Some people put up their holiday decorations as soon as Thanksgiving is over. Some wait until Christmas Eve. Right now, the only thing in my whole apartment that would tip you off is a tiny little fake tree on the counter. I've been planning on decorating all month, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet.
With the new year just around the corner, it's a time we all reminisce about the year that was. In the midst of families fighting over white elephant presents and the financial stress that comes with holiday gifting, you may also be dealing with the stress of hosting parties and get-togethers as well as the decorating that goes with it.
Autumn is a time of year when everything looks, smells, and tastes good. The scents of cinnamon and spices are everywhere you go, and even the dead leaves that fall off the trees are pretty. In particular, the fruits and vegetables of the season are gorgeous.
You may or may not care about this, but sometimes it physically upsets me when I see gears stuck together haphazardly, with no concern for whether their teeth interlock. I mean, what do you do with non-interlocking gears?
Since it's October and Halloween is fast approaching, it's time for a series of articles on how to make the coolest Steampunk Halloween decorations for your home! In this installment, we'll look at some jack-o'-lanterns, skulls, and a few other things that are easy to Steampunk, but will still keep that "spooky" Halloween feeling.
Don't spend all your hard-earned money on store-bought Christmas decorations this year. Spend it on cheap paper and make your own Christmas decorations, like this origami snowflake.
Christmas is The holiday of the year for many bakers, as the festive occasion offers more than enough excuses to bring out their best cookies, cakes, cupcakes, and yummy desserts. All red and green and Christmas-themed, of course. Christmas allows those creative juices to flow, but offers up very specific icons to work with.
In this tutorial, we learn how to craft quilled Christmas decorations. First, you will need to take paper and cut it into thin strips that are all the same size. After you do this, you will need to take a think stick and wrap the paper around it all in the same place. Once finished, you will need to take this circle of rolled paper and place it into a stencil that has a bunch of circles on it. Shape these circles into teardrops and then glue them together with other pieces to shape into a sno...
Eyeballs are spooky any time of the year, not just at Halloween. Whether they're on a necklace chain as evil eye pendants or simply being displayed as diagrams at the optomotrist's office, they're inherently creepy.
If you need to make lots of frosting flowers (such as for decorating a wedding cake), you can make many of the flowers ahead of time and then let them air dry before putting them on your cake. This video shows you how to make hydrangeas, gardenias, roses and Gerber daisies out of buttercream frosting.
This tutorial shows how to make tiny molded roses and leaves that you could put on cupcakes. To start you only need a few ingredients: icing sugar, water, paste coloring, fondant icing sugar, and a piping bag (optional). Mix all ingredients together, then put them in a bag so they stay soft. Make the color of the rose or petals any color you want. Knead the dough so that you will have the color you would like. Next, break off a piece of the kneaded dough and form it into a cone shape. Break o...
Homemade Christmas decorations and crafts! Get tips for making snowmen for your Christmas tree or window in this free video series.
Learn how to clean up after Christmas and pack away Christmas decorations in this free home organization video series.
Learn how to make fabric Christmas decorations and ornaments to decorate your Christmas tree, with expert craft tips in this free holiday video series.
In this video you learn how to make fun, creative, and cheap decorations for Halloween. You learn how to make Halloween "Koozies" and how to make a Halloween tree. This video shows the materials you'll need to make each one. The materials you'll need for the "Koozies" are 1/4 yard fabric, ribbons and boas, a glue gun, candy and craft bags. The materials you will need to make the Halloween Tree are parchment paper, craft glue, raffia, ornaments, small branches, a black marker, and a vase. The ...
The Dremel Stylus tool is ideal for any wood worker or wood crafter. This versatile and easy to use tool can let you carve or whittle any number of projects out of wood, such as a wooden relief. This video demonstrates how to carve a piece of ivy onto a wooden box.
In this video, we learn how to recycle old windows into new decorations. First, you can make a coffee table by using the old window and adding legs onto the bottom of it. You can also place a box around the bottom and hinge the window to make a display case. This is simple to make and doesn't cost much, you only need to pay for the legs of the table! You can also use the window to make a pot rack, but make sure you have strong hooks in the ceiling to hold the rack tightly and it will be able ...
Make some candy Christmas trees as decorations this holiday season! All you need is some Styrofoam cups and a collection of your favorite Christmas candies, like gumdrops or peppermints. You can use hot glue to attach the candies, or toothpicks if you want to eat them later.
Are you feeling the love in the room tonight? Why not celebrate the ambiance with some flower power cupcakes? Watch this video to learn how to make these delicious flower power cupcakes. Start with a simple Betty Crocker cupcake mix, and then add candy decorations on top. No one will be able to keep their hands off of these!
In this tutorial, learn how to go green this holiday season. You will get some helpful tips and advice on how to turn your old, outdated or broken Christmas ornaments into brand new Holiday crafts!
This is a great food project for the holidays. Melt some chocolate, make a piping tool, draw your chocolate decorations, and refrigerate. You'll have plenty of chocolate goodies to last you for at least a month. That is, if they're not all eaten up by then.
Make snowman Christmas tree decorations with tips from this how-to video. You will need two styrofoam balls, some toothpicks, a white sock, plaid fabric, orange pipe cleaners, and more. Watch this video tutorial to learn what else you will need.
Gumpaste and fondant are a fantastic to make regular cakes extraordinary. Once you have mastered the art of making fondant flowers watch this how to video. This how to video will show you how to wire gumpaste flowers together to form cake decorations.
This video shows you how to make sugar flowers for cake decorations. Follow along with these cake decorating tips as our pastry chef explaining the petal paste techniques. Use the petal paste technique to make sugar flowers for any cake.
Watch how you can inflate condoms and make them into dancing decorations that blink to the beat of your party music. Pretty clever if you can figure out what supplies he's using.
This video shows how to make wine-themed cake decorations.We can see Courtney and Ceasey's birthday cake in this video. The bottles, apples and the grapes are made of fondant. The leaves are made of modeling chocolate. We can make decorations. First take a piece of modelling chocolate. Roll it out. Dust the surface with confectioners sugar or cocoa. Use plastic leaf as a model. Then press the viened side into the leaf to make an impression. We nead 8 leaves to cover the sides of a 9 inch thre...
In this video, we learn how to craft orange-and-clove Christmas decorations. First, you will need to grab some oranges from a local supermarket, along with ribbon, and cloves. Now, grab the close and pierce it into the skin of the orange. This will release the smell of the orange and give you the scent of the clove as well. You can now make any design on the orange that you would like to! When you are finished decorating these, you can attach a ribbon to any part of them that you would like. ...
Grass is one of those things you'd think would be easy to replicate in icing, but actually end up becoming your worst nightmare. The problem that most cake enthusiasts have is that they think grass can be made from just about any piping tip, which is not the case as the result is usually a tangled, uneven mess.
In this video, we learn how to make Mario Party star coin decorations. First, trace templates for the star coin onto a large piece of gold paper. You can get these templates from CoolPartyBlog. After you have traced the entire outline, retrace using a permanent marker, you want your lines dark and full. Continue doing this for all of the coin stars. Now, take the star template and trace it into the inside of the circles with the permanent marker. When finished, add glitter paint or loose glit...
In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to make swirled chocolate heart cake decorations. Users will need a heart shape cookie cutter. Brush some oil inside the cookie cutter and some butter one the outside. Then press on some wax paper on the outside of the cookie cutter to create mold. Now pour in some melted white chocolate and fill in the heart shape. Now add the chocolate. Using the sharp point of a knife, swirl it around the chocolate to create a swirl design. Place the cake into the ...
This video shows you how to make your own home made Christmas reindeer decorations. You need some floral fabric, scissors, a few feathers, and some artificial eyes. Draw a reindeer template on some cardboard, using a cookie cutter if you wish, and cut it out. Paint some glue thinly on the reindeer shape. Lay the fabric on the glue and spread it out with your hands. You can use anything for this, even wrapping paper. This crafty look is very fashionable at the moment. Attach the plastic eyes a...
Baker Michael Anderson shows how to make three different festive cupcake decorations. Learn to adorn your cupcakes with either a reindeer, poinsettia, or holiday wreath made of frosting. The reindeer is made using brown, white, and black frosting, complete with a pair or pretzel antlers. For the poinsettia, red frosting is used for the petals, with yellow stamens and contrasting green for the leaves. The wreath uses heaps of green frosting with colorful sprinkles and a pretty red frosting bow...
Remember when you were just a wee little kid and there was nothing better to do on a snowy winter afternoon than cutting out paper snowflakes and unfolding them to see what beautiful shapes and designs would appear?
This is a fun and easy project you can do in an afternoon. Why spend money on expensive ornaments when you can go green to decorate your Christmas tree this year? All you need is some festive paper and thread.
You can create some lovely and cute cloth pumpkins to decorate your house for Thanksgiving! All you need is some scrap material in fall or pumpkin colors, and a few rolls of toilet paper. Wrap the fabric around the toilet paper, tuck and secure!
Coffee as a table decoration? You bet. You're probably used to having coffee in a cup as a hot drink or a cold latte, but coffee - rather, coffee beans - has so many uses than just for food.
A neat way to brighten up desserts is with flowers. In this how to video Chef Paul demonstrates how to make candied flowers in your own kitchen. Start with boiling water and add sugar. Let it boil until it gets a light yellow color. Dip your flowers and let them dry. Top off any dessert or cake with your candied flowers.
Royal icing is very versatile and great for cake decorating. In this how to video Edna teaches how to make simple royal icing daisies. Watch and learn how to make these beautiful daisy flowers out of royal icing for all your baked goods.
Faux bois is a fancy schmancy French term for fake wood. And faux bois prints on furniture, pillows, as wallpaper, and even as ingrained barks of chocolate are all the rage right now.
Karen shows you how to mix your colors and fill your bags. This example uses red blue and black. Begin by mixing blue. Start with royal blue coloring and add it to your frosting and mix it well. Dump the colored frosting into the middle of a sheet of plastic wrap. Roll it up in the plastic wrap, twist the edges, and now you have a little pouch with your frosting. Now take a bag with a coupler, and stick the plastic pouch of frosting in it. Pull it tight and rubber band the top of the bag, the...
