It’s finally here – the first of the Christmas craft videos! For this first video, I redid the background where I shoot my YouTube videos to be holiday themed!
The left shelf features a poster from The Guild as well as nerdy action figures with their tiny hats.
And the right shelf features the Keep Calm and DFTBA poster as well as some painted wine bottles and a sleeping kitty.
The first thing I did when putting this all together was cover everything with fake snow, aka leftover spiderwebs from Halloween.
I also made a red paper chain out of cardstock to give the whole thing another pop of color. This is super easy – just cut up cardstock to pieces approximately .8″ x 5.5″ and then hot glue them into a chain, keeping all of the loops uniform.
Of course I had to make tiny hats for my action figures again. The santa hat is just red cardstock rolled into a cone with some of the fake snow hot glued on to make the trim. And the reindeer antlers are cut out of a paint swatch book and then glued onto a piece of wire which fits around the Ood’s head. Don’t they look super cute?
My favorite though is BobbleJohn’s elf costume. The collar is really easy – just cut the star shape out of two colors of cardstock and glue them together on one side (leave the other side unglued so you can open it up to slip it around his neck). Then glue on some gold rope to make the trim and you’re done! The hat was a little tricker; there was a lot of cutting and gluing and then ripping apart and adjusting and gluing again and then even more cutting. But I really like how the shape came out, even if the glue did get a bit messy when I started putting the trim on.
Along the same lines, I also had to dress up my Guild Poster. Codex has a nice Santa hat and fur collar while Wil Wheaton got some reindeer antlers and a Rudolph nose. And of course, a bow and gift tag for his sword ;) These are just taped to the glass in the frame with double stick tape – if you don’t have a frame, you could use artist’s tape instead which has a weaker adhesive and hopefully won’t ruin your poster when you try to remove it.
On the outside of the frames, I had the idea to border them with lace and ribbon to make them feel more festive and liven it up a bit. I really love how this came out!
To fill in the gaps between the craft projects, I filled all of the clear containers I had with holiday garlands and colored glass stones.
I filled these painted wine bottles with silver pipe cleaners, which instantly gives them a holiday look!
I’m really happy with how the whole layout came out.
Though of course it wouldn’t be complete without a dalek. Who else is crazy excited for the new Doctor Who Christmas special?
And every Christmas display needs a sleeping kitty. The hat is an ornament I found at home over Thanksgiving which is actually a knitted bell with a jingle bell inside.
This action figure just makes me laugh. I think he’s supposed to be a chimney cleaner, but to me it just looks like he’s waving a flag that’s actually a giant leaf.
These red glasses are just painted movie theater 3D glasses! I hooked them onto a container filled with the pieces from the inside of the ampersands.
This gold garland was super cheap and I got the bottle at a recycled craft supply store, but I think together they just look gorgeous!
Of course I had to include a few of the extra ampersands to show some typographic love. You can buy these ampersands as a necklace or key chain at http://dftba.com/karen!
I love this little accordion player guy, though I am a little confused about why he has purple lips.
So sparkly!!
A little more love for Santa!Codex and Rudolph!Fawkes.
The giant Caslon ampersand finally meets its perfect background with the silver ampersand silhouettes. These sheets made the perfect shiny but not too distracting backgrop.
Overall I’m really happy with how it came out! Stay tuned to my channel and my Tumblr for more videos about nerdy ornaments, wrapping presents, and other awesome crafting ideas! And one more reminder, if you want to buy the ampersand necklaces or key chains, you can do so at http://dftba.com/karen. Thanks so much for reading, and have a happy holiday season!
