Every year I seem to end up having a couple of holiday projects that I meant to blog about, but somehow they didn’t make the cut.

Sometimes it’s just because I didn’t think there was much to say about them.  For example, I painted up some faux cutting boards earlier this fall, and then added some of the I.O.D. Clementine transfers to them.

You might be thinking that those don’t look like ‘holiday’ decor, but the Clementine transfer was from the I.O.D. 2025 Holiday Release.  They did turn out lovely, but what could I say about them?  Paint the cutting boards, sand to distress, add a transfer and bam!  You’re done.

I also sometimes don’t share a project because I don’t like how it turns out.  For example, I picked up a pair of rusty deer at the Bachman’s after Christmas sale a couple of years ago.  They were definitely an impulse buy, and I really only grabbed them because they were 75% off.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a true ‘before’ picture of them.  However, after initially deciding to add some simple small stencils to them last year I did take a photo.

The stencils weren’t quite right.  So I shoved them into the back of the closet and walked away (remember? I said I have a tendency to do that when things don’t turn out).

But I pulled them back out again this year and decided to give them a different look.  I was inspired by the finish on the container in this photo …

 I started by painting over the deer entirely using a Dixie Belle color called The Gulf.

Then I stippled on blotches here and there of the Iron Patina Paint and followed that up with the green spray and then waited for the rust to appear (for a more detailed tutorial on using the Patina Paint, check out this post).

Next I pulled out an old re.design with prima transfer simply called Deer.  I used this transfer on this tacklebox back in 2019.

I still have some bits and pieces of it left, so I picked out some appropriate wording to add the bases of my rusty deer.

Well, somewhat appropriate anyway.

I do really like how the patina ended up looking on my metal deer.  They are a bit more rusty than the inspiration piece, but I think that’s OK.

By the way, if you’re looking closely you may notice that I still had a leafy green background in the garden when all of these photos were taken.  I actually finished these projects before my sale back in October.

Finally, some projects get pushed to the bottom of the list because something that I liked even better took precedence.  Such is the case with a trio of brushed that I upcycled as decor.

I purchased this old wallpaper paste brush at a garage sale a couple of months ago.

I simply added some Tim Holtz Eccentric Remnant Rubs to the handle.

In hindsight I wish I would have trimmed off the words “skill and” and just went with “for amusement only”.

Too late now.

For the next brush I started by painting the metal ferrule to give me a clean background to work with.  I simply brushed on some of Dixie Belle’s Truffle, and then while it was still wet I also blended in some of their Ecru.

Then I applied a label from the I.O.D. Winter Botanist transfer.

I had to cut it up a bit to get it to fit just right, but I love how it turned out.

I liked the addition of some more color in the transfer, so I went all out on the next brush with some more sweet little birds from an I.O.D. transfer.

I liked how the brushes turned out, but it just seemed like I always had something better to post so these kept getting pushed to the bottom of the list.

But with that, I’m nearly done with Christmas projects.  I have one more special project that I did just for myself to share on Wednesday though, so be sure to check back for that!