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.

New Life for Old Candles

The heat and humidity returned on the Summer Solstice back in June, so it was primarily an indoor-day for me, although I did get my Vitamin D on for about a half hour when the breeze was still cool.  But alas, I started to roast so I went into the craft room and things got a little sparkly.

My mom continues to purge her house of things and is giving me the right of first refusal on everything she's getting rid of, so I snagged a couple of big white pillar candles from the thrift shop pile.  My first idea was to stick rhinestones on one of them but.....nah.  Instead, I broke out the bag of cool sequins, beads and pins.

My measuring skills are sad, at best, so I ended up eyeballing the design, so the rows aren't perfectly lined up. This was the point at which I thought this particular candle was done.  It was missing something, but what?

Ah! That's MUCH better!!

Wasn't sure what to do with the taller one, then I remember the pretty, fibrous paper stashed away and decided to Mod Podge pieces of it onto the candle.

I know, what a mess, right?

All done!

These are votives that I decorated with wax pens, specially made for drawing on candles, and also pinned sequins on the right.