More handmade gifting - totally upcycling!

I can't wait until Richard is old enough to craft and give his own handmade gifts! But until then, Mama will help him out! Now that we are into eating solid foods, I started saving the little jars because I know there are tons of cute ideas of things to do with them. For Christmas, I decided to make little snow globes.

I started to get even more excited about this idea when I realized that I probably had all of the materials necessary in my basement - a totally upcycled project! I had several bags of tiny trees from some scenery/mountains I had bought about 10 years ago for my Halloween village. I spray painted them purple and black, but of course never used the tree because they obviously didn't fit that holiday.

Then, I remembered that someone gave me a bag of fake snow several years ago for my Snowtown, but I never used it because I feared the mess it would make. I had silver glitter. I mean, what kind of crafty gal doesn't have tons of glitter??? Here is where I started to lay everything out. Mocha was very intrigued.
I washed all of the jars, and used Goo Gone to get the glue from the labels off. I have a love/hate relationship with Goo Gone. I cut circles from some sparkly while felt I had (again for my Snowtown) and adhered it to the inside of the caps. Then I glued a tree in the center of each one.

I mixed a nice bowl of snow and glitter up, praying that I would not spill it all over the place so that we'd be finding glitter until the year 2025. A spoonful or so in each jar, and secure the lids on.

Now I had to come up with how I was going to finish them off. A piece of ribbon tied around the base is the best idea, but have you ever tried to tie a tiny piece of ribbon around the rim of a slippery cap? That is something that I do not have the patience for. So I ran my silver ribbon through my Zyron machine (which puts adhesive on it) and affixed it round and round. I had some circle labels where I could put the "to" and "from" on the bottom and that's it!

Here are some pics with the flash on, and the flash off. I did have one larger mason jar from a candle that I burned down where I was able to add a snowman. I did not use water/glycerin in them because then there is the worry about them leaking over time. I modeled mine after the ones that were for sale at Anthropologie, which aren't on their website anymore for you to refer to. Very elegant and pretty, but for $38, this crafty gal is gonna DIY!

I hope the receivers will enjoy this memory of Richard's first Christmas!

More handmade gifting - Peas!

My sister-in-law, and nephew, love peas!

Heck, I like peas and so does baby Richard.

She also has a fondness for Green Girl Studios. So what's more perfect than making her a necklace with their pewter pea pod charm! I wanted it to be very simple and delicate so it's on a string of random pearls and seed beads - all in pea green colors of course! I am also gifting her with one of my tin cuffs!

Handmade Gifting

Now that I am starting to send some of my handmade gifts out into the world, I can blog about them! I do apologize though for the bad lighting. Since evenings are the only time I have to create, and we are in the dark days of midwest winter, pictures aren't so great.

First up, I gave my good friend Kristen one of these tin bracelets. These bezel bracelets are so fun to experiment with! She and I have both made button bracelets with them. And now I've finally gotten around the making some tin ones. The trick to them is getting the right size circle because when you dome the metal, it gets smaller. Now that I've got my sizes figured out, for both the small and large versions, I plan to make more of these in the future. I wanted to make each size and then decide which on to give her. I gave her the smaller one which features more variety. I selected tins that had background to them - such as the yellow one she gave me. The strawberries to remember our strawberry picking outing a few years ago. And of course I had to throw in a peacock feather! I am so glad that she likes it!!!

She gifted me with even more pretty tins, and I can't wait to work with them soon!

Happy Holidays!

Wishing all of my blog readers a wonderful holiday season!