Happy Birthday to me!

Well, today is my 10th Birthday!  I'm very excited, but Monday birthdays are really not much fun, because you can't do much after school.  I'll post pictures of my party later this week - when it happens.  I am pretty excited because I have presents coming in the mail all week long.  Yay for birthday WEEKS!  :)  Well, I'm off to eat my favorite food, chicken alfredo pasta, and have some cake and ice cream.  Talk to y'all soon!

Christmas Ornaments - Day 1

Hi!  Today I started on my Christmas projects.  I'm going to try to give everyone homemade gifts this year.  My first project was painted ornaments.  I made 2 kinds of ornaments today - I'll show you how!


(Notice my snazzy new outfit?  Thanks AGPT members - I totally claimed the Halloween prize.  Kit, Josefina, and Felicity still claim they have no idea what I'm talking about!)  You'll need to make sure you tie your hair back and have an old shirt on, as well as a handy human to help out!  You'll also need some old Christmas balls, acrylic paints, Qtips, and some bleach water in a bowl.





Pull the hangers off some old glass Christmas balls.  Drop them in some bleach water to sit.  You might have to scrub them a little bit with the Qtip.  Make sure you have some help!

 After they've soaked for awhile, they should start to look all grey and grody.  Then you can rinse them with warm water.  Make sure you rinse them a REALLY long time to get all the bleach off.  The grey paint should flake off too.  Lay them out to dry on paper towels.





At this point, you should probably take a break.  Maybe your mom has tasty peanut butter and chocolate chip muffins that you can steal.  Just don't get caught. Mmmm....





Okay - back to ornaments.

 To make marbled ornaments, you squirt diluted acrylic paints into the globe.  Choose your favorite colors.  It helps if you do light colors first, then add less amounts of dark colors.  When you are finished adding your colors, turn them over on the top of a bowl and let the paint drip out.  It takes a couple of days for these ornaments to completely dry.  In the meantime, you can work on polka dotted ones!



To make polka-dotted ornaments, take paint pens in whatever colors you like.  Make large polka dots in a light color (I'm using white).  Wait for them to dry - it only takes a few minutes.  Now would be a good time to eat another muffin.

 When they are dry, add smaller dots in a darker color.  I'm using red.  Then, choose one last color and add specks all around.  Make sure you leave a little blank spot, so we can put the initial on.

Add some ribbon for a hanger and voila!  I made this one for my cousin, Addie Jo.  I'm going to see her in her new house in Kentucky for Thanksgiving, so I had to get this one done quickly!



 I didn't forget about the marble ornaments.  Here are my two.  They were still a little wet, so I'll have to flip them over to keep drying out.  :)  Thanks for following along today!  Do you have any plans for Christmas projects??

I'm baaaack!

Hello friends - old and new!  Well, as you probably noticed, I went missing for awhile.  My human switched the internet company and my old blog vanished!  Very sad, but I'm ready to start again.   Here's my school picture from this year - I look a little like a deer in the headlights, but don't everyone's school pictures look like that?  Anyway, I'm working on a Christmas Ornament tutorial that I hope to get put up today or tomorrow (my human is home sick and she's pretty necessary for this sort of stuff, so I've got to get on the ball!).  See you all soon - and I'm so glad to be back!
-Makennah