funEZcrafts funblog – Page 6 – ideas and tips for crafting and solving household problems

New Addition – Jingle Bell Wreath

This simple and easy project takes very few materials and tools to make a pretty and cheerful jingle bell wreath ornament.

Take a look at these versions:

Here’s another version using silver bells with blue and silver ribbon.

Another gold version uses red and gold ribbon.

These fun and easy ornaments take very little time and very little expense to make. Enjoy making them as a family project to add to your tree, to trim your home or to give as gifts.

The instructions can be found at funEZcrafts’ Jingle Bell Wreath page.

Snow Angel

Here’s a snow angel that won’t melt, won’t get your behind wet and won’t get snow down your neck.

This fun and easy Christmas crafts snow angel ornament requires two simple materials and just minutes of your time to make.

With small variations on the bends in the wires, you can vary the shapes of your snow angels. Here are two different angels side-by-side:

Take a look at the second angel hanging on the tree:

You can find the detailed how-to instructions along with pictures on our funEZcraft’s snow angel page.

Have fun!

Take a look at this pretty ornament that is also a sachet for holding your choice of scent – spices for the holidays or a fresh scent for your home. You can also use this pretty sachet year round in a closet or a drawer with your favorite scent inside the sachet.

The first one shows white doilies trimmed with green ribbon. The scent pouch made of green felt can be seen through the doily.

The next one shows tone on tone colors of beige. This one is reminiscent of an elegant Victorian decoration.

These pretty and easy Christmas ornaments are small (three inches in diameter), simple to make and inexpensive too. They take little time allowing you to make several for gifts, to hang on your own tree or as year long useful sachets.

You can find the instructions here: Easy Felt Crafts: Doily Sachet

Tiny Dancer

We’ve added a new and very easy ornament to our Easy Christmas Crafts section.

She (or he) is a tiny dancer made of chenille wire. The girls need two twelve inch wires and the boys need one and a half wires.

They’re fun, easy and inexpensive to make. They can be a fast project for one, or they can be a group project to make several.

From children to seniors, the tiny dancers are easy and fun.

Here’s the pretty in pink and the cool blue dancers:

You can find the Tiny Dancer instructions along with a fun YouTube video of a young Elton John singing Tiny Dancer on our web site: funEZcraft’s Tiny Dancer

Have fun making these quick and easy dancers!

Pretty in Pink, Purple Passion and Black Elegance

Here are some more fun examples of the Easy Christmas Crafts – Beaded Christmas Wreath and Easy Felt Crafts – Keepsake Gift Bag.

Pretty in Pink, Purple Passion and Black Elegance will travel across the pond (otherwise known as the Atlantic ocean) to Scotland.

Pretty in Pink goes to a pretty little girl who loves pink and who loves to dance.

Here’s the matching pink keepsake bag.

Her mom loves the color purple, thus Purple Passion for her.

Here the ornaments are ready to go in the matching keepsake bag:

Her dad likes black – what better than Black Elegance?

The black keepsake gift bag holds the elegant beaded Christmas wreaths.

With a variety, many combinations of the beads can be made into wreaths from fun and whimsical to pretty and elegant. Plus, you can match the keepsake bags to the colors in the wreaths. But, if you want, you can contrast the colors or use holiday red, green, gold, blue and silver colors.

New Addition – Easy Canvas Shopping Bag

Have you joined the green movement? Or, perhaps you just don’t like to use all that plastic and paper for shopping bags. Not only do you have to do something with those bags when you get them home, but they also tend to break open at the worst possible moment.

The eggs break, the bread gets crushed and the heavy cans hit your toes when they fall through the broken bags.

Now, we show you how to make an easy and inexpensive easy canvas shopping bag that is both strong and long-lasting. Plus, it is washable time after time.

Even if you want to make just a couple, it still may be cheaper to purchase a canvas drop cloth from the painting supplies area of your favorite store. The canvas drop cloth comes in a variety of sizes and you can get a lot of material for much less than buying the canvas by the yard.

There may be imperfections in the drop cloth canvas; however those imperfections should add character to your bag.

Plus, when you make the bag yourself, you can determine the resulting size. Ours is deeper than those reusable bags you can find in stores for purchase. Also, the handles are longer such that you can carry the bag or put the handles on your shoulder.

Frugal, fun and easy!

Holiday Red

It’s the middle of November and time to start making gifts for family and friends.

Take a look at these beaded Christmas wreaths in holiday red.

These beaded Christmas wreath ornaments use the same methods as found in our Easy Christmas Crafts – Beaded Christmas Wreath examples. But, for variety, we used different types of beads. The beads came in a bulk container – 1000s – with a mix of colors, sizes and shapes.

Six wreaths easily fit within the Easy Felt Crafts – Keepsake Gift Bag. Green yarn holds the sides together with the blanket stitch. For the drawstring, both green and red yarns – three of each color – make the braid.

This gift journeys to a distant city via a delivery service. Since it will be in a box, why not send the accompanying Christmas card as an Easy Christmas Crafts – Five Point Star?

Take a look:

What fun…six ornaments as gifts, a keepsake bag to keep them from year to year and a Christmas card that is also a five point star ornament.

All of these are fun and easy crafts. Take a look at the steps for each of them.

Keepsake Gift Bag

Another new addition today…we’ve added an Easy Felt Crafts – Keepsake Gift Bag. The bag can do dual duty as a gift bag and as a storage bag. The bag is just the right size to hold the Easy Christmas Crafts – Beaded Christmas Wreath ornaments.

This simple and fun bag easily holds six of the small beaded wreaths. Your friends and family can receive a nice number of ornaments and have a pretty storage bag to keep them in from year to year.

Or, the keepsake gift bag can hold Christmas candies or other small goodies – maybe some jewelry. It can also hold cinnamon and cloves to be hung on the tree for a nice holiday smell.

Plus, you can use this as a potpourri or sachet bag all year round.

Have fun!

New Additions!

We’ve been busy!

There are new additions to the web site in the Christmas crafts, felt crafts, paper crafts and frugal projects.

Let’s see, we have:

Easy Christmas Crafts – Five Point Star (using Christmas cards)

Easy Felt Crafts – Napkin Rings

Easy Christmas Crafts – Folded Paper Christmas Trees (a little different than kirigami)

Easy Frugal Projects – Aluminum Foil Trivets

Easy Frugal Projects – Wine Charms

Easy Paper Crafts – Five Point Star (a general how-to)

Easy Frugal Projects – Decorate with Color

These were just added today. If you haven’t visited in awhile, take a look there may be other additions you haven’t seen.

Enjoy!

Easy Felt Crafts – Wine Gift Bag

The holidays arrive soon. If you give hostess gifts, perhaps a bottle of wine is on your list.

We just added a simple yet pretty wine gift bag to our Easy Felt Crafts.

Quite a few of us do not like to drink wine, however we do enjoy cooking with wine. The sauces taste great and not anything like the wine itself. In these days when we need to be more economical, perhaps your hostess gift can be a good cooking wine, not necessarily a wine connoisseur’s drinking wine.

The bottle used in our example is a nice marsala that makes a great sauce for either beef or chicken.

Here’s a recipe that we enjoy. Try it. If you like it, the recipe can be part of your hostess gift – a nice but not expensive bottle of Marsala wine in a pretty wine gift bag with the addition of a easy but good recipe – compliments of funEZcrafts!

funEZcrafts’ Beef or Chicken in Marsala Wine Sauce

Shopping list:

>>Beef chunks (not stew beef – too gristly and tough – chuck is good) or two or three chicken breast halves

>>Marsala wine

>>Butter

>>Extra virgin olive oil

>>Package of baby bella mushroom slices (can leave this out if you don’t like mushrooms)

>>Heavy whipping cream (small container is fine)

>>Dried, minced onion

>>Salt

>>Pepper

Cut the meat into one inch cubes

Put a large, non-stick skillet on the stove on medium-high heat

Put two tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of olive oil in the skillet

Put the meat into the skillet, spreading it across the bottom of the pan for even cooking

Let the meat cook for 3-5 minutes, stirring it a couple of times

If the pan is dry, add another tablespoon of butter and another tablespoon of olive oil

Add the mushrooms to the pan with the meat

Add a teaspoon of the dry, minced onion

Sprinkle salt and pepper over the mixture (a half teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper)

Stir the mixture, allowing the mushrooms to absorb the butter and oil

Add one half cup of Marsala wine to the pan, stir briefly

Allow the wine to reduce by half (monitor your heat, you want the wine to bubble and evaporate but you don’t want the contents of the pan to burn)

Add one third cup of the heavy whipping cream, stir briefly to mix

Allow the liquid to reduce again (you’re looking for a thick sauce, almost as thick as gravy but not quite)

Remove from heat and place in serving dish.

Serves 4 to 6 people.

This is an easy week night recipe.

Enjoy!