Welcome to the Handyman's Holiday Hop

Hi everyone and welcome!  Today is the day we have been anxiously waiting for so we can share our creations.  I first would like to give a shoutout to the wonderful companies who have generously sponsored this hop:  Quick Quotes ScrapbookCompany, Heartfelt Creations, Helmar, and D’s PaperStudio.  

Also, Our “Be Inspired Giftaway” is featured at D’s Paper Studio. Check out Debby’s blog for details. Four winners will be chosen from comments on all the blog posts in the Handyman’s Holiday Hop.  

I love Halloween and Christmas so enjoy decorating for both of them.   Recently, I had picked up a bottle of glow in the dark paint and that ended up being the inspiration for my Halloween brush. I wish I would have been able to share some pictures of it glowing in the dark, but unfortunately they just didn't want to turn out, but I have shared how to do it so you can make your own.  

I first painted a sheet of paper sheet of paper with the glow in the dark paint and let it dry.  Then, I cut out the pieces using the Tim Holtz Thinlits dies by Sizzix:  Village Graveyard and Haunted House which has been two of my favorite die sets this year.  I ended up attaching the house die cut to the painted paper and fussy cutting around it so that I could have the paper line the windows instead of being cut out by the die, but that's okay because I love how it turned out with a small white edge around the house that glows, too!  After all my years of creating I never have owned a set of number stamps so my husband took care of that and bought me some that had the amazing "31" and "ST" in it so I stamped those on in white to add a little something to the blank area at the bottom of the house.  

I liked the bristles for this one in the natural color, but they still looked a little empty to me so one day while my son and I had made a stop at on of the local dollar stores I found the spider and web in the Halloween section.  Perfect!  Those were just what I needed to finish it and they are glittered so they have a little sparkle, too.  

My Christmas brush I hit a wall with for some reason.  I just couldn't figure out what to do. My Christmas craft supplies have dwindled over the years and I have purchased more so I wasn't sure what I was going to use.  Well, that shopping trip helped with that, too.  I love poinsettias.  Every year we have them on our tree, I have dishes with them on and the list goes on.  I found this awesome poinsettia ornament which actually has a clip on the back to clip it to a tree or a piece of ribbon so that quickly became the focal point to my brush.  I wanted to make this brush look more like it had been used so I worked some red paint up the bristles and let it dry and then dipped the ends in green.  Everyone who knows me and knows that I have gone into making jewelry knows that I love things that are shiny and resemble beads or shapes of beads and that's what the green adhesive embellishments reminded me of so I had to have them.  In the end, they reminded me of green paint dripping from the brush.  It's amazing what a few items for your local dollar store can create isn't it?  This brush was so well liked by my family that it will hang on our tree and I am to make some more for some other people.  

I encourage you to try your hand at altering a paint brush, too.  I know you'll find it a fun thing to do and whether you get really detailed with it as you will see along the hop or just simple brushes like mine here it will be something you enjoyed and created yourself!

Thanks for stopping by today! The next stop on the blog hop is Jean Marmo's blog Pages in Time.  If at any time you get lost along the way there is a list of all blogs on D's Paper Studio


Happy Creating Everyone!
~Peg