The Evil Ornament Challenge

My co-blogger was kind enough to start a challenge this Christmas: The Christmas Ornament Challenge.  The inspiration for her challenge was cleaning of all the crazy things.  Anita moved her craft room downstairs and in the process did some cleaning and organizing of the cool bits and nubs one might find in a well stocked craft room.  The new room looks amazing, is quite spacious and comfortable, and the windows let in the crazy amount of light so as to inspire your inner most artist, tres awesome!  While working through this transfer of creativity she found several four packs of glass ornaments she had purchased at a deep discount for a Craft Club project two or three years ago.  Well what does one do with several boxes of plain ornaments, you trick your friends and relatives into taking them while baiting them into a false sense of security with a smile and a gentle tone of voice.

"Hey would you like a box of these? I have several and I can't use them all".

"I bet I could think of some....."

"Too late! You touched it now you have to take it! This is the Ornament Challenge, you have to create four different ornaments and post it in December".

(this whole exchange she did with a big ole smile on her face)

These little glass squares brought me much consternation as I pondered my approach to the challenge at hand. I could think of two or three different styles but I could never quite get to four.  Alas, would I never be able to complete the challenge and be saddled with these little glass squares of doom until the end of eternity?  I think not, the idea finally came to me on my commute home one day.  Kids crafts!  I would decorate my ornaments using the mediums I so adored as a child: clay, glitter, paint, and collage.    

The first one was Paint.  I wanted to make a snowman out of one for sure, I had that idea right away when I was still unsure of how I would approach this bunch of Christmas cubes.  I sprayed him white, used a Q-tip for the eyes and coal smile, and painted on a cute little carrot nose.  He is so happy looking.  This guy took all of ten minutes, not including dry time.

My second inspiration was Glitter!  Oh how I loved glitter as a little girl.  I wanted glitter on every craft project I did back then.  I got some glitter pens and drew different colored glitter snowflakes and all four sides of ornament.  I tried to make them all different, which is why they kind of really look homemade but that makes me love it even more.

The third option was Clay.  The only clay I had was some Sculpy so I went with that.  I was jubilant to find I had a dark green in my stash as my idea was to do a Christmas tree.  I had to make it thin enough to be lowered down into the cube through the hole in the top.  I decorated the tree with colorful seed beads and gave it a curly top for an increased sass factor.  I glued him to the bottom of the cube and poured in some extra seed beads, they sound so nice tinkling around on the glass.

Finally I did Collage.  The ornament was created by cutting out lots of brightly colored clippings from a Pier1 catalog and modge podging it onto the glass.  I peeked in through the hole in the top occasionally to make sure I wasn't leaving any naked holes in the paper. I added a little touch of lace to the top to dress it up, it needed something to bring it together and helps it look a little more antique-ish.

I like how happy it made me getting to delve back into my past and make these ornaments.  Three of them were attached to small loaves of pumpkin walnut bread and donated to Animal House Shelter for their bake sale.  There was one I liked too much to give away, the clay one, so I kept it for my craft room for inspiration.  Keep on keepin on, the 2015 crafts will be here soon!

You're up Anita!

Kelly

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