Tuesday, January 4, 2011

the elf work


so, i suppose i'm a little behind on the holiday posts but you don't really mind right? my hopes are to be all caught up and producing current posts(with a lot more pictures of my children) by the time the new baby arrives... which could be any day now (yikes)!
in case your wondering what kind of cookies those are up there... i regret to inform you that they are not the least bit edible. those are my attempt to instill the love of giving in my children over the holiday season. i thought if they made gifts and gave them to their family that it would open their eyes to the wonderful world of elving. you may be curious if this plan of mine actually worked and it did... to some extent... it definitely wasn't the extreme eye opener i was hoping for, but i think if we focus a little more on giving each year and continue to cut down on the receiving end that, yes, my children will learn the true meaning of christmas.

anyway... i should probably run through the directions of our little ornaments since that was the purpose of this post.

we used sculpey oven bake clay (which i do not recommend for the hand print ornaments... it's very firm and quite difficult to get a nice print (especially with a squirmy toddler). we handled the clay until it was soft and then rolled it out and used holiday cookie cutters to make the various shapes (star, tree, gingerbread man). then we used drinking straws to poke out the hole for the ribbon. how did we get them to look metallic? we used these really cool powder paints called pearl ex... just to warn you... a little goes a long, long way with those. also, make sure and protect your table! we used old place mats and the place mats are pretty much ruined now. you dust a little of the pearl ex powder on the clay with a paint brush (i let them use no more than two colors on each ornament). oh, i'm skipping a step! before we painted on the powder we used various things to create "texture" on the ornaments (ex. beads, textured toys, and rubbing plates). after the pearl ex is dusted on then you place the ornaments on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven for whatever time and temperature your clay recommends. then i let the ornaments sit out over night and wrote each kids name and the year on the back and tied on a ribbon. it was a fair amount of work, next year i plan to start the elving process in october!

did you do any elving this holiday season?

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