Friday, December 25, 2015

My Husband's Christmas Minis


The most wonderful day of the year is finally here and I'm stopping by to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

But before I go, I wanted to show you my husband's minis. The truck is from a co-work friend of his and he got it many years ago. I don't know what scale it is but I thought it  would look nice with a wreath in front or maybe a garland along the sides. I looked at it once and then saw a look on my husband's face that said "don't touch" so I left it alone.
But the other 2 Christmas minis are a different story.  They both were ornaments I hung on the tree.
One year as I was putting my Christmas decorations away, I noticed they were missing but wasn't to worried about it-they'd show up somewhere. Sure enough they did and this is where I found them.

The Santa was here.




And the sleigh




They disappear each each year only to re-appear the next.  I think my husband now has permanent custodianship and that's find with me.

From our house to yours

Merry Christmas!

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Beaded Angel




Hello everyone! I hope you are beginning to enjoy the holiday season.  I am really surprised that for 2 years in a row, I am ready. That is quite an accomplishment for me!

I decided to make angels using straight pin type jewelry findings instead of beading wire.  They may take a little longer because of the drying time but I really enjoyed this method.

You will need:

2 larger gold sequins
gold glitter- very fine
14 small beads for the dress
1 larger bead for the head
4 rice beads
6 straight pin findings
wire cutters
tweezers
craft glue for glitter
superglue (you could probably use craft glue but that takes longer to dry and not quite as sturdy)



String beads on wires as shown below and secure in place with super glue.

Once the glue dries, trim off the excess wire as close as you can to the beads. Then, carefully using superglue, glue together as shown.


While that's drying take one sequin and cut in half. Apply craft glue to both halves then glitter and let dry. Leaving the other sequin whole, apply glue and glitter.


Now comes the fun part. Using craft glue, glue the whole sequin to the back head of the angel (for the halo)
Then add the halves as wings. I had to do this as a two step process because it helps to have the halo dry.  I also decided to use craft glue because I wasn't too sure how superglue would stick to glitter. 
Final step is to superglue the rice beads to the back of the angel at the base.  Be sure to tilt the angel very slightly backwards,
You should end up with something like this:

I have made 2 of these so far and  have no plans to make more (for this year at least) In fact, this will probably be the last mini I make before Christmas. I will be spending the rest of the time putting together little scenarios on  how I want to display the minis in my Christmas shop.  Hopefully, I'll have some pics soon.

Hope you enjoyed thus tutorial. So, til next time, have a wonderful day.

Diane