Thursday, December 01, 2011

On the first day of Christmas ...

My true love gave to me ...

Supplies


A bunch of random office supplies ...

A dozen or so balloons ...

And a shaker of glittery goo.



On the second day of Christmas ...

My true love gave to me ...

String


A few dozen winds of string ...

A watered-down vat of glue ...

And a thick sable paintbrush ...




On the third day of Christmas ...

My true love gave to me

Spin


A hardened ball of string ...

A touch-up coat of glue ...

And few more shakes of glittery goo.



On the forth day of Christmas ...

My true love gave to me ...



A sharp, pointy object ...

A few stabs around the balloon parts ...

And a dustpan for all the glittery goo.



On the fifth day of Christmas ...

My true love gave to me ...

Ribbon, button, glue


A length of ribbon ...

A few salvaged buttons ...

And some more of the damn glittery goo.



On the sixth day of Christmas ...

My true love gave to me ...

Balls


A bunch of ornamental snow balls ...

A few ideas for other holidays ...

And a weird desire for Santa to bring a more powerful vacuum cleaner for all this glittery goo.

8 comments:

Lori said...

Oh, those are beautiful! I love them.

superpragmatic said...

gorgeous!

Anonymous said...

Is there a glue to water ratio? Is it just glitter added to the glue? I so want to do this with my kiddo!! LOVE it!!

toyfoto said...

@Anonymous I just thinned out the glue a little bit - enough to make it easier to paint on but not enough to make it runny.

As for the glitter, we shook it on right after I painted on the glue and let it all dry together.

Lori said...

OK...I had to try this. They look so great. But I'm wondering about how much glue you used. We popped our balloons this morning and our globes had some saggy spots. I think I might need to up my application of the glue. Did you have any issues as you went along?

toyfoto said...

I had the saggy problem, too. Sometimes I was able to reshape the balloon and it "almost" looked perfect. (You can see it in the pinkish ball in the last picture). I thought it was because I was using dollar-store glue that already seemed to be watered down from the start. I switched to Elmers, made sure each and every strand of string was painted with glue and let it dry for a full 24 hours. Before I popped the balloon I felt around for soft spots. If I found them I reapplied glue in those spots and let it dry again.

Lori said...

Thanks for the tips. I really love the look of these. And, yeah, we too have lots of glitter all over our house now. I even found some on my arms when I was at the gym this morning. :)

toyfoto said...

Update: Seems like shellac is a better alternative than watered-down glue.