baubles | Today We Did

Tucked away in the craft drawers I found a packet of cardboard Christmas garland shapes. It consisted of ten pieces of alternating bauble and snowflake shapes that could be decorated and then combined to string across the wall or the top of a door or window.

Shaking on glitter.

Glitter was the only decorating material we considered, so we took the glitter tub and the cardboard garlands outside. The kids painted on glue with paintbrushes and then shook glitter onto the glue.

Creating patterns with the glitter.

L made some interesting patterns on her baubles and snowflakes. She added glue in a swirl shape and covered it with one colour of glitter, and then blew the excess off. Then, she placed glue in the plain section and added a different colour of glitter to this glue. She also did some stripes using the same method. These look great.

Some of the garlands hanging up to dry.

Glitter patterns.

A liked to use lots of different colours all over hers, which also look great. At least twice, the lid of one of the glitter tubes came off, dumping a heap of glitter onto the shapes. As there was a lot of glitter left on the muck mat, I painted glue all over the last two pieces of garland, and then pressed them glue side down into the excess glitter. The glitter colours were very mixed up, but I liked the way they came up, and we didn’t waste too much glitter!

Ready to be combined to make a lovely glittery garland string.

Once the garland pieces were completely dry, I stapled them together, end to end. We tied the finished garland from the curtain rod on our large lounge room windows. It is quite festive!

Hanging from the curtain rod.

Some 3D foam balls, sequins, seed beads, metal pins, paint and Christmas ribbon…. all the ingredients for some great bauble making craft.

My sequined ball…it did take patience to make, but it looks great.

I started making a bauble by placing a seed bead onto one of the pins, followed by a sequin, and then pushing the pin into the foam ball. I did this over and over to cover the ball. This was a bit too tricky for A to do, first she couldn’t get the seed bead onto the pin, then she dropped the sequin and the pin, and got a little frustrated with the whole project.

A’s ribbon bauble.

So we tried for something a little simpler. For her first bauble we used three different Christmas ribbons, and wrapped them around the foam ball. I held the ribbon still while A secured each one with some of the pins. We continued to do this until the ball was covered in ribbons. I then tied a piece of thin silver thread to one of the pin heads (and glued it down)to hang it by. I think the result is quite nice, and it was much quicker and easier than the bauble I made with the sequins!

L working on her sequined bauble.

L also had a go at putting sequins and seed beads on a foam ball. She decided to place her pins randomly over the ball, rather than cover the whole thing because that would take too much time! As it was, she became tired of trying to get the tiny seed beads onto the pins after about a dozen or so. She wants to come back to hers later.

To make some more decorations, A painted another foam ball and a foam star with gold paint. Once the paint was dry she glued sequins randomly over the shapes. We added some Christmas ribbon to hang them up. These were much easier for her to complete on her own, and she was happy with the result.