we can put on our shoes

Since we moved in months ago, I've been looking for a bench for the entryway. Preferably something that would match the style of the house and the dignified entry. Walking in the front door, you face a staircase and to the right are pillars. Pillars!


I love modern, but an antique church pew seemed like just the thing. I've been searching Craigslist and secondhand stores religiously (ha) for months, but couldn't find just the right piece of furniture. And then last weekend, I came across this beauty at an architectural salvage store. They'd had it a week.


According to the previous owner the bench is European and dates from the 1830's. A neighbor thinks it was a courtroom bench. It's six feet long, built using pegs, and very sturdy. The seat could use a little more cushioning and the faded red fabric should be replaced, but that's a fun project.


It's exactly what I was looking for. Happiness!

The fireplace tile

Here's a closer look at the Rookwood fireplace tile I'm debating, as seen in yesterday's photo. I thought about decorating the room to go with it, but couldn't bring myself to decorate around something I don't particularly like. Does anybody else see spinach dip here? It's also a bit cracked and chipped.


At first I hated it. Then it started growing on me, and now I just mildly dislike it. Maybe I'll leave it alone and add some green artwork or something to tie everything together.

DIY dining room drapes

The dining room needed drapes to soften things up, so I enlisted my mom (Grandma G in the comments around here) to pretty-please sew me some panels. I ordered home decor fabric online for $6 a yard on clearance at fabric.com (now sold out) and shipped it to her, sight unseen. Normally I'm not a huge paisley fan, but it seemed like it could work in this dining room. Mum has dubbed the room's style "grand hotel."

She cut four 3-yard panels for me and pressed, hemmed, and pressed again. Maybe that sounds easy, but I knew it would be a huge pain since that is A LOT of fabric to maneuver. I was too chicken to tackle it myself— I'm certain I would have created 3-yard-long seams that were puckered and crooked, and it would have taken me three days per panel. Despite reporting some highway hypnosis while driving along that paisley print, Mum's work is perfect. With matched patterns at the top, of course, because she's good like that. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the sewing on her blog here.

My work was just to put in grommets, which was the easiest part of the project. I bought these Dritz plastic curtain grommets. You trace around the supplied circle template to mark the fabric, cut out the hole, and snap the front and back grommet pieces together around the cut-out. No special tools are needed.


This dining room is coming along! Something is bugging me, though, and I think I've figured out that besides the table, the main visual offender for me is the fireplace tile. It's original Rookwood tile that people here get excited about, so I'm hesitant to change it. It's pretty cracked and beat up on the hearth, but the face of the fireplace is mostly okay.


Let's pretend the tile was pale gray or white. And the table was dark wood and the light fixture was swapped out. Better?


I need some art on the walls to tie things together, but we're making progress.


P.S. If you want a really nice tutorial for how to sew your own drapes with grommets, check out these instructions at Deuce Cities Henhouse.