Archive for the ‘Winter Holidays’ Category

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You won’t want to go without this cute little hat for your New Years eve celebrations! The decorative possibilities are endless and the template is free so what’s holding you back?

Mini Top Hat Accessory

Materials
• Stiff felt sheet, foam or colored flexible cardboard
• Ribbon
• Embellishments such as feathers and rhinestones
• Hair clips or headband
• Mini top hat template found at http://andreacurriecrafts.com/templates
• Hot glue gun or fabric glue
• Scissors
• Pen
• Craft knife

Instructions
1) Print and cut out the template from http://andreacurriecrafts.com/templates
2) Trace onto stiff felt sheet and cut out. Mark the glue lines at one end of the long piece.
3) Bend the long piece into cylinder shape and glue together where the glue lines are marked.
4) Give the top circle tab a strip of glue then bend the tab into the cylinder. It should be flush or almost flush with the cylinder.
5) Cut slits into the bottom brim circle to match the lines made in the template.
6) Fold slits up until it kind of looks like a crown.
7) Quickly put dime sized amount of glue on the outside of each triangle and then put cylinder over the top. Flip over to press each triangle to the inside of the cylinder.
8. Pipe in small amounts of glue to the top part of the hat if you have holes.
9) Decorate with ribbon, rhinestones and feathers!
10) You can attach the hat to a headband or set of hairclips with hot glue OR criss-cross and glue ribbon across the bottom allowing the headband and clips to slip over it.
11) Wear to a party and let people ohh and ahh over your crafty genius!

Need to spruce up your Xmas tree on the cheap? Check out this neat vintage up-cycled ornament craft that I demoed on Cool2Craft!

Materials
-Soda Can

-2 bottle caps -Glitter

-Alcohol ink or acrylic paint

-White glue -Hot glue/gun -Festive embellishments

-Scissors

-Ball point pen

-Pinhole punch or small nail/hammer

Directions
1. Flatten out soda can and cut two 3 inch circles from soda can.

2. Warm glue them together

3. With a ballpoint pen press design lines into your circles. Flip over and outline the top with design lines too.

4. Use alcohol ink or acrylic paint to decorate the circles.

5. Glitter the insides of the bottle caps by adding white glue and topping with glitter.

6. Add embellishments on top of dried glitter with warm glue.

7. Pin hole punch or nail a hole through soda can circles.

8. Sandwich the soda can circles in-between glittered bottle caps with warm glue.

9. Add chord or ornament hanger.

I must admit that may have a cork hoarding problem….. But it’s good to note that my large stash of corks doesn’t come from endless days and nights of drinking wine I actually acquire them from friends and local restaurants. Why? Because corks are a great addition to any crafters stash! That’s right ladies and gents they aren’t just good for sticking pins into anymore! Take my glittered cork tree ornaments for instance. They are equal parts warm/cozy and glam. That paired with the fact that they are easy and virtually free to create makes them a totally addicting project! Check out the cork tree demo LIVE tonight on the Cool2Craft PJ Party @ 6 pacific 8 central 9 eastern.

And here’s the written instructions.

Materials
-Corks (6 for a small ornament sized tree and 10 for a larger tree decoration)
-Screw cap (for larger tree)
-Small cork or half cork (for smaller tree)
-Hot glue gun and hot glue
-White glue (Aileen’s tacky glue)
-Fine glitter (3 colors for a festive look)
-Brads and/or other small festive embellishments (Making Memories Large Snowflake
Brads and Crystal Brads)
-Small eyelet screws
-Craft knife

Directions (Decoration)

1) If you have bottle caps fill them up with your decorative glitters (1 cap per color).
Reserve a cap for your white glue.
2) Decorate both ends of your corks by dipping them into a small amount of white
glue. Immediately dip the glued ends into the glitter making sure not to rub off the
glue or glitter.
3) Repeat this with all corks.
4) To insert brads into the corks use your craft knife to start a small hole and then
gently push your brads into the cork. This should be secure enough without any
glue. If it’s loose secure with a quick dry glue.
5) For other loose embellishments use a quick dry glue

Directions (Assembly)
1) To make your bottom row of corks start with a strip of hot glue on one side of
your first cork then press your second corks’ side to it. Continue making your
bottom row of corks this way. For Large tree your bottom row will be 4 corks. For
the small tree it will be 3 corks.
2) Your second row of corks will rest within the valleys that the first row created but
they valleys have small space in which you don’t want glue to show. To adhere
the corks into the valleys without showing hot glue in your final piece you will
need to place 2 strips of hot glue on either side of the valley and not directly into
the valley. Then quickly place your cork onto the hot glue before it dries.
3) Repeat step 2 but also add a small strip of hot glue to the cork you just placed so
that its’ new neighbor will stick to it and the next valley.
4) Repeat step 2 and 3 for subsequent rows
5) For the trunk you will either adhere a screw bottle cap (open side facing
down), small cork or half cork to the bottom layer of corks with a nickel
size amount of hot glue.
6) For the ornament hook create a hole by working craft knife into the top
cork. Screw in your eyelet screw.

Now decorate the house and have a great holiday! Don’t forget to visit the YouTube channel for more fun projects!

It’s projects like these that make my husband stop looking at me strange for collecting bottlecaps and corks! It really doesn’t take much more than sparkles and glue to finish off these two eco-friendly and fun projects.

Many of my friends have been wondering why I’ve asked for their left over corks….They see them as garbage and I see them as crafting gold! I was in the holiday spirit this weekend (how could I not be?) and made these cute little cork holiday trees! Check out my first cork project video. I say first because I have more cork ideas waiting to get made

For those not able to see my video above (because you on IE) please click on the direct link below.

Every year I cut paper snowflakes. This year I took some leftover contact paper and cut out some very simple snowflakes. Why contact paper you ask? Contact paper is about as sticky as a Post It note and won’t ruin my walls after The holidays are over