Stencil Your Way to a Basket of Blessings!

Hi everyone, it's Gwen here today to share with you a new project that I did recently to help celebrate Thanksgiving in my home. I'm calling it my Thanksgiving Basket of Blessings! It's a little bit more cutesy than my usual projects, but I just couldn't resist making this fun little turkey to preside over my "basket."

I started off making his feathers. For this, I picked two shades of brown cardstock. On the darker cardstock, I used a white pencil to trace part of the design from Nathalie Kalbach's Art Deco Wallpaper stencil.

Then, I used a sharp x-acto knife to cut out the designs (After a little experimenting, I found that the easiest way for me was to cut the designs out before cutting out the feather shape so I didn't have to tape them to my glass mat.)

On the lighter cardstock, I used parts of the Feathers and Lattice stencil by Daniella Woolf. Here you can see all seven of my feathers with the designs cut out.

Next I picked seven pieces of scrap patterned paper in different colors (I tried to pick subtle patterns that would look okay through the openings in the feathers) and glued them onto the backs of my cut out pieces and then trimmed.

And Voila! Turkey feathers!

To complete my turkey, I cut some circles, legs, and a beak and put together the body.

To tie in the feather motif a bit more, I added in some more stenciling using the Falling Feathers stencil by Lizzie Mayne along with some brown Archival Ink. Then I adhered my cut-out feathers to the back with my tape runner.

To finish, I got a clean fruit container I'd saved from the grocery store and taped a stick to the back of my turkey so that he would stand up - the stick slides to the outside of the container while his legs go on the inside. And for the container - my "bucket," I made up slips of paper using a stamp set I had handy - one slip for every day of the month.

Then I wrote down a blessing in my life or something I'm grateful for on a slip for every day of the month so far, and I'll keep writing something every day for the rest of the month.

When I finished them, I folded them all in half and put them in my little basket. Any time I start to get stressed, frustrated, or need any kind of pick me up, I can pull out a random blessing and be reminded of how much I have to be grateful for. I've found that it never fails to make me feel better and give me a little lift.

That's my project for today, I hope you enjoyed it! And if you do something similar, please make sure to come back and share! If you want to try making your own little turkey, I made up a pattern for the one I made that you can save and print out at home if you'd like.

Thanks for stopping by, and Happy Thanksgiving to those who are celebrating!

Gwen Lafleur