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.
Image from Under the Table and Dreaming
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 a 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!
33 Comments
Glorious. Magnificent. Glad you didn’t burn your fingers off. Feed it to the dog to decorate your lawn with glittery sprinkles. All the neighbors will be jealous.
At Step 6 you could insert an episode of Cocknails. The snowflake is just too damn pretty, add it as a decoration on a gift, and make sure to tell the recipient that you made it. Pile on the guilt at Christmas is my motto.
The snow stuff is actually quite pretty. It didn’t get applied all the way at the top – maybe the minute-wait affected that? Funny, when I saw you spreading the soap, I noticed you didn’t have polish on, then you mentioned it. You need to do one of those obnoxious nail applications where you can’t even wipe ur tush when done. I’ll find the pin. I think I saw one on PYAD. That’d be a good CockNails.
Maybe I don’t know enough about this sort of thing, but couldn’t you have just dumped glitter on the glue before it hardened, instead of putting mod podge (read: glue) onto hardened glue?
Also, of course you didn’t have glitter. No one happens to have glitter laying around unless they’re a teenage girl or a stripper.
I have glitter in abundance – but i’m an elementary school teacher and ya just never know when you’ll need to glitter something! plus I love glitter!
You got that right about the glue gun Sonja. After spending a whole five dollars on one I had great expectations. Advise to newbies: start a rigorous work out program building the strength in your pointy figure if you plan on making a snowflake pattern that is thicker than a pencil line. The lack of proper physical training will also produce wavy lines as your hand shakes whist trying with all your might to push that shit out. Bottom line…go make some Christmas cookies.
Glitter is the herpes of the craft world. Once you have it, you never get rid of it.
Am I the only one who wants a t-shirt that says that? LOL-awesome!
You know, it was hot GLUE. You could have just poured the glitter on it while it was hot and saved yourself a bunch of steps… Just sayin’.
Yeah, I was sorta thinking the same… Needless steps for the win!
Oh shoot. Somebody already said that. A day late and a dollar short. That’s me.
I love it!! So pretty!
Glitter is like herpes. Once that shit gets on you, there’s no getting rid of it!
It does seem like making things more complicated than they may possibly need to be BUT if you put the glitter on while the hot glue is still drying…it becomes difficult to wash the soap off the back of your snowflake! I mean unless you have superfantasmorgasmic glitter. Sometimes instructions have good intentions…sometimes
Tip: For future activities involving hot glue, use a hair dryer to get rid of hot glue ” stringy things”
This craft is a good example of what bugs me about this crafting movement. Hot glue, glitter, glue, dishwashing soap, wax paper, and a somewhat functional printer are the supplies you need for this. And the result is – less just say you even slam dunked this puppy – marginal at best. If you are trying to keep a bunch of 3rd graders busy, maybe it’s worth a few household supplies. But, if you are actually trying to make your home look nice, it is a terrible waste of time and money. I thought the point of doing crafts was to make stuff that looked nice without spending a lot of money. But, this craft, and many, many of the crafty projects I see around, seem to be a way to generate more garbage.
So who chucked the wet blanket on you today?
someone pissed in your cheerios did they?
Agreed – I asked my aunt to crochet me a blanket to match my living room. It came out great but the supplies and yarn cost $80!
I like crafts and do it yourself a lot. I just think that in exchange for doing work yourself, you should also end up with something that is better than what you could buy for that money, or something with personality and spirit. It is part of what makes it enjoyable. Like, with the crochet blanket – hopefully you ended up with some really beautiful, homemade and unique which made the supplies worth it even if you could have bought a crochet blanket at Target for less. Some of the things on Pinterest, like this craft project, I think are more good things to do with children. I, personally, as an adult would not see this as a particularly cool decoration for all the money I would spend on supplies. However, having a sister who teaches small kids and having a child who has done crafty things at camp and school, I know teachers are always on the lookout for things like this, so, I like that people can share ideas on Pinterest for that stuff. I just think there should be sort of a divide between crafts for grownups and good ideas for keeping little hands busy.
With the skill a deftness you used in creating this “master piece”, might I suggest tackling the making of an Ugly Christmas Sweater? I bet you would nail it completely
[…] Snowflakes are each unique. And “unique” is about the nicest thing you can say about this one. […]
i like your snowflake better than the example because it has a star in the middle.
[…] I hot glued the little fuckers to the cut-out piece of plate, in a feat of using my glue gun twice in as many weeks, which has never before happened and probably never will […]
Step 6b. but in all actuality this turned out great looking
I too want the glitter herpes T-Shirt! Thanks for sharing the Sandy Hook memo,.
I was away on vacation and am enjoying the backlog of posts that built up in my absence. These are so funny, it’s a treat to be home.
Now to live up to my name: The expression is “wild hare.” Coming from the idea of being “mad as a March hare.” (Bringing it full circle on my pedantry, I will point out to myself that the hair/hare issue is actually up for debate). Yes, I hate me, too, sometimes.
Wow! I never knew that and have been spelling it wrong my entire life. Thanks so much for letting me know so that I will not further embarrass myself in the future! Glad you’re enjoying the posts– but I bet it’s still better to be on vacation. 😉
Oh man, I’ve been reading through these posts since 10pm ( mind you it’s now 220am) this is hilarious. My favorite post by far. Keep it coming
You already have the Christmas tree up?!
No dear. This post is from last year. 😉 I still have a rotten jack-o-lantern on my porch.
BUT WHAT ABOUT COATING THAT FUCKER WITH VASELINE OR HAIRSPRAY?!
[…] nice thing about pinning something that looks very similar to something you made before is that you get the benefit of experience. The nice thing about pinning something from […]