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!

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.

The Cozy Gift

There is always that one person you have a hard time shopping for. For me, it's my brother-in-law and his wife. They live about 100 miles away and much different interests than the family that is closer. They are always the most difficult to shop for.

This year, after much thought, and hair pulling-out and stress and asking the hubby "what do get them?" I decided on a simple personalized gift. I purchased a warm fleece throw while they were on sale. Next I found a coordinating piece of felt and cut out their initials and appliqued it to the blanket. And PRESTO! A personalized gift that shows thought, care and sentiment and is useful to boot.

It takes only a little bit of sewing knowledge - and I hand stitched it.This is something that can be done in a night. If you want to personalize it further, make a no sew blanket from fleece or a minimal sew blanket with fleece and flannel sewn together with a applique personalization.

Sorry the picture isn't the greatest. It was taken on my phone before I went on a gift wrapping rampage and couldn't get a better picture!

Sentimental Greetings

In this time of tight budgets and scattered friends and families, it can be difficult to send someone you care about a little something. It gets expensive, especially in large families. A Christmas card allows you to send that tangible reminder to someone that you are thinking about them at this hectic time of year.

The easy way is to just go buy a box of cards and quickly breeze through them to get them in the mail. Personally, since it is the only thing many of the people in my life will get, I prefer to make my cards and have made them for the past several years.

You really don't need to do anything elaborate. This year my card consists of scrapbook paper trees (the shape coming from a cookie cutter) topped with a glittered foam star sticker, a band of red textured paper and a stamped piece of white paper with the seasonal greeting. I made 15 cards in about two hours in one evening. Te majority of the time was spent tracing and cutting out the tree shapes.

This is another great project that you can get the kidlets involved with. Why not do hand print cards by tracing hands on different fun papers and layering the hands of everyone in your family? Or let the kids decorate with stickers, crayons and paints for keepsake cards to grandparents, aunts and uncle. 

Everyone I have sent my cards to always seems so grateful for the thought and time put in to the cards. That is why I love doing this every year. We live in a time of instant communication between text messages, phone calls and social media, it can mean a lot to someone to receive a handmade card. 

Outside the Cookie Cutter

 Every year I like to make some sort of new ornament for our tree. Since I've been fascinated with felt this year, I decided that would be what I would use.

I knew I didn't want to do the cookie style ornament that are so popular in felt. Of course the idea I had wasn't too far off from the cookie idea.

What I did was take my felt and some of those inexpensive, big plastic cookie cutters and cut out two of each, stacked them and sewed them together.

For the candy cane, I opted for some bling and used some red rhinestone cup chain. It glitters so nicely in the light. I really like the non-traditional look of the candy cane. Rather than the normal spiral-inspired stripes, I chose to simply outline the whole cane.

As for my star I went for a more classic look with the string of small pearls surrounding the set white start and then the entire outer border.

Personally, I really like the way these turned out. Tweaking a basic idea to create interesting new pieces. Felt cookie cutter ornaments made to look like frosted cookies have been done a million times. But my adding a pinch of ingenuity, I've made something different, classy and timeless to hang on my tree.

With the simple tweak of an old idea, the creative possibilities are endless and I look forward to making more!

Decorated Dining

 I don't have a fancy-schmancy dining room that I can keep pretty for special occasions. Nope. I have a single dining room that must function as such on a daily basis.

Does that mean I can't decorate it for the holidays? Absolutely not!! :)

My wonderful mother-in-law gave me some adorable quilted place mats as an early Christmas gift. I love them and could not wait to get them on my table. You can see the little Santa's that offer their jolly laugh.

To complement the Santa's, I wanted a centerpiece that could continue the holiday spirit. I took my glass cake plate, filled it with glass bulb ornaments that I made a couple years. They remind me of oversized candies. 

This is a really simple way of bringing your decorations to a functional area without impeding on the space. If you don't have a covered cake plate, use an over-sized clear bowl. If you don't want to take the time to paint ornaments get some inexpensive bulbs from your local dollar store in colors that will compliment your decor.

Considering this is the only holiday I really get excited about, I love it when I find a new way to add some cute decorative touches to the house. I get even more excited when I can use supplies I already have in the house. It just proves that you really don't need to spend a lot to create a beautifully decorated home.

Holiday Door Valance

 I always loved those paper loop chains that kids make. They are just cute and make me think of childhood. So this year, I decided I wanted to try to adapt one of those chains to fit in with my decorations.

I opted for red and white felt for the loops. Staying with my buttons these for the year, I stitched buttons on to the red loops where the ends meet and used them to close the loop. I kept the white loops simple and just stitched them closed.

We live in a split level house, so when guests leave they will see this cute chain suspended over the door. I didn't want to just do loops, so at each end I staggered ribbon. Jingle bells and acrylic "lights" are tied to the ends of the ribbon streamers.

This is just another cute, fun decoration that can be quickly put together in an evening. I really love the childlike quality to these decorations. For me, Christmas has always been about kids and that wonderment that comes with this time of year. And my favorite decorations reflect that.

Let the Merry Begin!

Thanksgiving in my house means two things: A huge family dinner and time to decorate for Christmas. I don't take out or put up decorations until the day after Thanksgiving, that's always been our tradition. This year that has gotten tweaked a little due to a major home improvement project. As I type this, my wonderful hubby is finishing putting in the last of our beautiful new laminate wood floors. It's been a long week working on this, but the end is in sight and I'm so happy to finally have pretty new floors. My house should be all put back together and decorated by the end of the week.

One of the new decorations that will be up this year is this felt wallhanging. This is a really nice project to do with kids. While you are weaving and sewing the red and white background, let the kids decorate the tree with dimensional fabric paint, beads, sequins, buttons or whatever else you have handy.

This year I'm in love with buttons, so I stitched buttons around the border and used them as embellishments on both the tree and around the tree. The colored chain that hangs on one side added some nice texture and tied in the chain used to hang it. The chain can easily be substituted with ribbon. In total, this little project cost maybe $10 if you have to buy all the supplies, much less if you only need to get felt. It would be a nice activity for little ones, as I did with my granddaughters, sure to make memories that will be cherished every year when you take it out.

A quilt in progress...

So I am the only one planning for Christmas already? I hope not. With my husband retiring from the military and starting his second career, money is going to be tight and our already limited budget is about to get more limited. I want to give my family a nice Christmas, so I have started my shopping now and get a few things here and there as I can afford them.

My favorite gifts to give are always the handmade ones. This year I am making one person a quilt with hand stitched lighthouses at the center of each block. This is the first one I have almost finished. There are two more embroidery blocks to finish and then to start adding borders and piecing.

There will be a total of eight lighthouses, so I have to come up with something for the center of my nine block quilt. I'm actually kind of excited to see how this one turns out. It's been a while since I've done a quilt like this. It should be done before Christmas, and I am planning quilts for at least one other person, so lets see how this all turns out!