Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Glittery Ornaments - Part One

My husband has a large family and every year I like to make something for those who are local as a nice little gift. One year it was a plate of baked goods; one year was small jars of homemade jellies with little muffins. It's has usually been a food item that I could mass produce and package in some cute way. 
Well, baked goods won't really keep with my goal of a stress-less holiday season. I needed to come up with something I could do now and set aside. I found a good tutorial on making glitter ornaments here. Searching my stash I found a couple boxes of clear glass ornaments and figured this would be a good place to start.

The tutorial writer used Martha Stewart glitter. I didn't really want to spend the money on that, so I got a couple containers of regular glitter in red and green. It is not as fine a glitter as the Martha Stewart, but worked out just fine I think. The only negative to this larger glitter is if you hold the ornament up to the light, you can see the glass is not completely coated. This to me is not an issue because they look fine otherwise and I doubt the family will be searching for flaws.

I pretty much just followed the guidelines of the tutorial - this is not a difficult craft to do. One thing I will say is that I waited about an hour before I put the silver cap back on the ornament. I wanted to make sure the glitter dried and wouldn't flake off when it was finished. I showed them to my hubby and he said they looked store bought.

As much as I like these ornaments, they seem a little plain for a Christmas gift. Which is why this will be a two-part post. I'm not 100% sure when the next part will be posted, but I need to find some way to embellish these ornaments - to make them stand out. I have a couple ideas, I just need to get them done!

Monday, July 22, 2013

Christmas Planning in July

Every year I tell myself that I am going to get started on Christmas planning really early. The goal is to have as little stress as possible during the holiday season. This year, being on an especially tight budget, I've decided to actually follow through. I started my gift shopping in June and have to say I'm already done shopping for a couple of people.

I know, I miss all the great Black Friday sales. Sorry - I was never one for those sales. I'm not that crazy. On Thanksgiving I put a higher value on spending time with my family than prepping for all night shopping. Don't get me wrong, I still hit the sales - Memorial Day, Back to School and 4th of July are all good times to shop. And if you know what you want to get some one, you can bargain shop year round.

At any rate, to get myself ready for the holiday season, I've already made my Christmas cards. I even got the envelopes addressed and ready to go. One less thing for me to worry about later.

I found some really cute papers at my local Joann's (and on sale!), the gems I found at Walmart for $1 a pack (and I needed 2), and then the holidays just beg for glitter so I added a little glitter glue accents to the ornaments. I love the shimmer of glitter but hate how it goes everywhere! As a result, I am a strong advocate for glitter glue. You get the shimmer, but it actually stays where you want it!

Speaking of glitter, the red and white circles are textured, glittery paper. I just couldn't seem to get a good picture. :(

The cards went together relatively easily. I spent one afternoon was spent cutting out all the shapes and strips and finalizing what I wanted the cards to look like. The next afternoon was spent piecing everything together. I set up a little assembly line method. Now to just sign them and set them aside until it's time to mail them.