Misadventures in Christmas Crafting

Crafting always looks so easy and so satisfying to me. Who doesn’t want to make their own personalized Christmas stockings or an elegant wreath for the front door?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to distribute your thoughtful hand-made gifts to your friends and family members?  No, not gifts, future heirlooms – keepsakes – treasures.

For me, these efforts inevitably end in tears, specifically my tears.  I had some luck with loom-woven potholders and latch-hook rug kits as a child.  I can cross-stitch and perform a very basic knit stitch.  That’s about as far as my talents have taken me.  Once, I tried to make ice cream cone ornaments with my son who was 6 years old at the time.  It consisted of gluing a brown colored ball ornament into a waffle cone, adding some embellishments and sealing it with a spray.  My memories of that endeavor include glue cemented to the top of the dining room table, glitter in my hair and my perplexed child asking, “mommy, why do you look so mad?”

Lately, I’ve been watching a YouTube channel called Canterbury Cottage.  I highly recommend it if you’re into that sort of thing.  The content creator is so artistic she could probably scrape a squished bug off the bottom of her shoe and turn it into a lamp – with a hand-crafted bird’s nest artfully perched on top.  She’s the sort of person who makes all things seem possible, like a very encouraging Kindergarten teacher.  

One of her projects particularly spoke to me.  She used color printed copies of charming vintage Christmas images, cut them to fit the back of a flat-backed clear plastic ornament, and applied a thin coat of mod-podge to adhere them.  Then she used rick-rack (I had to look that word up) to give the ornament a “finished look,” along with some glitter on the back.  Then she filled the ornament with fake snow.  She found all of these very specific things in her “stash” which must look something like the inside of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag.  The result – charming, vintage Christmas keepsakes that she planned to sell.  For money.

I felt certain that I could make these ornaments myself, but mine would be even better because I would use slightly damaged antique Christmas postcards – something I had in my own “stash.”  I purchased other supplies like mod podge, rickrack, glitter, clear plastic ornaments and ribbon at Joann’s Fabric Store, the Dollar Tree and Amazon.  Once I had them in hand, I was ready to perform crafting magic!

I’ve seen many Canterbury Cottage vlogs, so I knew that a cardboard template would be a good tracing tool for my postcards.  I used it to carefully cut out my first image.  It came out perfectly.  I squeezed some mod podge onto it and instantly created a thick gooey coating that couldn’t possibly dry clear.  No matter – I also smeared glue on the back of the ornament – maybe too much – it was a bit drippy.  Then I pressed the image to the ornament.  It slid around like a slick seal and would not lie flat.  If I pressed one side the other side would pop up like a Jack in the Box.  If I pressed the other side, the reverse would occur.  Maybe a little bit of buckling wouldn’t be noticeable?  What about the mod-podge residue from my sticky fingers that was now leaving fingerprints on the front of the bulb?  Could those be washed off?  Would I need Goo-Be-Gone?  Does Dollar Tree sell that?

No matter.  The first ornament was just a test-ornament.  Everyone knows that the first one doesn’t count.  The next one would be better.  Except that it wasn’t.  In the end, I made four gooey, opaque, buckling ornaments that I couldn’t give away to my own grandmother.  When my husband came home and saw my results, he reasonably remarked that crafts are always harder than they look, and wouldn’t it be easier just to buy a finished ornament?  Reader, it would.

If you would like to watch my crafting escapade for yourself, I encourage you to check out the video at the bottomn of this webpage.  Be cautioned – it won’t inspire you to do some crafting of your own, but it might make you feel better about the crafting you can’t be bothered to do. Incidentally, Amazon sells some lovely ornaments.