glitter ornament

My friend Ralph recently referred to glitter as the herpes of craft supplies. It is true. Once you are exposed, it never goes away, and you spread it to all your friends. I used to avoid it like the plague. Everytime I would use glitter, it seemed like three months later I would still find glitter underneath my eye.  It is like Easter grass or tinsel in that way. Damn Martha Stewart crafts. She will be here forthwith be referred to as M.S.

But Beezus loves glitter as the day is long. And honestly, I love glitter. It makes things shiny. I like shiny things. I actually bought some M.S. glitter for my mind jar experiments. A whole box of them in six colors and two styles. Hearts and stars. The reason I selected them was because they are larger and heavier than ordinary, impossible-to-clean glitter. ANYWAY, that is not my point, my point is that the heart and star glitter actually cleans more efficiently than the itsy bitsy glitter and has become an okay craft supply to use with Mama's guidance.

Yesterday, Beezus' friend and our next door neighbor came over to play and they wanted to paint. So, I set them up, and I was looking through my craft supplies and found styrofoam balls. The other day, someone was telling me that they have pretend snowball fights with their kids utilizing styrofoam balls. Isn't that an awesome idea? And so, as I was contemplating this as an afternoon activity, Thor seeming to read my mind and salivate at pummeling his sister and her friend by throwing things, I had a different idea.

ORNAMENTS!

That is a holiday craft.

So, I set the girls up with some of that tissue paper squares I bought at Lakeshore Learning store the other day. I can't remember how much this box of tissue paper squares were, but it was something I saw and thought, "That would save me a lot of time and buying of tissue paper, which I use almost exclusively for crafts in very small pieces." There are 10,000 squares in 20 colors. Very useful even though they look completely impractical. We did those little ornaments with the little tissue paper squares, and I thought they would look like stained glass if we decoupaged them.

So, I pulled out some styroglue, but you can use Elmers, or Mod Podge, or even just paint, which works quite well as a glue for glitter and tissue paper. I buy these little bowls for paint/glue from Michaels that I can toss, or I use plastic paint palettes to keep glue. I just pour glue in and let the girls put it on like paint. The girls used some combination of both paint and glue. Bea glued hers and used pink tissue paper. I actually created one out of blues, purples and whites. As you will see in the final product, Beezus' and mine look almost identical in different colors. I am 37 and she is 4, so this is really a craft for everyone. Thor tried to carve his with kid scissors and a pencil, then painted it with yellow/brown paint, so his looks like a half eaten apple. The neighbor girl half painted hers, and half decoupaged it.

It was very fun. Then we sprinkled, sprinkled, sprinkled with glitters--hearts and stars. We used little lids from babyfood jars to stand them up. Our hands got messy, I am not going to lie. And it took all night for it to dry completely, but that was okay. It was a before dinner craft, then this morning, they were dry. There is heart and star glitter all over the craft table, but because they are large glitters, they fell to the floor when the girls stood rather than in everything. That was fine with us, though. Sweep sweep, and it is fine. When the girls were done, I straightened a paperclip, made a small L-shape in the bottom of the paper clip. Then I pushed it through, then looped it with pliers at the top. This ornament is so light, it really doesn't need to be reinforced in that way. I used an ornament hook for it to hang on the tree. I think it would be cool to decoupage a name on it, or use letter stickers to decorate it with each kid's name, if you wanted. It is also not Christmas-centric, so you could use this for a solstice/yule tree.

Happy holidays.