Christmas Gifts 2012

Yes, the title is Christmas Gifts 2012. As I am planning the gifts I will make for 2013, I realized I never posted the gifts I made last Christmas. Oops. And I did not remember until a friend of mine invited me to a "craft day." I responded that I am not really that crafty, to which she pulled out the gifts I made last year. So, maybe I am crafty.

Just like millions of American women, my inspiration comes from Pinterest. I stumbled on these necklaces and these glasses and thus I knew what I wanted to make.

CANDLE VOTIVES
I made these for my son's teacher and they were extremely easy!

I found some great glasses at the dollar bins at Target. I have lots of glass paint (from 10 years ago when I made a bunch of votives for Christmas... again, forgot I can be crafty), but the paint can be found at any craft store. For a picture of the paint I use, refer to this blog post.

I squeezed the paint onto a paper plate and used the flat end of a bamboo skewer to put dots all around the glass, making them more dense towards the bottom. I was proud of the end result!

GLASS PENDANTS

This project was a bit more time intensive, but I loved how I could make each one unique. Instead of square glass, I used the round stones found in the floral section of the craft store.

I wandered the scrapbook paper section for a while to find the perfect papers. I wanted paper with  "words" and paper with "music" for my project, and I also printed my own graphics. I used the stones to trace circles to fit perfectly.

I used modge podge to attach the circles to the stones, let them dry, then used modge podge to seal the back of the paper to the stones. Once that dried, I attached magnets to some, and necklace/keychain loops to others, using really strong epoxy. The most time intensive part of the entire project was waiting for "dry time."

So now that I have finally shared my gifts from last year, I can start gathering materials for the gifts for this year. Happy crafting!