Hello, Friends! My November Crafting Agenda: Wrapping Up My First Year, Tackling Christmas, and Hitting the Craft Fair Circuit!

Welcome back to Fran’s Friends! Can you believe it? We’re heading into November and December, and that means I will officially have completed my first full year—my first 12 months—on this crafting journey with all of you! It’s been an absolute whirlwind, and I’m so excited to share what we’ve accomplished and what’s on the horizon. We’ve hit a huge milestone with nearly 90 videos on the channel, and I’ve also been putting a lot of love into the website to make it an even better resource for everyone.

🍂 A Look Back: My October Triumphs

October was a bustling month filled with holidays and projects! I managed to tick off so many things on my to-do list:

• Christmas Preparation: I’ve almost completed all the small Christmas ornaments for my annual advent calendar—only November and December’s projects are left to do!
• Beading and Embroidery: I explored a beautiful beaded embroidered hoop, learning how to flawlessly incorporate beads into my standard embroidery techniques.
• DIY Halloween Boys: This was a fun, multi-faceted series where I created four small pumpkin “boys” dressed in Halloween regalia. This project was a great lesson in using different materials like t-shirt fabric, wire, and wood.
• The Upcycled Witch: I gave a major face-lift to a kitchen witch I received back in the 1970s. It was looking a little worn, so an upgrade was definitely in order!
• The Canvas Crow: I dedicated a good portion of the month to projects using canvas bags. My personal favourite was the canvas crow, another mixed-media piece incorporating paint and woods. I designed this piece to cover both my Thanksgiving table, complete with a cornucopia and homemade sock pumpkins, and then transition seamlessly into Halloween decor with a witch’s hat!
• The Pumpkin Man: I also managed to bring my adorable Pumpkin Man to life! He’s made from a pumpkin pie tin, muslin I dyed with coffee, and he stands on legs and feet I created using my signature i-cord material. He’s got buttons for eyes, a little nose and mouth, and, of course, a little heart on the back. For storage, I’ve designed him to lean against something, which works perfectly!

💡 Resource Spotlight: Pattern Deciphering and Inspiration

Speaking of projects, October was a great reminder of how many free resources are out there to spark our creativity!

I’ve been diving deep into Pinterest lately, and it’s a goldmine for free patterns that you can download and then upsize or downsize to fit your needs. That’s where I found the pattern for my Mini Bear! It was such a great challenge because the pattern came with no instructions, and it was in a different language. I had to intuitively figure out the pieces by deciphering the alphabetized markings—A to B, C to D—for the positioning. It was a wonderful exercise in pattern recognition!

I also drew a lot of inspiration for my Halloween pieces from other great creators: I looked to Moth Art for ideas on seasonal decor, and the perfect witch’s hat for my canvas crow was inspired by a pattern from Merry Dolls! You can truly gain so much by just picking out different bits and pieces from various resources and making them your own.

🎄 My November & December Agenda: A Christmas Focus

As we move into the final months of the year, my focus is, naturally, on Christmas! Over the years, I have created so many Christmas projects I could literally stock an entire store! This year, instead of making dozens of new items, I’m going to create a series of videos dedicated to how I’ve approached Christmas crafting and memory-making over time.

This series will include:

• Documenting Memories: I’ll share my system for documenting our Christmas memories, which includes making special covered books for all the Christmas cards and documenting every single moment from the day my son arrives until the day he leaves. I put all of it onto a USB drive each year so I can always go back and relive those special times!
• A Look at Past Projects: We’ll take a tour of some of my classics—Santa Claus figures, gnomes, and projects I made by upcycling old Christmas toys.

I will also make time for a couple of simple new tutorials, like how to make an adorable Acorn/Pine cone Ornament out of an egg-shaped styrofoam and a beautiful ribbon ornament using gold and festive Christmas ribbon!

🌐 Promoting the Website: See Me at the Craft Fair!

One of my biggest goals this November is to start getting the word out about Fran’s Friends in the local community. I’m going to be attending a local church Christmas craft fair, but I won’t be selling my projects! My sole purpose is to promote the website and the channel.

My display will feature a few fun things:

• AI Art: My son has been sending me the cutest AI-generated pictures of me as a crafter—he even sent me one for my birthday and another specially for November and December! I’ll be featuring these fun images.
• The QR Code: I’ll have an enlarged copy of my business card featuring a QR code that people can scan to automatically link them to the website. It’s all about making it as easy as possible to become a new friend of the channel!

I may also be working on a Nutcracker from a Lisa Pay master class pattern, but I have to be careful—I really don’t need any more Christmas crafts!

I’m so excited to look forward to the next year of this amazing journey and finding new ways that I can carry on and improve people’s lives through the joy of crafting.

Thanks for watching, friends!