Wishful Ornaments

Hope.

It seems like such a simple thing, typed up on the page like that. Four letters that escape so many of us, more often around this time of year. The holidays can be wonderful reminders of what you have, or to some it can be a reminder of how poor or lonely you feel. It seemed like, in the wake of all the negative feelings in the social media sphere lately, that we should take some time to think about the things we plan for the future. Even if they were little silly things, or big life changing things. I saw on Pinterest an ornament a family had made with the year on the outside in glitter and inside was a curled piece of paper that they had written all the major events of the year on. Why not do that, but instead of looking at the past why don't we look toward the future? We're often consumed on what happened, or didn't happen, instead of what might happen or will happen. I pulled Shepard and Wiseman in on this craft again, we all needed to be hopeful for a little bit. Both my boys struggle with depression for various reasons, and I had hoped to cheer them up. It didn't work at first, Wiseman was very upset about the idea. To him, it seemed, it was less writing out your hopes and more promising your hopes. Shepard took his paper from him at wrote at the top of it with a gold paint pen "Not a promise, just things to hope for..." After a few minutes of pondering the writing he managed to write out a whole slew of things, smiling by the time he was done.

Hop below the jump to see us getting glitter everywhere.

We started off with basic glass ornaments from the craft store. I had hoped for plastic with all the cats we have, but these were all they had in stock. We'll just have to be careful!

We also had six colors of glitter to choose from and a clear glue pen for fine lines. I went first, mostly as a proof of concept.

You really only need a little glue, you can see there was too much in the "2" and it was starting to run a bit. Oops! Ah well, it doesn't need to be perfect, right? I grabbed the green glitter and began my sprinkling!

So much glitter! This was the fun part, haphazardly shaking glitter all over the glue parts. With how the glitter stuck to the glass all on its own, I got out a brush to clean it all up. It was very tedious but well worth the effort. 

Here's how mine looked after I cleaned off the extra glitter.

Next was Shepard and he has such wonderful handwriting! You'll see what I mean. He was very worried about how it would come out, but personally I love it. Here's the glue...

And the glittering (he chose red)...

His hands were shaking pretty bad, so I brushed off the glitter for him. Here's it after it was cleaned up. See what I mean about how nice his writing is?

Wiseman was next and he waffled about doing it for a bit. That is, till he saw the glitter. First the glue...

For his glitter he actually wanted to do two colors, blue and purple. How could I say no?

He had a blast with this part. He whined about having to clean up the glitter while the glue was still wet but when I offered to do it for him he got mock-offended and told me I'd just mess it up! After much grumbling, he finally got it "clean enough".

And finally all three ornaments together...

All in all it was a great craft to do, and very light since we were all feeling so down. There aren't any pictures of us writing or them in the ornaments yet because, as the boys told me, you can't let anyone see what you wrote! They're like wishes! They won't come true otherwise!

We're planning a trip to the store for large glitter and confetti to accompany the notes, so I'll post the entirely finished ornaments when we do that.

What do you think of these? Would you like to do one too? Was it silly, sappy or just perfect?


Going Dark,
Snowflake