Winter Suncatchers – Holiday Fun for the Whole Family

My favorite days in the winter are those when the sky is a clear, bright blue and the sun is shining. On those days the temperature isn’t much of a concern because it’s just so pretty out. But let’s face it. Sometimes, no matter how pretty the sky is, it’s just too cold to spend time outside. So bring the best of the outdoors, in!

Suncatchers can really make the indoors sparkle with that natural sunlight.  Plus, they are so versatile. My son and I paint them together and then attach them to holiday gifts. My son loves giving out these presents, bragging that he painted the attached suncatcher just for that person.  Some of our friends hang the suncatchers on their Christmas trees and then after the holidays put them up in bright windows so they can enjoy them all year long.

We don’t even carve out a ton of extra time to paint our suncatchers. It becomes part of our holiday preparations. We do have one special tradition though: when we know we are going to get snow, we pull out some special designs and paint them the night before so that they are ready to glitter against all of the pretty fresh snow.

What do you do with your suncatchers?

Crafty Stocking Stuffers

Thanks to our friends over at CraftGossip.com we discovered our favorite new website: Bugs and Fishes! The site is the brainchild of Laura “Lupin” Howard who confesses that she is obsessed with felt. We didn’t need to know much more to love her. But then we took a peak at some of her projects and all we could say was, WOW!

Laura has a creative vision and ideas that got the wheels turning for us. In fact, she published a wonderful article full of adorable projects that would be perfect as stocking stuffers. Check it out!

Do Laura’s projects give you ideas? Share them with us! Tis the season to be making gifts and with all the people on our list we need as many ideas as we can get!

Winning Ideas

Over the summer we ran a contest asking crafters to show us their Back-to-School themed projects. Kimberly Crick won the contest with her a set of tags that featured an animal on one side and the letter and word on the other. (See it here.)

We were curious about what Kimberly did with the products she won, so we asked her.

She made this beautiful Checkers set using Lara’s squares and discs. She stamped her own designs to create the pattern of the board and the crowns for the kings.

We loved her out-of-the box thinking on this project and were inspired to try it for ourselves.

What do you think? What other games could you recreate in your own style?

And the Stockings were Hung by the Chimney with Care…

I don’t know about you, but it seems like every other year or so we  are adding stockings. Whether we’re replacing worn out ones or adding new members to the family doesn’t seem to matter. We just need more. Plus, my son loves to give his teachers gifts in a stocking as an extra touch so we’ve had to figure out quick and creative stocking making. Fortunately, we have some really talented designers on our team to help us with that!


Over the next three weeks we are going to share fun and different stocking ideas with you. Make them to decorate your hearth, or give them as gifts. Either way the process is fun and much like snowflakes, you can make each one unique.

This week we’re starting out simple with a basic mini stocking. This little guy is easy to make and perfect for gift cards, candy, dog or cat treats and other small gifts. Mix it up a bit by making it with different colors of felt, or add Stick-It Felt numbers letters or shapes for an extra touch.

Have fun and show us your cute little creations!

Thanksgiving Reflections

Our Thanksgiving holiday was a wonderful time for us to spend with our families and think about all of the wonderful people and opportunities in our lives. It also reminded us what a pleasure it is for us to craft and to share our crafts with others.

Crafting is so much more than just creating decorations or gifts. It’s a time to be creative and bond with friends and family. And in one special case, it was a time to learn a new culture and share some of our own.

A few summers ago we sent Kelly’s suncatchers with the Monaghan Baptist Church on their mission trip to Jamaica. We paint suncatchers all the time. We get excited by the new designs and love to get creative with them. But even we weren’t prepared for the reaction we got. 

The people our friends at Monaghan Baptist visited had never seen anything like our suncatchers before. They took excitement to a new level. And we got to see a craft we do every day through fresh eyes.

The Monaghan Baptist was a success on many levels. We are so glad we got to be a part of it.

Getting into the Spirit of Christmas

Now that we all have bellies full of turkey and have reminded all those near and dear just how grateful we are for them, it’s time to turn an eye toward Christmas.

The spirit of the season is about giving and while it is so much fun to watch someone receive and react to a gift, it is just as fun to do something for someone in secret. But instead of the traditional Secret Santa parties, we found a great way to get the whole family in on the act, without having to worry about gift lists, budgets, time lines and so on.

We call it the Gratitude Wreath. The wreath itself is pretty simple to make with dowel rods and squares of felt. It’s what you nestle inside the wreath that makes it really special.

Using long pieces of paper, friends and family can write down a good deed they’ve done, or something special that was done for them and anonymously tuck it into the wreath.  This way all of your family’s good deeds are recorded, thanks are given and you get a daily reminder of how all of those little things add up to make a big difference.

Want an easy way to get the little ones involved? Let them know that Santa and his elves can see the wreath. They’ll love knowing that every slip they add to the wreath helps them stay firmly on the “nice” list.

Click here for instructions to make this wreath. 

Frame It Up for Thanksgiving

We’ve been trying to pull together some fun and quick ideas for your Thanksgiving dinner. This project is an old favorite – easy enough to do for everyone at your table and pretty enough to keep in your house all year long. 

You can get this project done in no time – you just need a frame, some jute or twine and our fall leaves assortment. If you want to change the look a little bit, you can use felt instead of jute for the background. If you stick with the jute, simply wrap it around the frame. Place and then glue your leaves and you’re done!

If you want to use this as a name plate on your table, simply print or write your guests’ names on cardstock and put it in place. Or, take your favorite Thanksgiving photo and proudly display it.

Happy Thanksgiving from New Image Group!