Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Hello, Ribbon Lovers!  I'm not trying to rush the season or anything, but here we are past the half way point in November, and Christmas is creeping up on us. It's definitely time for this gal to get busy with Christmas projects!  How about you?   I had an idea for an interactive Christmas frame the other day...and it involves a pocket, and custom dyed seam binding. Wanna take a peek?

I picked up this pretty white frame at a yard sale earlier this year, and have been saving it for just the right project.  I sat down the other day and had a blast building all kinds of layers, fussy cutting retro images, altering chipboard and all sorts of messy fun.

The cloth pocket in this frame really opens, and I thought how awesome would it be to tuck a tiny gift inside each day during the month of December?  It could be a movie ticket, an individually wrapped chocolate, a cocoa pouch, tea bag, a note...any little bitty treat to add a sense of excitement and anticipation to the month of December.

My little bottle brush tree was too green for this assemblage, so I painted it white and then added clusters of sparkly gold bead and berry clusters (out of stock at the moment, but Bonnie will replenish as soon as she can) to the tree base along with deep red gypsophila blossoms. I just love seeing the giant Christmas trees in the mall....you know, the ones that are banked with poinsettias.  That's the look I was going for here.

When it came time to make the bow, I decided to custom color some white seam binding. In case you've never done this,  I put together a quick step out tutorial for you.

Cut a 1 yard length of white seam binding, and crumple it up a little.

Choose two colors of Distress Markers to color the seam binding.  I used Pine Needles and Festive Berries to go along with my Christmas theme.

I used the broad nib on the marker and drew a green line on the bottom of the ribbon, then used the Festive Berries to make a red line on the opposite side, leaving a wide white strip down the middle.

Lightly spritz the marker with water and let the colors wick for a minute.  Then dry with a heat gun.  Don't crumple the ribbon until the ink is nearly dry, or the colors will bleed into one another and you will lose the striped effect.

Use your Zutter Bow-it-All tool to tie a multi loop bow and then top it with red, green and gold jingle bells to make everything fun and festive.

Seam binding is a wonderful item to have in your ribbon stash, because in just a few seconds, you can customize it to work with any project.  And, it's very easy to tie into a fancy bow.  Bonnie sells it in 100 yard spools for just $15.99.  That's a whole lot of ribbony goodness for not a lot of money!

Hope you enjoyed this little tutorial.  If so, let me know in the comment section below, and I'll try to throw more of these your way in coming posts.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheerio,
kathy