This year the Christmas season began early at the casa de cherry blossom. I've got my tree up and it's all decorated. Nah, I'm just kidding....that would be completely creepy and weird and certainly not the good kind of creepy and weird either! But I did work on a holiday project this past week. I am participating in the ornament swap hosted by
Handmade Parade so I got into the Christmas mood very early this year. I wanted to make something with a vintage look so I put on my Charlie Brown Christmas cd, did some creative brainstorming and decided to make little candy colored glass ornaments. I did some Etsy surfing and found the cutest vintage images to use. They are taken from vintage Christmas cards and were the perfect size for my project.
The Etsy shop where I bought the images is called
cachecache and I picked up some great vintage fairy images as well. I love that cachecache sells her images as digital jpegs that you download. I was able to print out the images just a few hours after buying them with no shipping costs and no waiting. I love that!!
I used microscope slides for the glass in this project. It's super lightweight and really easy to use. I got the microscope slides courtesy of my geeky science lab hubby, but you can find them on Ebay too. I cut the slides to the size of the image and they were ready to go. I used my Olfa wavy blade to cut the copper foil. You can buy pre-cut wavy edged foil, but it's expensive and I am a the queen of cheap so I did it myself. I used 3/8 inch foil that I cut in strips and took my wavy rotary cutter to the edges of them. I love the look of wavy edged solder. It reminds me of rick rack trim.
I always use lead-free solder on my glass projects which is a bit trickier to use than regular solder, but it's safer and worth the effort. I added wee jump rings to the top and bottom of each piece. After I cleaned and polished the pieces I went shopping for beads. Ideally, I wanted to find beads that looked like little pieces of old fashioned Christmas candy. Naturally there was no such thing at this time of the year, so I settled on the pink and green glass beads that had a vintage look to them. I thought they sort of looked like already sucked on candy.
I strung the beads on eye pins, attached them to the glass pieces and added a ribbon hanger. Then I made a quick little hang tag and they were ready to go!
These ornaments were really fun to make, but I'm glad to be done with them. They are getting shipped out tomorrow and should make it to their destination with a few days to spare of the Nov. 1st deadline.
This year the Christmas season began early at the casa de cherry blossom. I've got my tree up and it's all decorated. Nah, I'm just kidding....that would be completely creepy and weird and certainly not the good kind of creepy and weird either! But I did work on a holiday project this past week. I am participating in the ornament swap hosted by Handmade Parade so I got into the Christmas mood very early this year. I wanted to make something with a vintage look so I put on my Charlie Brown Christmas cd, did some creative brainstorming and decided to make little candy colored glass ornaments. I did some Etsy surfing and found the cutest vintage images to use. They are taken from vintage Christmas cards and were the perfect size for my project. 
The Etsy shop where I bought the images is called cachecache and I picked up some great vintage fairy images as well. I love that cachecache sells her images as digital jpegs that you download. I was able to print out the images just a few hours after buying them with no shipping costs and no waiting. I love that!! 
I used microscope slides for the glass in this project. It's super lightweight and really easy to use. I got the microscope slides courtesy of my geeky science lab hubby, but you can find them on Ebay too. I cut the slides to the size of the image and they were ready to go. I used my Olfa wavy blade to cut the copper foil. You can buy pre-cut wavy edged foil, but it's expensive and I am a the queen of cheap so I did it myself. I used 3/8 inch foil that I cut in strips and took my wavy rotary cutter to the edges of them. I love the look of wavy edged solder. It reminds me of rick rack trim. 
I always use lead-free solder on my glass projects which is a bit trickier to use than regular solder, but it's safer and worth the effort. I added wee jump rings to the top and bottom of each piece. After I cleaned and polished the pieces I went shopping for beads. Ideally, I wanted to find beads that looked like little pieces of old fashioned Christmas candy. Naturally there was no such thing at this time of the year, so I settled on the pink and green glass beads that had a vintage look to them. I thought they sort of looked like already sucked on candy. 
I strung the beads on eye pins, attached them to the glass pieces and added a ribbon hanger. Then I made a quick little hang tag and they were ready to go!
These ornaments were really fun to make, but I'm glad to be done with them. They are getting shipped out tomorrow and should make it to their destination with a few days to spare of the Nov. 1st deadline. 
3 comments:
These are so cute, Pam! Some day you'll have to teach me how to solder!!!!
These turned out way too cool.When you told me you were making ornaments I knew they would be cool, but never this cool. I expected toothpick mangers. I love the pictures. I can't believe how perfect they are.
You're no bear in a bee costume~
Cutest things!!, I want you in my ornament exchange group. Last year I made a beautiful wool star, bedazzled to the nth and the one I got was a dorky Rudolf the Red nose reindeer made from panty hose. One other year, I made something wonderful and I got a manger made from popsicle sticks. Please join my group.
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