Tag Archives: gingerbread men

It’s Giveaway day!!

Yipee!!!! I love this day.

For the past few I’ve been super lucky and for some reason or another been home on Giveaway day and had time to enter every thing I wanted to. This year, sadly I’m at work. But I can participate!

I’d like to give 2 lucky winners these cute cup cozies! They’re from the beginnings of SewTara and are sort of my early designs. For my awesome now designs, go here. I made them for the first Christmas season I had my shop but never got around to actually listing them in time. So there they sat and strangely, before I knew it was going to be Giveaway Day I had them out to giveaway myself in a boring lonely post. This is way better.

They are reversible and have this fun holiday themed print on the inside.

Please leave a comment below, let me know if you’d rather proudly sport Mr Glasses on your cup or Mr Stache. Perhaps I’ll whip some up for next year. I’ll email the first winner and let them choose and then the second name I draw will just have to settle for what’s left.

No hoops to jump through just leave a comment by 8pm EST on Friday, December 7, but sharing the love and spreading the word around the internet is appreciated. OH and I’m ridiculously close to 500 likes on my Facebook page and I’d really like to just gaze at that number, even if you unlike it the next day, I won’t know, it doesn’t tell me. Honest. And don’t forget to go enter all the other giveaways being hosted!

Easy Wreath Idea

I found this wreath idea in a magazine in *cough* 1999.   I went on a binge years ago and made a ton of them and gave them away to people or as Christmas gifts.  Now I’ve only got my one banged up one left.   I don’t have time to make a new one right now so perhaps next year I’ll make some new little men to replace the ones who have broken in the line of duty.  Here’s a bit of a tutorial, what I could throw together without actually making on and taking the pictures.

wreaths

Here’s what you need

supplies

1. ring of something pretty sturdy, cardboard works, or you can buy the fancy ones from a craft store and sometimes a dollar store.

2. gingerbread man cookie cutter

3. glue gun and glue sticks for it

4. tacky glue

5. 1 1/4 cups of cinnamon

6. 56 scraps of fabric, measuring 1″ x 9″, It’s more rustic looking if you tear the fabric but you can cut it too.  9 1′ x 4″ fabric scraps, cut these ones.

7. rolling pin, cookie sheet and wire cooling rack

8. some acrylic craft paints, colours can vary but I used a tan, and pinkish colour.  A paintbrush and I had a black marker on hand, rather than paints, for details.

Here’s the handy steps!

1. Mix one cup cinnamon with 4 tablespoons of tacky glue and 3/4 cup water.  Mix it around until you have a stiff dough.  Add more of something to achieve that consistency.  Place the dough on the counter and sprinkle with cinnamon so it won’t stick to the roller.  Roll dough out to about 1.4″ thickness.

2. Cut out 9 gingerbread men and transfer them onto the wire rack.  Place the wire rack on a cookie sheet and bake at 200 for about 2 1/2 hours.  Turn the men over every 20-30 minutes.  Your house will smell wonderfully of cinnamon!  Leave the cooked men on the rack overnight.  They might curl slightly.

3. Paint most of the men with the tan paint, leaving a little bit of the gingerbread edge showing.  This may take a few coats to cover the way you like.   Add little rosy cheeks and eyes and a mouth.

little men

4.  Tie the little 4″ strips into bows and glue gun them to the men to look like little bow ties.

5.  Set the men aside and pick up whatever you have for a circle!  Tie the 1″ x 9″ fabric strips around the circle until it is entirely hidden by fabric.  Photo shows the back.

bows

6. Once it’s entirely covered place the ginger men around the wreath with room at the top for your hanging device, be it ribbon or an actual hanger from a door.

ta da!

As I’ve learned, and you can see from a few of my men, they are fragile and can break so store your wreath lovingly.  The men also smell like cinnamon for some time, so if you can keep it in some sort of sealed box that will help preserve the smell.  What’s more festive than yummy smelling cinnamon!