Making Ornaments

There are a lot of holiday fun times around the corner, but it always starts the season off right to do a little crafting the day after Thanksgiving.  Instead of Black Friday, we modge podge Friday.  With some friends in town we ended up at the craft store very early on Friday and picked up a bunch of clear glass ornaments 3 boxes for 10 dollars.  With some other supplies floating around the house, paint modge podge, a sharpie; and a few extras at the store, snow man stickers and fake snow the kids spent most of Friday making ornaments.

I had never decorated glass ornaments and wasn't totally sure what we were doing so there were some successes and failures.  The first issue was that we put too much paint inside the ornaments. We tried to paint the inside of a few ornaments and after hanging them upside down to get the extra paint out a few still cracked because of the amount of paint still in them. Another tip we had to learn was to decoupage any ornaments that we put stickers, paint or shapies on the outside of, then the items stay on and don't get shmeared off. The fake snow was a bitch to get into the ornaments, but ended up really looking amazing.  When working on decoupaging something to the back of an ornament it is a good idea to use like a sealant glue around the edge so that when you paint the background later the paint doesn't bleed into the paper you just stuck on.  Sharpies work better for kids to get on eye balls on faces instead of paint, sharpies are a lot easier to manipulate and manage.  Lastly; glass, glue, glitter, and paint in combo can be a total mess so it's good to use a table clothe you can throw out after. Hubs has temporarily banned glitter and it is understandable, there is glitter everywhere.

The part that I thoroughly enjoyed was having the kids make wish ornaments.  We got the over sized round ornaments and encouraged the kids to decorate these to represent the things they love most. Bean went for a bear, with pom pom ears and a cute bear face. Chicken got bored of the whole activity and I made his, which was in BSU colors with his name. Then all the kids wrote out their Christmas wishes on the computer and put them in their ornaments.  It was all too cute, and me and the other mom present ended up prying out the wishes later that night to make sure we knew what was on their lists. Chicken besides wanting a full size football, wanted his family to be happy and healthy.  Seeing what great people your kids are becoming is just too awesome sometimes.

What crafting are you all up to these days with your family?  We have a few more craft opportunities with out Activity Advent Calendar, thanks Rhonda, so it should be a fun few weeks. Have a wonderful time in this family and friends time of year.