Hot Glue Glitter Snowflake

Because you can never put enough shit on your Christmas tree, I decided that I needed another crappy homemade Christmas ornament to go with all the ones I made when I was little, and had an excuse to produce fucked-up-looking crafts.

The victim of my wild hair? The hot glue snowflake. OMG.

Why do I do this to myself? I don’t know. I hate glitter. I loathe it with a burning passion. I hate it more than Easter grass or tinsel or any other decorative item that gets everywhere. But then I look at someone’s cute craft and I think maybe it won’t be so bad this time…

Step 1? Find a pattern on the internet.

Step 2. Realize again that your printer is almost out of ink. Vow to put “buy ink for printer” on your to-do list. Promptly forget.

Step 3. Cover the template with wax paper, and then spread dish soap on the wax paper.

Step 4. When the instructions fail to tell you how to spread the dishsoap around, use your favorite method.

Step 5. Realize while uploading pictures to post on your blog for all the Internet to see that you really desperately need a manicure.

Step 6. Begin hot gluing.

Step 6b. Idly wonder if there’s a remedial hot gluing class and if you should sign up for it.

Step 7. Admire your beautimus work. Let it dry. Perhaps for hours because you started playing on the Internet and forgot about the whole snowflake ornament thing.

Step 8. Peel carefully off of dishsoap-soaked wax paper.

Step 9. Rinse in cold water. Damn hell there is a lot of soap on this thing when it comes off the paper. Rinse, rinse, rinse. You’ll know you’re done when you can’t blow bubbles through the snowflake gaps anymore.

Step 10. Remember from your elementary school days when you used hot glue with adult supervision that hot glue always leaves those stringy things. Consider that perhaps you should still have adult supervision.

Debate with self over how to take care of the stringy things. Consider cutting. Then just pull the little effers off because that’s a whole lot easier.

Now comes the messy part. The glitter. I could have just stopped with the hot glue ornament, I think. It’s not terrible. I mean, well, it is, but it’s not any more terrible than all the other broke-ass shit hanging on my Christmas tree, so ya know.

But I couldn’t bear to leave it unfinished.

So, step 11. Get out glitter. Breathe deeply. But not too deeply because you might inhale it accidentally. Glitter is fun like that.

This is actually “powder snow,” because I don’t own any glitter, but it has glitter in it, so I figured it was close enough. Use whatever you have: sand, sugar… crack cocaine. Whatever.

Do you guys remember when I made ModPodge? (What the fuck is ModPodge?) Sure you do…

Well, I made it and then I never used it, because I am a lameass and, honestly, I sort of forgot about it. But now I’m going to use it! Get excited!

The instructions (step 12, or whatever, I don’t know, I lost count) say to brush on the ModPodge. I didn’t have a little paint brush, but I did have a barbecue brush because I think it was attached to a bottle of Jack Daniels that I bought at the liquor store once because they were promoting the Jack Daniels barbecue sauce. Waste not, want not, bitches.

So I brushed it on and stuff, and then I sprinkled snow/glitter. Liberally.

I just wanted to make sure it would stick, you know?

I let it dry for like a minute. I maybe should have let it dry a little longer, but I was tired of it at that point, so a minute. Good enough.

TADA!

If you ignore the fact that it’s flimsy and weird and the fact that every time it moves more snow/glitter falls off, and the fact that I spent way too much time on this thing given that I already have glittery snowflakes for the Christmas tree that I bought in bulk for like a dollar at Target five years ago, it’s not so bad, really.

Here it is on my tree, where it remained until maybe 5 seconds after I took the picture. Maybe I’ll trim my wastebasket with it.

Edited to add: Jessica on Pinterest pointed out this news story to me. Apparently, the PTA of Sandy Hook is collecting snowflakes to decorate the new building where students will begin classes in the new year. I may or may not send my snowflake. (I know they said every snowflake is unique just like every person, but I feel like this one is a little… uh… too unique.) But I will send something, and I thought my fellow Pintestes might want to, too. Thanks Jessica!