Stupid Gravity

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

I had a lovely and delicious dinner at my aunt's house in Michigan. For a bit of post-moonwalk, post-football, post-turkey entertainment, I brought a little craft project to kick off the holiday season.

Cat Morley had a cool idea for a light bulb Christmas ornament on her site. Conveniently, Meijers had a sale on both lightbulbs and glitter glue last week.

Pros: These looked awesome when they were finished - very sparkly and festive and cool looking. The materials were super cheap - it's just glitter glue, lightbulbs and a bit of picture wire to make them hang. This was appropriate for a wide range of ages - road tested for elementary school through my Dad (the wire was a bit sharp - that step may be best done by adults).

Neutral: The mess factor. The glue was water soluble - so easy to clean up mistakes and/or sparkly fingers. Probably less messy than your average paint project but you'll still need to put newspapers down to cover the table.

Cons: Stupid Gravity. Since the ornaments weren't flat they needed to be hung to dry. In most cases it seemed that the glue had slid around or dripped before they were fully dry. I suspect this will vary with the type of glue you use, but was a problem for us (note to self: read packaging for appropriate surfaces). The abstract designs still looked really cool, but the more specific shapes were blurred (sparkle camoflage was a success, holly leaves not so much). More enthusiastic (heavy/thick) glue applications actually dripped off of the ornaments and onto the floor. Fortunately the glue was water soluble, but I'm a little worried that my aunt's kitchen will be permanently sparkly.

Sorry, I don't have pictures to show you. But I would certainly recommend trying this at home - just, you know, put down some newspaper first.