Start a Family Tradition by Creating Holiday Craft Projects
(ARA) - With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it is sometimes difficult to spend quality time with your family. Start a new family tradition by creating handmade projects for this holiday season. To make greeting cards, decorations or even wrapping paper, all you need is a little inspiration, easy-to-follow instructions and the right glue.
"Instead of spending time fighting the crowds at the mall, why not enjoy an evening at home making your own unique decorations," says Sandy Moran of Perfect Glue, a trio of adhesives from the makers of Liquid Nails.
Perfect Glue offers the following ideas for personalizing your holiday season with family handmade projects:
* Holiday cards and invitations: Make the season bright with old-fashioned greetings made from recycled wrapping paper, ribbon, tissue paper and glitter.
Materials needed for glitter cards: Perfect Glue 1; cardstock or blank cards; foam stamps; glitter; small paintbrush; ruler
Directions: Brush a thin coat of Perfect Glue 1 onto foam stamp. Cover all raised areas. Press firmly onto card; lift stamp away. Sprinkle "stamped" image with glitter. Dry for a few minutes before shaking off excess. Dry for an hour before excessive handling or mailing. To make a border around card -- brush on a thin line of glue around card edge. Sprinkle with glitter and allow to dry.
* Heirloom-quality holiday decor: Glue decorative papers to a Styrofoam cone for the perfect-sized evergreen or put a twist on the traditional poinsettia with patterned red paper and floral wire.
* Decorative Gift Boxes
Celebrate the gift-giving season by adorning unforgettable presents with bows made of various textured papers or create tiny treat boxes covered with decadent fabric and ribbon.
* Advent Calendar Garland
For over 150 years, holiday advent calendars have been used as a special way to count down the days of December. Different methods have varied from drawing chalk lines and lighting candles to opening tiny doors to find a small piece of candy.
It is easy to create your own Advent Calendar that your family will treasure for years to come. This version includes 24 handmade paper stockings that can hang as garland or ornaments. Instead of candy, family members can write "gifts of kindness" on thin strips of plain paper. Examples include: "Tonight Dad will read Jack a bedtime story" or "Tonight we'll play a family game." Mix up the strips, slide one into each stocking and place the stockings in numerical order. Each night, a family member can pull one.
To ensure project success and longevity, use high-quality materials, such as Perfect Glue. Perfect Glue provides solutions for 99 percent of all household gluing needs covering a variety of projects, repairs and surfaces with three formulas. For more information, holiday project ideas and tips, visit www.perfectglue.com or call (866) 321-GLUE.
Courtesy of ARA Content
How to Make a Festive Snowflake Plant Pot
by S.Roberts
How to make an inexpensive and festive plant pot, ideal for adding additional festive cheer to your Christmas decorations. Christmas plant pots also make fantastic Christmas presents for any plant lover. They can be used inside or out. Super for potting springtime bulbs, or a little Christmas tree or dwarf conifer.
You will need...
- A terracotta plant pot in whatever size you wish.
- A base colour paint. Gloss or silk emulsion is great. Use up leftovers from the shed, they have just come in handy.
- Metallic spray paint, scissors, selotape, paper, newspaper and paintbrushes.
- Before you begin you need to cover your work area in newspapers to that you don't spoil any furniture with paint.
Take your plant pot and apply two coats of the base coloured paint. This will take a couple of days to complete because of drying times. Complete as directed on the back of the paint tin. Only continue when the paint is completely dry.
To add a snowflake design you need to make paper snowflakes. Take a square piece of paper and fold it in half to make two triangles. Then fold in half again, and fold one more time. Always fold the paper in the same direction, and keep the centre of the piece of paper at the tip of the folded triangle. Now using the scissors cut interesting shapes along the folds, along the top and snip the point off your folded triangle. Don't cut too much paper away so that it all drops to bits. Unfold the paper to reveal a beautiful snowflake. Make several different snowflakes, you can also make them in varying sizes if you wish.
With small amounts of selotape or blue-tac, tack the snowflakes to the plant pots. The snowflakes mask off parts of the pot. Any part of the pot masked off will remain the base colour.
Once you're happy with the snowflakes, you're ready for the metallic paint. It is important that you use spray paint in a well-ventilated room and that there are now naked flames present. Read the paint ca for full instructions.
Spray your plant pot and snowflakes with a thin coat of paint. Keep the paint tin moving at all times. You need to avoid a build up of paint because it will run and spoil your design. You can always spray another coat later.
When the paint is dry, carefully peal off the snowflakes to reveal a beautiful frosty snowflake theme plant pot, great to keep for your self or to give away as a gift.
_______________________________________
S. Roberts writes for http://www.santaspostbag.co.uk/ a Christmas website packed with festive ideas of things to make and do. Get Santa to send a FREE letter to your child.
Featured Article
The National Christmas Tree
Behind the Scenes -- People Work Year Round to Bring this Tree to Light
Favorite Recipes
Spice Up Holiday Cutout Cookies
Dust off your rolling pin and cookie cutters -- cutout cookies are a classic symbol of the festive holiday season.
Thumbprint Cookies Recipes
No holiday is complete without at least one batch of adorable, jelly-filled thumbprint cookies.
Flavored Butter Recipes
Dress up your table for the season with a holiday favorite - real butter.
Featured
Popular topics...
Making the Holidays More Meaningful
Christmas Gifts to Last a Lifetime
Keeping Christmas Spirit Alive: Christmas Just Isn't The Same Without Santa Claus!
Successful Holiday Gift Giving Starts with a Plan
Corporate Holiday Gift Ideas Start With a Possibilities List
Decorating for a Victorian Christmas
Legends of the Christmas Tree
Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees
Resource Center
Submit your topic related site and we'll
review it for our Partner Sites where we
provide link exchange information.
Tour our site using the Site Map. See our Privacy Policy.