We are still recovering from the most fun day of the year! This year we had 15 crafts offered, varying in price, skill level and decorating style (country versus elegant) because we have such a wide diversity of incomes and interests in the ward. The crafts offered were:

• Apple berry beaded candle centerpiece (two pillar candles with a beaded pattern on a gold plate (BYO) with an apple berry pick)
• Apple berry table centerpiece
• Apple berry wreath
• A large wooden pumpkin cutout, that is sanded, stained all over, and the only the front painted orange, with a little bit of raffia and a green leaf.
• Wooden stars on sticks, in a cube base (very popular)
• A wooden plaque that had wooden tiles painted to resemble a quilt block.
• Holiday note cards, set of 5
• Painted glass candy jars (from the Dollar Store)
• A Halloween wreath with wooden cutouts to paint stuck to it
• A summer wreath with sunflowers and ladybugs
• Memory boards (upholstered board with ribbon stapled to them in a criss-cross design, and buttons glued on the intersection
• A decoupage box edged in gold pen (tear chunks of paper to decoupage, when
  dry, outline each piece of paper with gold pen)
• A eucalyptus swag

The most popular craft (37) was a season-less “gospel” craft. It was based on the March 2004 talk by Russell M. Nelson about the fruits of the gospel. On my printer, I took all the “fruits of the gospel ” (love, hope, faith, temperance, kindness, etc.) and formatted them to equal size regardless of the amounts of letters in the word, and used a blue-green font. Using an 11×17 frame (we crackle finished them in blue overlaid with white), cut green-grey art paper to fit the frame. Position post-its on the top and sides.
Then, using a 1″ leaf stamp and dark green dye ink, stamp an oval tree shape, overlapping the leaves, and not re-inking the stamp too often.

With a rose stem stamp (shaped like a parentheses), make the trunk.

Take large oval page pebbles (clear rubber dot stickers that look like water beads) and stick them on the white computer printed sheet words, centering the words in the page pebble. Cut out the page pebbles carefully (just use scissors) and stick them in the tree as fruit. Taking the leaf stamp with aqua opaque ink, print a few more leaves in aqua.

Tear a strip of blue green paper straight across to make the ground for the green and glue it on, torn side up (looks cool, like grass). Frame and go.

I used my Stampin-up kit that has parts for making a rose to do this (hence the rose stem), but you can do it how you like (free hand a trunk, use any leaf stamp). Everyone did theirs slightly differently and they all looked very neat. We offered them with or without frames, to keep the cost down.

The above idea came to me in a dream, after thinking about the tree with desirable white fruit. You could use this idea to make family trees also.

We a had breakfast and lunch buffet (bagels were free from a bakery the night before; tell them it is for your church group), played Christmas music, and had holiday decorations on the stage. We put up tables (according to how many signed up) and covered them with butcher paper, and put a sign on each table.

Each teacher brought materials packaged as kits (leaving out shared supplies) and written instructions (in case the sister couldn’t do it that day). We had assigned different teachers to teach 9-11, 11-1, and 1-3pm, so the teachers could have fun also. But people could do the craft any time, the teacher just wouldn’t be available.

And we do need to delegate more of the clean-up. It ended up just the 4 committee members at the end — everyone else boogied on home.

-Lynda G