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Christmas Gifts 2020- Blue Ornaments

January 18, 2021 creativecritters77Leave a comment

Today I’m sharing the set of blue Christmas ornaments I made. As with the red and green ornaments, I made these by adding polymer clay to a glass spice jar.

blue polymer clay covered glass Christmas ornament

For this ornament I strung together several pretty blue glass beads and hung them inside the jar. These ornaments are just beautiful hanging in a window, or with a Christmas light behind them.

For the bottom of the ornament I used my large Maple leaf cookie cutter and cut out several leaves which I stamped and colored with metallic blue Pearl Ex powder. I overlapped the leaves on the bottom of the jar and then layered star shapes over that.

I layered textured star shapes over the top of the ornament as well. On this one I added a string of metallic seed beads and a string of blue seed pods. Half the fun of making these ornaments is sifting through my bead and broken jewelry stash to find just the right beads. These seed pods came from a really cool necklace and they’ve found their way into several of my creations 😉

I used Tacky glue to help adhere the textured stars on the corners of the jar. Tacky glue works really well with baked and unbaked polymer clay.

For this ornament I made good use of some of my flower cutters. I love using cookie cutters and cake decorating cutters with polymer clay 🙂

For the top of this one I layered flowers in decreasing size. First I brushed the flattened sheet of clay with blue Pearl Ex powder, then I used an intricate Victorian filigree stamp to impress a pretty design, then I cut out the flower petal shapes. Brushing the clay with Pearl Ex powder before stamping it helps to keep the clay from sticking to the stamp.

I added flowers around the top and down the sides as well. Once again I used Tacky glue to help adhere the unbaked clay to the glass.

I stacked more daisy flower petal shapes on the bottom of the ornament. I love the way the Pearl Ex powder helps the stamped design to stand out.

So that’s it for the ornaments for now, although I’m sure I’ll be making more of these. Projects like these ornaments allow me to explore my creativity and experiment with different techniques. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by!

~Michelle

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Christmas Gifts 2020- Green Ornaments

January 4, 2021 creativecritters77Leave a comment

I just wanted to share more of the Christmas ornaments I made this year. I made a set of green ornaments using glass spice jars for the base. I just KNEW I’d find a use for all those spice jars I’ve been saving!

Green polymer clay covered glass Christmas ornament

For this one I painted the bottom of the spice jar from the inside to cover up the stamped lettering on the bottom of the jar. I used a pretty sparkling teal acrylic paint, which I think goes nicely with the green polymer clay.

Using my leaf shape cutters from my cake decorating set I cut out leaf shapes, rubbed them with green Pearl Ex powder, then stamped them for an interesting texture. Then I layered them over the top of the jar. For the top layer of leaves I used more of a teal blue green Pearl Ex powder. This matches the paint on the inside of the jar nicely (plus I love that color 🙂 )

I picked out several green glass beads and hung them inside the ornament. These ornaments look especially pretty hanging in front of a window with the sunlight shining through.

On the bottom of the ornament I layered squares of green polymer clay which was also rubbed with Pearl Ex powder and stamped.

clay covered ornament with Christmas tree and gingerbread man cutouts

The second green ornament was made by first painting the glass spice jar with green sparkle paint then completely covering the jar with clay. I rubbed the clay with green Pearl Ex, then cut out Christmas tree and gingerbread man shapes.

I cut out large leaf shapes, dusted them with Pearl Ex, then stamped them with pretty floral designs before layering them over the top of the ornament.

I added stamped leaf shapes, stars, and the cut out Christmas trees along the bottom and sides of the ornament.

Before painting the glass, the very first step was to add a cardboard armature to make the bottom come to a point. Then I was able to cover the bottom with more stamped leaf shapes.

Calcifer Kitty inspects the final product

Of course I had my fluffy supervisor to oversee the whole project 😉 Calcifer has to inspect everything I make- it’s his job after all!

Thanks for stopping by to check out my handmade Christmas ornaments!

~Michelle

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Christmas Gifts 2020- Red Ornaments

December 29, 2020 creativecritters77Leave a comment

I just thought I’d share some of the Christmas presents I made this year. I’ve been pretty busy for the last few months, creating ornaments, scarves and hats, toys, slippers, and many batches of cookies.

These turned out to be beautiful and unique Christmas ornaments

Today I wanted to share a pair of red ornaments I made using recycled glass spice jars, polymer clay, and glass beads. I’ve collected so many of these glass spice jars, knowing that I’d be able to make something really cool with them eventually.

For some of these ornaments I covered the top, bottom, and outer edges with clay and left the center area clear. I attached a string of glass beads to hang inside the ornament. These look really pretty hanging in a window with the sun shining through.

The clay flowers that adorn the edges were stamped and then rubbed with Pearl Ex powder for added depth and shimmer

I had a lot of fun playing with my shape cutters, stamps, and Pearl Ex powders. I just love the effect you get from stamping the unbaked clay and then rubbing Pearl Ex over the raised surface. It really helps to bring out the design.

I liked playing around with layering the shapes. I got a set of shape cutters made for cake decorating and they work great with polymer clay. I spent hours just totally lost in my little creative world 😉

This ornament is more fully covered in clay with just the star shapes cut out

Above is a different type of ornament. Here I wanted to experiment with cutting shapes out of the clay. For this one I used red sparkle paint to cover the jar so that would show through the cut outs.

I used gold Pearl Ex to compliment the red clay

Once the paint was dry I covered the jar with a sheet of red clay and used a star cutter to cut out stars around the ornament.

I made good use of my stamps and Pearl Ex powders with this one too. Rubbing the flattened sheet of clay with Pearl Ex and then pressing in the stamped design works really well. The powder keeps the stamp from sticking to the clay and you can get a nice deep impression.

Part of the fun of making these ornaments (and I made quite a few all together) was sifting through all my stamps and deciding which to use. Polymer clay plays well with so many different mediums: paint, stamps, powders, beads, inks, and all sorts of other embellishments!

Before I covered this in clay I added a cardboard armature to the bottom so it came to a point like this.

I really enjoyed creating these ornaments and took my time with the whole process, just letting my muse guide me. There was absolutely no “plan” for any of these (I’ll be sharing more ornaments later), just a vague idea. These turned out even better than I expected and I plan to make more, eventually listing some in my Etsy and ArtFire shops. This year I just wanted to be sure I had enough to give as gifts.

I’ll be sharing more of my Christmas creations in future posts, so stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope your holidays have been full of laughter and love.

~Michelle

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