Christmas Ornaments 2016

Happy Sunday!

As I stated last post, it had been WAYYYYYY too long since I had been in the Craft Cave.  Yesterday was the day - I headed down and got lost for a total of about four hours.  Yay!  The down side was I had to spend the first half hour trying to find the top of my desk.  Boo!  The chaos from my class July 5th (!!!) was a sad reminder that it had, in fact, been 11 days sine I darkened the doorway.  Given that it's summer and I have nothing but time on my hands I am shocked it's been that long … alas - the mess don't lie *lol*

As I started putting things away I got distracted (quite a normal occurrence for ME!)

I had cleared off a space about 6" x 6" … good enough, right?  CERTAINLY enough room to start making Christmas decorations! … so that's what I did *lol*

Wa-LOW!  I give you the Bertram 2016 Christmas Ornament!

Side Bar - for those of you new to my blog ... that was my daughter's attempt at "voila" when she was younger - love how they constantly tried to parrot my sayings …. and got them wrong about 50% of the time hee hee.

Another Side Bar - for those of you new to my blog … every year, for the last 13 years, I have made a Christmas ornament for my daughters.  Than plan was//is to give them a box of ornaments for their trees when they move out.  After all, when you get your first apartment/home who has money to buy something as frivolous (and expensive!) as tree ornaments, right?  … and how lovely would it be to open a box of special memories and love from your mom?

Most years December sneaks up on me and I'm making my annual ornaments the day before Christmas.  Not this year!  Done mid JULY!!!

This fabulous little ornament was inspired by my friend Casey.  Last month she showed me some tiles she had picked up at the hardware store …

Casey has a Silhouette machine and is a wizard at creating fabulous personalized items and home decor using vinyl.  Her plan was/is to turn them into Christmas ornaments using vinyl.  I fell in LOVE with the idea!  Of course MINE would be with ink and paper!  Next time I was out running errands I bought the tiles and started researching how to stamp on them.  (Thank You "Uncle Google"!)

Naturally this was over a month ago *lol*.  Yes, I BOUGHT the tiles … put them in The Cave … and there they sat… until I found them yesterday under the pile of chaos on my desk.  Well … no one procrastinates on cleaning like I do … so cleaning was abandoned and 2 hours later this is what I had come up with ...

"Two HOURS?", I hear you cry.  "How could that take you two HOURS?"  Well … this is about the 9th version *lol*.  Stamping on tiles is tricky.  First and foremost the tiles are slippery making stamping on them a little more difficult than on paper.  My first few versions involved stamping the above image with black Staz-on (the recommended ink on most of the tutorials I found).  There was a definite learning curve as the image slipped and smudged.  No problem - Staz-on cleaner wiped it right off for a quick "do-over".

I DID come up with a version that was stamped in black and then coloured green and red with my Sharpies.  Alas … the tutorials said I needed to BAKE the tiles to set the ink … and then spray them with an acrylic glaze to seal everything so it doesn't chip, bleed or rub off.  Ya no.  I don't bake crafts.  NO patience for THAT nonsense.  Rather than doing as I was told I went straight to "spray with acrylic glaze".  Mistake.  BIG mistake!  The inks turned into a big runny, sloppy puddle of green, black and red.  Straight into the garbage!  *lol*.  So!  What was I going to DO with these things?  Normally they would be pushed aside to try again "another day" (of course "another day" never actually arrives and they would collect dust like the other 72 projects that have suffered the same fate!)

I wanted a project that I could use for a class … something that would be FABULOUS without being tedious, time consuming and/or involving my oven!  The above "final version" ticks all the boxes.  Yay me!

Gold is "anything" is a hot trend right now … so gold is what I wanted.

I simply stamped the image from Embellished Ornaments in Versamark …

… and heat set it with Gold Embossing Powder.  *** WARNING *** These tiles get HOT when you heat emboss them.  Holy COW!  I was vey surprised at a) how LONG it took for the embossing powder to melt (about 3 times as long as it does on paper!) and b) how screaming hot the tile got!  I guess the tile absorbs the heat from the heat gun, heating up the tile and drawing the heat away from the powder, slowing down the melting process.  Whatever the science behind it, know that if you are holding the tile in your hand it will burn you.  I quickly learned to place the tile on my desk to melt the powder (I will put the tile on a block of wood in future just to protect my desk).

I LOVE how thick the embossing powder is and how well/evenly it melted.  It looks great "live".

I made the banner using the FAB hostess set "Time of Year"

Love love LOVE this banner!  I stamped it on Whisper White with Versamark and heat set the gold embossing powder.  I then punched it out with the corresponding banner framelit from the Bunch of Banners set ...

I used a fine tip Sharpie to write '16 in the corner and popped it up on dimensionals.

Oh!  The hole!  Yes, I needed to drill a hole to HANG the ornament!  Remember, these are tiles, intended for kitchens and bathrooms, not crafting *lol*.  Last month I had Craig pick me up  drill bit specifically for drilling tile.  He set me up with a block of wood, his drill, instructions not to lose any body parts and off I went.  It worked perfectly!  No chipping, cracking or breaking!  Craig DID mention it would be a lot faster, easier and more precise if "ONE of us" had a drill press.  20 minutes later Uncle Amazon had one winging it's way to our house.  It will arrive next Monday.  Yes, it will be a business write off … but I'll let him use it from time to time *lol*

Quick, cute and no oven needed!  My kind of project!  Naturally, I'll be offering a class in the fall for my local customers so stay tuned for a date on that!

I managed to spend another two hours in The Cave after dinner last night so pop in again soon to see how that one turned out.  Until then, have a stampy Sunday!



Tam