Quick and easy Christmas ornaments

I had some fun making ornaments over the weekend. I was originally going to make some CD ornaments, but Patti gave me a link to instructions for these ball ornaments, and I was hooked.

To give credit where credit is due, the original instructions came from Heidi's blog: http://sweetheidijo.blogspot.com/ Check it out, she has a lot of great projects there!

Never one to leave well enough alone, I changed the directions around a little bit though. So I'll give you my version, and you can see which works best for you.

Glitter Ornament

Supplies:

Clear Glass Ornament

Inks - re-inkers, alcohol inks, or posh rainbow sponge inks

Hair Spray

Fine Silver or White Glitter

Disposable Cup

Thin Metal Charm

Pliers

Metal file

Craft Glue

Instructions:

1. Pull the cap off the ornament, and drop in 3-5 drops of ink. Add about 1/4 teaspoon of hairspray, and swish around the inside of the ornament until it is completely covered with ink.

2. Turn the ornament upside down over the disposable cup and let the ink drain out for 10-15 minutes. Tap the rim of the ornament onto a folded paper towel to remove any excess ink before moving onto the next step.

3. Dump about a teaspoon of glitter (you may need to add more depending on your coverage) into the ornament, and place your finger over the opening. Shake until the inside is completely covered with glitter.

4. Dump any excess glitter out into a clean disposable cup. You can re-use this glitter later if desired.

5. Using your hands, gently bend a thin metal charm to fit the contours of the ornament. Heating the metal up a bit between your palms will make it bend a bit easier. Once you have done that, use a pair of pliers to break off the hang tab by bending it gently back and forth. File off any rough edges with a metal file. You can paint your charm if desired, ink it with alcohol inks, or leave it plain.

6. With a strong adhesive, glue your charm to the front of your ornament. Allow to dry completely.

That's it! They're a piece of cake to make, so easy my four year old made one with minimal help from me.

Have fun!

This and that...

I'll put headings in here, so that those of you who don't care to hear about snake news can easily skip right over it. :)

Kauket (aka Ms. Snakey-Poo):

Kauket has been eating really well since we finally got her to eat a live pinkie awhile back. The only problem is, she will only eat live food. This is an issue for several reasons:

1. Live pinkies are really hard to come by. We have to get them from our breeder who lives about an hour north of us. You can purchase adult feeder mice from a pet store, but Kauket is still smaller than a magic marker, so she's not big enough to eat adult prey yet.
2. Live prey can actually hurt a snake. Seems hard to believe, I know, but adult mice have teeth and claws, and if they're upset enough they can gouge out a snake's eyes. Not really something you want to see happen to your lovely pet.
3. I just don't want to feed her live mice. I know it's a natural process and all that, blah, blah, blah... It still squicks me out. Did you know that a pinkie mouse who's no bigger than a dime can scream loud enough to be heard 20 feet away when a predator grabs it? It's disturbing to be completely honest. I'd much rather feed her something that can no longer object to being eaten.

So off and on we've presented her with frozen pinkies, only to have her literally turn up her nose at the offering and slither away. Who knew snakes could be so pretentious?

Well, between the snowstorm last week and our breeder's love of hunting (what is up with that Chad?), it's been a little over 2 weeks since Kauket has eaten. She was starting to show that she was not liking the starvation diet the other day when she began striking at her own reflection in the glass of the tank (I never said that any of my pets were smart). Watching her do this we thought that it might be a good time to try a frozen pinkie again. So off John went to get another "Gourmet Rodent" from the pet store, and we tried once again.

Once again, she snubbed the food. Picky, picky, picky, she's starting to act like one of my kids. Well the breeder had told John to smack her around with the thawed pinkie to try and upset her enough to strike at the food (I know it sounds abusive, but sometimes you need to use tough love on your kids), so he did just that, and after about 10 minutes of being whacked in the face with a dead mouse, she finally got mad enough to eat it.

YAY! No more pinkie squeals! Thank heaven for small favors.

The Cuttlebug:

I'm loving my Cuttlebug! I had a couple of people ask me about some of the techniques I'm doing with it, so I thought that this would be a good place to explain them (rather than in the comment section of my ASB gallery).

First off is the embossing folders...

On this money card Sue asked how I managed to isolate the saying from the rest of the saying in the A2 sized embossing folder.

The truth is... I didn't. :D

For this card I used one of the small 4 packs of embossing folders. It's the "Congrats" set, and it has 4 small folders with different congratulatory sayings in it. I found that I can place the small embossing folders on a portion of a larger piece of cardstock, run it through the Cuttlebug, and all that gets embossed is the part that's supposed to be embossed. It doesn't leave a residual line where the folder hits the cardstock, which is really nice. So it expands the useability of the embossing folders even more, in my opinion.

The next thing that I've been asked about is embossing with brass stencils, Fiskar's texture plates, and other different things, and the answer is: YES, you can! I took some old computer mouse pads, three to be exact, in different thicknesses. Then I cut them all down so that they would fit through the Cuttlebug. Now whenever I want to emboss something that's not specifically for the Cuttlebug I use the A and C plates, along with my mouse pad embossing cushions to build a sandwich that fits into the machine.

The sandwich should be built with the A pad on the bottom, the plate or stencil next, cardstock or paper on top of the stencil, mouse pad embossing mats, and last but not least the C plate finishes off your embossing sandwich. It should be difficult to turn the crank to feed it though, but not impossible. That's how you know you have the right thickness.

It works really well, and you're going to be embossing all sorts of fun stuff before you know it. Try bits of lace, or pieces of ric-rak; punched pieces of cardstock, or chipboard shapes make fun embossing tools as well. Look around your house, and I'm sure your imagination will take off! :)

Have a great day!

Just a day in the life...

I have some pictures to share… These are the pictures that I’ll use on the scrapbook page I talked about the other day.

Corydon W. S.



Corydon J. M.
With a 1937 Supercharged Convertible Cord

I don’t have too many pictures of Cord (the elder); this is one my mom gave me after CJ was born. Yes, there’s someone else in the picture with him. That’s Irene, his wife, and I’ll talk about her some other time I’m sure.


So, on to more mundane things…
I tried feeding the snake again last night, after two days of leaving her in solitude, but she’s still not going for it. I almost had her at one point, but she was distracted by something and shied away. I’ll leave her alone for a couple more days now and then try again.

I don’t know what I have planned for today. I should clean the house, but what fun is that. Perhaps some stamping instead. I need to make projects for a workshop next month. The last couple of workshops I’ve had, I waited until the last minute to put the projects together, and that’s a bad habit to get into. So I should really make an effort to get my act together. I want to make some Halloween things using the October Stamp of the Month, which is too cute for words, but I’m not quite sure what to do yet. Maybe some treat bags or something. I’ll have to look around and see if there’s anything fun I can case.

I did make a card yesterday. I was trying to come up with a card for a swap I’m in. I think the card turned out pretty good, but it has paper pieced letters in it, and the thought of cutting out 100 letters for a swap made me want to go play in traffic, so I’ll have to come up with something else. I’m just not good at making quick and easy cards, which means I’m also not good at big swaps. That’s why I usually only do 5 for 5 swaps.

Do you love those letters? I just got that set thanks to a fellow Angel, and I’m totally in love! I’d marry it and have its lowercase babies if I hadn’t already found the perfect man.

I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of sets I buy… There are the sets that I see and I like the design so I get them, but then once they get here I’m not quite sure what to do with them. I cut them out and look at them for awhile, and then I put them away and forget I have them. Sometimes they make it back out onto my desk and get used, but I’ll admit to having plenty of sets that have never seen an ink pad.

Then there are the sets that leap right off the page, grab me, and shake me. As soon as I see that black and white line drawing, pictures of completed projects start parading through my head. The Alpha Grunge set is one of those. This set is perfect for so many things… Scrapbook titles, monogram cards, it’s a great set for paper piecing, or just doodling on the insides of the letters.

Ok, I need to go get something done. John’s on the road today, so we can’t IM each other. That means I need to take a computer free day and catch up on the rest of my life.

Have a good one!

Just one of those mornings...

I woke up this morning to John's sonorous voice hollering "Oh sh**!" I opened my eyes to see the clock and find that we should have left the house fifteen minutes earlier…

Don’t you just love it when your morning starts out like that?

All in all, it could have been worse. We were only about 20 minutes late and still early enough that we had some time to relax before we had to start playing. It all went well, my voice didn’t get as torn up as I thought it would, and people seemed to appreciate the noise we were making. I was a little worried about what we were going to do with the girls while we were playing, but they ended up earning their keep by helping pass out water bottles to the participants.

We also got a really nice sign that says “ABS Blues Band” out of the deal. I’m sure I’ll find a good use for it.

Ok, so… It’s time for a snakey-poo update.

No, she still doesn’t have a name. I have a couple of ideas, but I want to run them by the two oldest kids to get their thoughts first. They come back home tomorrow, so maybe she’ll have a name by tomorrow night. Notice I say maybe… I have no faith in our ability to agree on anything. I attempted to feed her last night, but she refused it. I’m thinking (hoping) that she’s still stressed out from the move. We’re leaving her alone for awhile, and then we’ll try again. If some solitude doesn’t do the trick, I’ll have to give the breeder a call and see what he recommends. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that though, he’s going to think I’m an idiot pretty soon if I keep having all of these problems. I’m not, I swear I’m not! I’ve raised four kids and haven’t had a single one escape their cage.*

*Disclaimer - I’m just kidding, no need to call DCFS.

I didn’t get any stamping done yesterday like I’d planned. I did get to go to the JoAnn Superstore though. I’m much better at accumulating papercrafting supplies than I am at using them anyway. I got a new Sizzix die. *Yay* I bought the slide mount die I’ve been wanting for awhile. I think it will be cool to cut them from chipboard and alter them. I also ordered the Ransom Doodle Bar set from the Sizzix web page last week (at 70% off on clearance *WooHoo*). They’re coming out with some really cute new dies now, and I, of course, want them all!

I also found the cutest Frankenstein dollar stamp there. I didn’t know JoAnn’s had dollar stamps, but I don’t get to the superstore that often. When I went to make some Halloween projects a couple of weeks ago, I found that I was seriously lacking in Halloween stamps, so now I’m doing my best to fill that hole. I’ve since gotten 3 Halloween sets from The Angel Company, along with a bunch of dollar stamps from Michael’s and now JoAnn’s.

*One of my projects made without a Halloween stamp.
It uses the Creepy Crawlies set from TAC.

I should be good for awhile now… Maybe… Though there is another TAC set that I’ve had my eye on…

John’s outside patching the front walk. We have to fill the big hole before it freezes or they won’t deliver our mail anymore (we nothing, make that He). I don’t hear him swearing yet, so it must be going ok, though he has had to make at least one trip to the hardware store for extra cement, and I see another in his future.

I should go take a picture before he gets mad so I can scrapbook the event.
Have a great day!
Anne