5th Anniversary Ornament

After looking all over stores and Amazon for a special ornament to commemorate mine and hubby's 5th Anniversary throughout this year and not finding anything, I decided to make something-I just didn't know what.

I was thinking that I wanted to make a heart-shaped version of either the Glitter Ornaments or Paint Ornaments, but I was unable to find any heart-shaped glass ornaments to fill, so that plan was out the window as quickly as it was in my head. I did, however, find a cardboard base ornament that could be decorated, so decided to make something with that. So I made this cute little ornament- a sweet memory and decoration for a sweet price of less than $5:

Isn't it adorable? Even though it's not a complicated thing, hubs and I really love it!

Here it is on the tree:

I love that you can see it clearly from even across the room. :)

(And yes, we have stockings for our stuffed animals....)

And I learned some useful information as I was experimenting while working on this: when painting things made out of cardboard base like this, Paint by itself takes forever to cover the surface without streaks or cardboard showing through. But paint + clear glue (which is what I had, I'm sure white glue that dries clear works, too) = magic. I did it as an experiment just because, but it drastically reduced the number of coats needed and the time spent working on it versus paint alone.  So, if you're ever painting cardboard, maybe this trick will work for you, too.

Painted Skully Floral Decoration

One day when shopping at Michaels for something else, I found this skull floral pick (always find things at Michaels that you didn't go for...) for 0.99 and, me being me and loving skulls, had to have it-despite not having an idea for it.

When I got home, I decided to decorate it like a sugar skull, since I do love how those look. Here's some pictures of the process to see how I did it:

Painted White with a foam brush

Here's one finished side of it

I remembered to take an "in progress" picture for this one, heh. I just outlined the design in pencil (keeping it simple since I am not really artistically inclined) and then colored in with markers.

The other side finished

Paint Ornaments

Oh, Boy. I've been a terrible little crafty blogger again, and haven't updated in a long time. I am really going to work on updating the blog as I make my various crafts-sometimes it's hard though when the object is a gift and you don't want to spoil the surprise. But I'll work on doing better, I promise! For now, let's get caught up-there will be a lot of posts one after another. Here we gooooo.....

Here are the paint ornaments I made for our tree/as gifts. This is a really fun and easy way to make unique ornaments... but can be really frustrating, too if the paint dries in a weird way or chips. But I ultimately found a way to keep them in a good position-yogurt cups from the recycling to hold them in place. Genius, I know. :)

I really like how these all turned out. The pictures just don't do them justice:

Anyone know what this shape ornament is called? I love it, and would like to find more, but don't know what the shape is.

These tiny ones are great for paint! I originally bought them for the glitter ornament project but that turned out terrible, so I don't recommend it. There were too many empty spots, and it was hard to get the materials into the tiny opening so it's just not worth it. Paint, though--that was super easy and only took a tiny bit, and looks great.

So there you are, adorable and easy paint ornaments. What do you think?