DIY personalized Christmas Snow Globe Ornaments.

It's coming. It will be here before you know it. Yes, I'm talking about Christmas!! I don't like to push Halloween out of the limelight, but when it comes to crafting it sometimes takes awhile, especially if you are making a lot of something, so I will give a pass out to go ahead and think about that big end of the year holiday. However, you will go back to thinking of Halloween right after.

I didn't really think of blogging a tutorial on this, so I don't have pictures of everything, and as usual my pictures are not professional looking shots like I usually see on blogs. I'm just a regular chick with a camera and glue all over the place.

Let's get started.

Materials Needed:

• Clear glass or plastic ornaments. These can be found in just about any craft store. I found unbreakable ones at Hobby Lobby that are sold single. 
• Red or green heavy paper. Use something like card stock. If you use a glitter paper make sure it's glittery or at least colored on both sides. 
• Glue
• Fake snow/glitter/or whatever you want to place inside your ornament.
• Scissors or an X-acto knife or if you have some sort of paper cutting machine things will be even easier! 

O.k. so your balls should look like these. Just clear ornaments. You can choose either glass or plastic and they usually come in a variety of sizes. I picked up the larger ones for this project.

This is the hardest part of this project, making your names. If you have a fancy paper cutting machine like a Silhouette you are in luck. If you don't have one see if someone you know does. I've never used one but the more I do paper cutting, the more I wish I had one. If you don't have a machine you can use scissors or an X-acto Knife or other crafting knife. This is my preferred cutting method, but it's not easy. 

You also have a choice in the how you design your names. I use a free program called Inkscape. (Google it). You can use Paint or Photoshop or a quick Google search will probably give you many more free programs to use that design fonts. If you simply can't master any of these you can draw out your names.  You do want to make sure your letters are all touching each other because if not they are just going to fall apart. Remember when choosing your paper you will be able to see the front and back of the names so each side should look good. You will need to measure the ball you choose to see how long the name tag should be and how wide of an opening the ball has. You need to be able to fit the name inside. You will need a tab on the top and a tab that hangs down into the ball where the name will start. Confused yet? Yeah, so am I. This is what you are looking for.

The box is to show the boundaries of the letters so they fit inside the mouth of the ball. Everything in black is what you are going to cut out except for the thin box the name is in. To cut these out you can use that aforementioned machine, scissors, which I think would be a nightmare, or a craft knife. A craft knife will be easier than scissors. Just print your names on the back of the paper you want to use, place on a cutting mat and follow the lines with your knife. More confused? Youtube has some good tutorials for paper cutting with an X-acto blade or similar. 

After you cut them out you should have a ton of name tags. 

I actually cut these in red and in green and glued them together so they are red on one side, green on the other. I do not recommend doing that. 

Now you are going to take your names and glue them to the inside of the tops of the ornaments. Bend the top tab and glue into the middle of the underside of the "lid" of the ornament. Make sure these are dry before putting them back inside the balls. I rushed and found out the hard way the glue needs to be dry! 

You should end up with a name hanging down off the "lid". This is why you need to measure your tags to make sure the name hangs down far enough into the ball that it isn't blocked out by the top around the lip of the ornament. You also don't want them too long so that you can put other stuff in the bottom of the ball. 

If you made it through all that, the rest is a breeze! You can fill your ornaments with anything really. I was going for a snow globe look so I chose some fake, glittery "snow". One thing if you are going to use snow like this or glitter remember that it will stick to the sides of the ornament from static. If you don't want that to happen you might try the fake snow that is more like tiny balls instead of the light feathery stuff I got. I like how it looks sticking to the sides though, so I'm o.k. with it. It makes it look kind of frosty. I also added some shiny "Merry Christmas", Santa's, "HO HO HO's", stars, Christmas Trees, ect. Just make sure what you fill it with can fit in the opening if the ornament and go crazy!!

Once filled you are going to carefully slide your name into the ornament and snap the "lid" back on. I tied ribbon on the hook part to hang them or you can get some of the fancy hooks they sell at craft stores for hanging or even attach a cute charm. Whatever you'd like to do. 

O.K.. now get back to HALLOWEEN!! 

Galaxy Shoes!

Oh yeah, I have a blog! Man, I am horrible at this blogging stuff. I've done several crafty projects I could have blogged about, and even took pictures to do just that, but for some reason I never got around to actually blogging.

Today I painted my shoes. Doesn't everyone? Oh...well, I did. Anyway, I love the starry skies. The background of this blog is even galaxy looking.  I don't study galaxies or constellations and still consider Pluto a planet, but I love gazing into the night sky. I try to catch meteor showers and other celestial events except when these things happen it's usually cloudy here. I love the stars so much that my husband, the one who makes them shine for me, named one after me for our anniversary one year. Awww, I know, he's a keeper.

I've done my nails to look like a galaxy far far away before with nail polish and was happy with the results so I figured if I can make my nails look cool, why not my shoes? There is a connection there somewhere between fingernails and shoes. HA! I have it, they can both be painted! You didn't think I could come up with a connection did ya? Showed you.. and I'll show you how I made my shoes look like this:

Here is what you will need. 

• Shoes! This is pretty much the most important part. If you don't have the shoes I'm not sure you will be able to complete this project. I bought a cheap pair of black canvass shoes for $10. 
• Fabric paint in various colors. I chose shades of blues, pink, purple and white. You can use any colors you wish. Google "galaxy pictures" and it will give you some ideas on the different colors you can use. Reds, orange and yellow also look great. It's up to you. I also got some silver glitter paint as well, because everything is better with glitter.
• Painters tape or similar.
• Paint brushes or sponges. I used the sponges. 
• Old toothbrush, or a new one, but you wont be brushing your teeth with it after this. 
• Paper plate or something to mix paint on.
• Paper towels and some newspaper to protect the poor living room coffee table you keep doing these messy projects on. 

Next take your tape and tape around the bottom rubber edge on the shoes. Depending on your shoes you may not have to do this. Some don't have that rubber edge or maybe you want to paint that as well. Again, it's up to you.

 Next put some of your selected paint colors on your paper plate (or whatever you are using to put paint on) and dip your sponge or brush into the paint and then dab it on a paper towel. You're not really looking to put a ton of paint on the shoes or make them 3D. Or maybe you are, I don't know, I just know I wasn't so I dabbed.

 Now start painting your shoes. You can dab (I've never used that word so much before) your brush or sponge on the shoe or use a painting motion. This does not have to be perfect! Layer your colors and feel free to make some swirls and stuff in the paint. Space, the final frontier, is wild and unpredictable. No need to try and draw something perfect. I started with darker colors on the bottom and used lighter over them. I did not wait for each color to dry first so that they blended together even more on the shoes.

 Of course, we need stars. Once you have your colors on take your toothbrush and dip it in some white paint. Then you are going to use your thumb and "flick" the paint onto the shoes. This gives a very scattered effect. I also took a small brush and painted a few larger star bursts and larger dots in a few places.

This is like, the worst picture ever, but I'm flicking in it.  

After this I rubbed my finger in some of the silver glitter paint and just rubbed in on the shoes in a few places. This gave me more stars that were SHINY! OOOOOO SHINY!! I couldn't get a good picture of the glitter to show you, but after looking at my other pictures are you really surprised I didn't get a good one? I have to be the worst blog picture taker there is...

I don't really have a lot of (read: any) experience with fabric paint so I have no idea how well or if it stands up to water. I don't go around jumping in puddles but there are those times we simply can't avoid walking through one. I don't want my galaxy to turn into a black hole if that happens so I sprayed them with some acrylic sealer. I don't even know if it will work, and there is probably some sort of better sealer, but it's what I used. Will it work? Yo, I don't know, but spray those shoes and let's go! *groan*

I also plan on getting some purple shoe laces because I think they will go better than the white ones they came with. Maybe I will just paint the white shoe laces.. Hmmmmmmm...