Merry Christmas!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas! I'm here to share the card that I made for my mom for Christmas, based on the Off The Wall Craftiness challenge from last week. I know I missed the deadline, but I was completely inspired, so I had to share...

Some quick DEEtails:

Rose Red, Cherry Cobbler and Garden Green card stocks stamped with SU!'s new Button, Button set, arranged as a tree using Stampin' Dimensionals on Naturals White card stock, embossed with PTI's Diamonds Impression plate.

But now, on to the good stuff! I wanted to share what my brothers, my hubby and I did for my mom's Christmas present. We sent our parents out for a day and got to work to turn our previous dining room turned sewing room back into a dining room and transform our formal living room, which didn't serve much purpose than a holding room for a lot of random stuff (including golf clubs, a piano, pretty things to look at and more sewing stuff).

Here is her new "studio". The room is positioned at the front of the house. This window looks out to our front lawn. These curtains were in the formal living room and we decided to leave them in there for now. Changing them out to something more colorful might be a future project. The shelves in front of the window were some simple wood ones that my dad built a while ago. We set up a mini ironing board on one and left the other space open. Underneath are some boxes of supplies and bolts of various linings that mom uses on her bags. In the center of the room is a brand new table and PINK lamp that we purchased. We pulled up some old dining room chairs that we had in the basement. You can't see it in the photos, but we added a chair mat that my friend, Rebecca donated, to make it a bit easier to pick up loose threads that fall on the ground. We're planning on securing those cords...

My Aunt bought my mom a body form and we set it up in this room. We brought down the lamp from our playroom and switched out the light bulbs to be natural light rather than soft white light. Behind it, are a few rolls of additional materials - vinyl and such. In the center of the wall is our old dining table, set up as a cutting table. We placed it between two old bookshelves, lined with mini bolts of fabric that my brothers and I wrapped. The left bookshelf holds binders of inspirational ideas that my mom has been gathering. The little shelf piece with the ribbon organizer on the right bookshelf is a new piece that we bought and my little brother built.

Here's another view of that side of the room. We decided to put up paintings and artwork that we had created. The three in the center were made by big brother - a self-portrait, a garden painting and a cute koala. The big mermaid painting was something that I made in 2nd grade. The artwork in the other photos are by also by my brothers and me (a self portrait of me is hanging above the body form), as well as one made by my grandmother (mom's mom). We also bought the shelving unit in the corner to match one that my mom had purchased before. This gives her a lot of more space to organize and store all her stuff! We bought a couple of pretty glass jars to display some buttons and threads and placed them up there.

To the right of the mermaid painting and shelf unit is an opening to our dining room. On the opposite side of the opening is the original shelving unit along with a self-portrait and poem by little brother. (If you were keeping track, that's all 3 of our self-portraits!) We made this little area her "business area" with personalized notepads, business cards, tags, and some of her favorite PINK tools - tape dispenser, white out, etc.

I made a cork board and dry erase board and hung it in the corner along with a yard sale find - a tiny shelf made from a yard stick. These wooden spools of silk thread were passed down from my paternal grandmother. They were the perfect colors for my mom's work room!

And here's the final touch... I made this sign for my mom. It hangs right above the doorway into the dining room. Hope you've enjoyed the little craft room tour! If you're interested in seeing a few of her creations, click here. I've opened up an Etsy shop for her, but haven't stocked it yet. I'll keep you posted! :)

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and got all that you wished for! :)