Christmas Pillows

For the most part, I am sticking to my resolve to avoid the mall and big box stores for Christmas shopping. This week I spent time in The Underground making gifts.

I had quite a stash of burlap left from Art in the Garden in 2013. Using my Silhouette Portrait and freezer paper, some of it was turned into pillows. Taking advantage of the 12 Days of Christmas free designs from the SilhouetteStore, I had a grand time!

These designs were not free designs, but I did get them for half-price (50 cents) earlier in the month.

One of my granddaughters  redecorated her room this year, using purple and gray with a French flair. I found this burlap in my stash and thought it might work for her.

On the reverse side of the burlap, I stenciled a fleur-de-lis for the front.

My daughter-in-law requested a fleur-de-lis pillow. I did this one on canvas 

If you have not yet tried the freezer paper stencil tutorial on the Silhouette School Blog, it is a really simple process. Hop on over to their site and take a look.

Let me share a few tips from my experiences.

• Bold colors tend to show up better on burlap. When some of the colors I chose were too light, I repainted with a darker color after I removed the stencil.
• Thread the color of the burlap works great to correct paint bleeds in a small area.
•  If using a white pillow form, it looks best to use a natural color (like muslin) for a liner.
• For me, I find more paint bleeding when stenciling on canvas making the edges a bit fuzzy. I found the heavy acrylic works better than craft paint.

On Wednesday I will share some of my 2014 gift ornaments. 

This year we are giving our oldest granddaughter our gift of time. She has wanted a garden for some time so in the early spring my husband will build her a 4-foot square bed; I will help her with the planting. Her favorite fruit is strawberries so I thought it would be neat to present her a gift card for the garden in a strawberry basket with the suggestion she plant strawberries. I did make a trip to the candy store in the mall to buy strawberry candy for the basket, but I thought that would be okay as it needed special touch.