I Will Not Be Bested By Bad Glue & Glitter!

My bff Marsha had a cardiac scare recently, and fortunately is OK because they caught it in time...but she was one sick lady for a few days!  So relieved & grateful that she made it through this crisis!

I'm not religious and identify more with atheism/pagans, but Marsha has very strong faith and if anyone walks the walk, she does.  In fact, she happily and willingly dedicates her life doing for other people, so I'm not at all surprised she got this wake up call to slow down.  I was so worried about her that I burned up nervous energy by walking to town and back two days in a row, one of them being in snow.  I wanted to make Marsha something that resonated with her faith because I know how very grateful she is to be here.  I found a nice silver cross at The Whatchamacallit Shop and decided to try making a snowglobe from a baby food jar.

Last year I didn't have much luck with the snowglobe I made with a Santa figurine, because I used epoxy which stunk so bad that I couldn't even have the snowglobe in the house and it got dismantled after the holidays.  This year I reviewed a quick tutorial, which used a baby food jar.  So I bought a jar of it at the grocery store, gave the contents to Sagan and began to assemble it.  I used two tiny craft pine trees and the silver cross.  I first glued them into place on the jar lid with clear Gorilla glue.  For one thing, it holds really, really well and for another, it foams up so much when it dries that I knew it'd look like snow.  After that dried, I filled the jar with glitter, water & glycerin and glued the cap on with E6000, and waited.  

After a couple of hours, I came out to find green water and all the glitter congealed at the top.

Some of it would swirl but not much.

It looked like mercury.

Green water.  Seriously WTF.  Hardly any of the glitter sunk to the bottom like it's supposed to.

I pondered the fate of this damn project all night and into the next day.   There was nothing else I could do but try and unscrew the lid, drain out the contents and start over.  This meant carefully running a sharp knife tip between the cap and jar, scraping out the E6000, one tiny bit at a time.  I was able to unscrew the lid and clean the whole thing out.  Luckily the trees and cross were still very much glued in place.  

This time I used heavy chunks of glitter, not the fine stuff.  Fresh water and glycerin, and before I put the lid back on, I stirred the crap out of the jar contents to see if the glitter was going to float or sink to the bottom.  Finally, most of it settled on the bottom, so I used gorilla glue to reseal the lid.  And of course, I ended up with it foamed out all over the edge of the cap, and then that  required scraping it off bit by bit with an Xacto knife.  The water is a kind of pale green....not as bad as the first one at all.  And the cross is leaning a little to the left....that's how it dried.  I kind of like it that way. 

Then I headed to my ribbon stash and found a heavy, dark green and gold piece to hid the lid and bits of glue that refused to budge.  My only regret is that I didn't put a little bit more water in it.

Worked MUCH better!!!!

I made this for her too. :)

New and Retro

Pinterest is, of course, featuring tons of holiday themed projects right now, including snow globes from jars.  It looked pretty straightforward, all I needed was a jar, something to put inside it, glue, glitter, water and glycerin.  I found that Santa figurine at The Watchamacallit Shop in town for $2.00.  I didn't have a jar that fit, except the pickle jar in the fridge which was full of, well, pickles.  I dumped them into a tupperware and started the project. The Pinterest project calls for the use of hot glue.  I HATE hot glue.  It never ever works for me.  Ever.  Stuff always comes unglued and there are always those annoying spider webby type strings that stick to everything.  I asked around and it was suggested that I use epoxy or a clear vinyl caulk.  I bought both.  Since the caulk wasn't supposed to touch water for at least 2 hours, I used the epoxy.  Huge mistake.  The stuff stinks so incredibly bad that this water globe has been sitting outside for over a week.  Overall, the idea worked fine - the glycerin helps the glitter float down slower.  But next time I have to use a different adhesive.

This to illustrate how the 52 Reasons Why I Love You cards came out.

The candles were still out from the storms in November so why not add some sequins.

Now for the Retro portion of our program.  When I was a kid, I always received craft kits on my birthday and Christmas because there really wasn't much for me to do during those long winter/indoor months.  When I was about 9 (1973), I received a rather complex ornament kit, which would require more than a day or so to make, and only with adult supervision.  These had to be carefully popped out of the wood frames, stained, painted, the bases put into place, glittered & decorated with little figures...

on both sides.  And after all these years I've just noticed that I stuck this deer on facing the wrong direction.

There's a little deer in the bubble wrap baggie for this ornament that needs to be re-adhered.

When we are able to finally have a large tree, I will be able to use them again.  But for now they are carefully packed away, and I'm very fortunate that they have survived nearly 40 years, being shipped to the west coast and then all the moves since then.

These last three were made by me, probably around the same time period of December, 1973.  They are those Make-It Bake-It melted plastic pellet kits.  I used to love making these and I'd still do it if I could find them.

This one is my fave.