Craft Supply Challenge - Glitter

How-to guide for making Glitter Cake decorations

A blog I religiously follow by Dana, Craftyminx, is hosting a craft supply challenge! This week, the supply is glitter. It's a craft supply I have plenty of and I want to add to everything! Although I try to restrain myself, sometimes a girl's got to add glitter... that was this case this past Valentine's day.

I briefly showed these in my older post. But I want expand the post to show you how I made the 3'd glitter X's and O's I put as decoration for the Valentine's day pie I made.




These instructions are for 2 X's and 2 O's.

Materials:
Paint
Paintbrush
Tracing paper (I used plain, ruled paper) - 1 piece
Thick cardstock (I used watercolor paper) - 1 piece
Scissors and/or Xacto knife
Glue
Glitter
Toothpicks
Pencil
Ruler
Tape




Instructions:
1. Measure and draw the shapes you'd like to cut out on tracing paper or flimsy ruled paper. In this case, I measured and cut an X shape and an O shape. I made them about 3" tall.



2. Tape the tracing shapes onto cardstock and trace the shapes. Make and cut 4 shapes of each - 4 X's and 4 O's - two will go to each piece, making the shapes thick and able to hold a toothpick in the middle.



3. Next, glue the shapes together - making 2 X's and 2 O's. Wait for the glue to dry - place the shapes under a book to let them set flat.



4. Paint the shapes the desired colors - make sure to get both sides! Wait for the paint to dry.










5. Using glue (I used rubber cement, but a glue stick or mod podge will do!), spread an even thin layer of glue on the side you will be adding glitter to. After applying glue to one shape, quickly add your glitter! I used my extra piece of white ruled paper to catch the extra glitter so I could reuse the unused glitter. Wait for the glittered sides to dry, and flip over and repeat if you'd like to apply to the back sides as well!






6. Once the shapes are all dry, insert a toothpick in between the two pieces of card stock of each shape.
7. Decorate your cake, pie, cupcakes or brownies with your special decorations :) I like how the glitter mimics the crispy cooked sugar on top of the cherry pie!

Recycling Old Plaid Shirts

I bought some nice plaid shirts (four) for Steve two Christmas' ago... Well, they apparently weren't the best of quality, and the right elbow ripped open (about 4-5" big!) on each shirt. This could have been a combination of the quality of the shirts, but Steve also admitted that his right elbow rubs on some jutting angle of his work desk all day. I kept telling Steve to stop wearing these shirts, we need to get rid of them- but being a boy, he refused. So I finally took them out of his closet and gave him some options - we could throw them away and forget about them, or give me some time and I will re purpose the shirts. Of course he chose the re-purposing, but I knew it would take me a while to get around to fixing them up.

So I decided to make a pillow case (or as I thought, 2) out of the four shirts. So they all have snap closures and pockets on the front, so getting nice long pieces out of the material was only from the back paneling of the shirt. I cut the back pieces out and realized I only had enough material for 2/3rds of a pillowcase! So I decided to only use 3 of the shirts to make a front piece of the pillowcase, and plain brown cotton fabric for the back. I wanted to add an extra special touch, so I added the snap closures on the side you insert the pillow (so you can snap it closed and not see the pillow!). I've admitted this before, but I am the worst quilter and crafter possible only because I get SO annoyed with measuring and making nice cuts with my material. I mean, I made sure to make sure the final product fit the pillow, but to get to that point, it's all messy and guessy.

So I feel better (and hopefully Steve feels better) that his shirts have a new use (and it's a really soft pillowcase!). And, despite the messy measurements, the pillowcase fits perfectly (note to self: do not put in dryer).