Christmas Subway Art with Canvas

With Christmas arriving very soon, I have many gifts to make and orders to fill. I really like the look of Subway Art and wanted to make something special for my son's Kindergarten teacher. While looking online for ideas I came across the Crafty Sweet Peas blog and the perfect Subway Art file! I normally design my own but after seeing how nice this design was I went ahead and purchased Barbara's file.

I painted a 11 x 14 canvas a Santa Red and then used white vinyl. And this is my finished Subway Art canvas!

The canvas above was completed with indoor, non-glossy vinyl. I really liked how it turned out and with the vinyl sticking so well on the painted canvas I could have just quit here. But I wanted a shiny finish so I covered the canvas with 2 coats of Modge Podge to achieve the following glossy finish.

It may be hard to see the glossy finish in the pictures but if you could see it in person, there is truly a big difference. And Special Thanks to Barbara Sweetpea from Craft Sweet Peas for the file and for her genuine and thoughtful emails in regards to my project, the file and everything else!

Cindy

Christmas Tile - Vinyled

This project was another "prize" I made for our first ever Cookie Exchange party! This prize was super easy to make and turned out great! Last Summer a good friend of mine gave me several boxes of 12 x 12 tile that she no longer needed. Some of the tiles in the box was broken but I didn't want to just throw them out. I found a tile that was broken perfectly so that instead of it being 12 x 12, the tile was now about 9 x 12.

I took this tile and painted it red (took several coats) and then added a coating of Modge Podge on it. With the "Merry Christmas" sign I found and purchased the file online, then can cut the image with my Cricut. Once I placed the sign on the tile, I added another layer of Modge Podge to secure everything and to give a nice, glossy finish to it.

My broken 9 x 12 tile now looks like this!

Christmas Subway Art

In an earlier post I talked about the first ever Christmas Cookie Exchange Party I co-hosted. In that post, I needed to make some prizes for several contests we were having at the party. My first prize was a Christmas Subway Art picture frame that I designed. The supplies I needed was a large picture frame, blue poster board and white spray paint. I went to my local Goodwill store and found a picture frame for $3, the Dollar Store had a big sheet of light blue poster board for $0.50 and then my husband picked up a bottle of satin white spray paint at the hardware store. This is what I started with:

And this is my finished product!

Normally, when I vinyl picture frames, I cut the vinyl in "reverse" and then place the vinyl on the backside of the glass. This way you can easily clean the front of the glass and not worry about putting any cleaning spray on the vinyl. But, this time I placed the vinyl directly on the blue poster board. I really didn't notice much difference in the end result by doing this. My other reasoning behind this was that you could easily change out the poster board and add other subway art designs for other seasons. I could make a red subway art sign for Valentine's Day or 4th of July, etc... and can re-use the same frame.

Anyway, I found the original idea of the Christmas Subway Art on Etsy and the person was selling just the vinyl for $20. For under $5 I not only have the Subway Art vinyl but the entire frame by using a little spray paint, checking out Goodwill and the Dollar Store and using my Cricut!

Cookie Exchange Party

I know it's been awhile since my last post but with a very busy Thanksgiving weekend and the holidays quickly approaching, time is going by way too fast! One of the activities that I have been working on for the holidays is a Christmas Cookie Exchange party! The last two weeks I have spent quite a few late lights, along with my best friend who co-hosted the party with me, making prizes, establishing a set of "rules", creating decorations, baking and everything else that a successful party requires! The "rules" was my favorite part of the party, this was needed to ensure that all cookies were "baked", everyone came with a minimum number of cookies, everyone had an ugly Christmas sweater and most importantly, no kids or husbands came to the party! This was a Cooke Exchange Party, but it also was a fun night for just the ladies!

This was our first attempt at such a party and is now going to be an annual tradition. Including us (the two hostesses), we had a dozen people at the party with nearly 40 dozen cookies plus plenty of appetizers and drinks. The picture isn't the greatest but here is the table with all of the cookies the ladies brought to the party!

We also had prizes for 3 categories which was the Best Looking Cookie, Most Creative Recipe and the Ugliest Christmas Sweater. We obtained a copy of each recipe ahead of time, made copies and handed them out at the party so everyone went home with a recipe of all of the cookies at the party. And this allowed everyone to vote for the "Most Creative Recipe". I should have taken pictures of the winners of each category, especially the "ugliest sweater". It may be too late for that, but I do have pictures of the prizes that I made for the party. Each prize was made out of vinyl and I think turned out great! The Red Vinyl sign is made out of tile, the Subway Art Sign was a Goodwill frame that I re-painted, both of which I will post a separate blog on how I made them in more detail!

I wrapped up all of the "prizes", we placed them under the Christmas tree and the winners unwrapped their presents to reveal their prize! I hope everyone had a lot of fun and I think, come next year, there will be very little things I would want to change when it comes time to prepare for our "2nd Annual Cookie Exchange Party"!