14 Days of Festivity: Day 6

Crafts for the Contagious

I had "Library Holiday Crafts" on my calendar for weeks.  I love the annual library holiday craft event.  It's local, free, and fun.  All the crafty mess stays out of your home.  It's perfect.

Furthermore, I had my 14 Days of Festivity event all locked up for that day.  (What?  I think about these things in advance.) 

But, as is becoming my theme with this series, my plans got derailed.  This time it wasn't our new rodent friends who threw a wrench in my day, but instead Nathan's random illness. 

He started showing signs of a stomach bug in the morning.  I think it turned out to be just a fluke, something he ate or something, but to be on the safe side I decided to keep him away from other kids.  (Also he was ridiculously crabby, so I considered it a public service that I was keeping him away from other people in general.) 

So, I decided we'd just do a craft at home! 

I'd checked out a book about holiday crafts from the library the week before, and I was intrigued by a project where you make Christmas ornaments out of a sugar/glitter dough.  I had purchased super-fine glitter the previous week in preparation for the craft. 

So, you know those blogs you read where the mom and the kids seem all perfect with their perfect little craft they do?  And everybody is smiling, and the kids follow directions instead of just making a huge mess out of expensive art supplies, and the mom isn't looking like a vein is popping out of her head?  And you feel all bad because it never goes like that in your house, and you're barely eking out a crayon-based artistic existence for your own children? 

This is not going to be one of those blog posts.  This craft was a horrific failure.  Please, take comfort in my pain. 

I figured since I got the craft idea out of a legitimate published book instead of some unreliable website, the craft would be a success. 

Part of the problem is that I didn't exactly "follow directions," as they say. 

Here's what you were supposed to do: Mix 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon water, and 1 teaspoon glitter. 

I had absolutely no faith whatsoever that this dough would ever harden, so I drizzled about a teaspoon of white glue in there, too.  And I think I added an extra tablespoon of water.

The other thing was, you were supposed to press the mix into cookie cutters that had backs on them.  But who on earth has those, considering they are (a) harder to find, and (b) the biggest pain in the ass for making actual cookies?  So we just used your standard cookie cutters:

You were supposed to immediately remove the cutters and leave the shapes to dry without the cookie cutters framing them.  This seemed fraught with potential for crumbling, so I left the cookie cutters there.

Meanwhile, Nathan dumped all the ingredients, plus a few others, into a bowl to make a potion:

The potion got transferred back and forth from bowl to mug, and then somehow paper cups got involved:

 
And I think somehow it was mentioned that Nathan wanted to keep the paper cups of potion to give Bill for his birthday (which is in June) ... ?

I put a towel underneath the potion, and I figure it's Christmasy because it's red:

Oh, and the next day I took the sugar/glue ornaments out of the cookie cutters.  Or the original 5 we made, only two survived the cookie-cutter-removal, the star and the stocking.  Then Nathan decided to crumble up the stocking, just for laughs. 

So, behold, our one ugly star ornament: 

The ornament will not survive to Christmas 2012.  Unlike the Star Trek ornament you see in the upper-left-hand corner of the above photo.

Oh, and who on earth does a sugar-based craft when her house has a rodent problem?  All kinds of win, I tell you.  All kinds of win.