Basketful of Homemade Ornaments

At the Island Open House someone showed how to make glass ornaments for the holidays. It was such a cool idea I had to run to Michaels and pick up 2 dozen ornaments and my daughter and I proceeded to make them for family and friends.

You have to use glass ornaments and not the plastic variety. You mix water and liquid pearls to create the glue and spray inside (or outside) the ornament depending on the effect you want. You then sprinkle glitter inside the ornament. We did some with the Martha Stewart Glow in the Dark glitter and others with red, pink and purple glitter that we also had. (The few containers my daughter didn't get into a year ago when she covered the bathroom...).

Some of the ornaments were then decorated with Ranger alcohol ink. This was the exciting part, holding the ornament up away from my daughter's body but still within reach and over the craft table cover so my table didn't get accessorized. She did have some very colorful hands when all was done but the Ranger scrubbie works on her hands as well.

Here she is post clean-up showing off her handiwork.

We also decorated some of the ornaments with glitter on the outside and some got glitter on the inside but no alcohol ink. All were finished with some gorgeous Christmas bauble garland and a peppermint bow.

Tim's 12 Tags

I so enjoy Tim #12Tags. It is amazing to see what he can come up with each and every day. I have to admit I have been guilty of staying up until midnight to see what the new tag is and then I plot how I will make it in my sleep. Or rather lack of sleep. EEEE!

Today's technique featured crackle paint. I embossed the snowman from grungeboard, cut out by hand, and then applied the tattered rose crackle paint. I think I did a good job as I got some pretty big cracks. I then distressed again with the spun sugar distress ink and spun sugar and festive berries distress ink.

I coated a tag in distress ink picket fence and fired brick and then stamped fired brick snowflakes all over. I then used my finger tool and added some more picket fence to dilute the image. I knew that even though Tim had gone all blue for his tag that I wanted to go all pink and red. I pulled out some red, white, pink glitter snowflake paper to line down the side. I also used this same pattern paper to add to my charm at the top. I tied the charm on with red tulle and red garland ribbon. I then added glossy accents to the charm. I also had a red tag on hand that said Dec 25 which I applied to the bottom of the snowman. Just perfect!

Enjoy and merry christmas!

Delivering Christmas Joy

I hope you all liked my 12 Cards of Christmas Series. It was great fun to develop them and come up with a new theme for each day. And just think there will be more next year!

Delivering Christmas Joy

Today I am sharing a home decor project I did in November which I call "Delivering Christmas Joy". I found these 8 cute reindeer and sleigh at Michaels over the summer. Actually I was looking for reindeer and a sleigh about half the size these are to add to my Up on the Rooftop Advent Calendar. While I didn't get exactly what I was looking for I am very happy with the final product.

The reindeer are painted in a brown metallic paint. Each have a garland halter around their necks and and connected to the sleigh. All of the reindeer have baubles on their antlers - one of my friends called them earrings - but I think the baubles helps to upclass them a bit. In fact this is the first project that I have added baubles. I've always been nervous before about jump rings but a quick 5 minute tutorial and I am a jump ring demon - and I have enough sets of pliers to prove it! The 4 reindeer in the back are the younger more anxious reindeer ready to get a move on. While the 4 reindeer in the front are older and wiser and know to rest while Santa is delivering presents to the good little girls and boys. Today Santa Mickey is driving the sleigh but tomorrow it could be our Elf Scout or maybe an Annalee doll.

Enjoy! I know my fellow croppers did while I was making these as they kept walking off into other people's crop bags...

BTW don't you just love the new shelves my husband built and installed...finally

12 Cards of Christmas Series - # 12 Home for the Holidays Card

I hope you enjoyed yesterday's card. I am a little sentimental today as this is the last card for 2011. But I think I ended with a good one.

I found this paper on clearance at Scrapbook Island and knew it would be perfect paired up with a digi stamp from La La Land Crafts. The ornament pattern paper was distressed with the festive berries distress ink. I then used my copic markers to color in Marci, as you can see I went with festive colors, including coloring in the panda bear with green colors rather than black and white. I added red and green buttons with red and white twine from the Twinery.

Enjoy and merry christmas. I will be back with more goodies throughout the month!

12 Cards of Christmas Series - # 11 Warm Wishes Card

Warm Wishes

I hope you enjoyed yesterday's card. We are almost near the end!

Today I am sharing a card I created called "Warm Wishes". This is meant to be my Christmas neutral card for my non-Christmas celebrators. It is a blue cardstock base card to which I added a purple cardstock belly band. Here I added three felt snowflakes of different colors - teal, dark blue and white. I added a gem to the dark blue felt snowflake. Finely I added a "warm wishes" sentiment that I cut from my Cricut, it includes a smiley face on the a.

Enjoy and merry christmas!

12 Cards of Christmas Series - # 10 Tweet Wishes Card

Tweet Wishes

I hope you enjoyed yesterday's card.

I have a new card to share today called "Tweet Wishes". This card was a lot of fun to make. I paired a bird on wire pattern paper with a blue and dark blue checkered pattern paper. The bird on wire paper include falling snowflakes and a hint of green. The patterned paper also came with matching tags. I combined 3 matching tags with a Wishes token from Tim Holtz, a purple brad and some snowflakes from the Martha Stewart deep edge punch. I stamped in the sentiment Tweet Wishes.

Enjoy and merry christmas!

12 Cards of Christmas Series - # 9 Gingerbread Family Card

Gingerbread Family

I hope you enjoyed yesterday's card.

Today I am sharing the Gingerbread Family Card. I saw this delightful paper at Scrapbook Island and just had to make some cards from it. On the reverse side of the gingerbread was this cute striped paper in orange and red which I used as my card base.

At the top of the card I added 3 additional layers from the same pattern paper after adhering I added on either side a Mr and Mrs Gingerbread brads. Next up was my Gingerbread family. I used two sections of this paper for a layer effect.

After adding the first gingerbread layer. I hand cut out the gingerbread family, applied rock candy stickles to all the white frosting and added red pearl pen to all the belly buttons. It was such a fun card to work on and you get to enjoy dessert without the sugar rush or calories.

Enjoy and merry christmas!