A Win and a Fail

We've all had those Eureka! ideas where we know its  going to turn out great. How could it possibly not? Then you execute the idea, aaaaand yea it didn't turn out half as well as it did in your head. I had that moment when making this ornament.

I had this grand plan to modge podge the back of this ornament with a vintage Santa Claus image from The Graphics Fairy. So I printed out the image. Trimmed it down to fit the back of the ornament from seam to seam. Yes, my ornaments are plastic. :) This is where Ruination entered his mean little head. The paper was not molding nicely to the back of the ornament. You couldn't see the image really clearly through the ornament, and the back looked like crap. I thought well maybe you can't see it real well because the glue is still wet and I can hide the back and raw edges with glitter. So the glue came out again as well as the glitter. Here's where Ruination tap danced all over my efforts. I can't even explain the horror. You will just have to see for yourselves. Here is Ruination's ornament.

   

But I am not so easily deterred. I'm stubborn like that. You could go with mule-headed, but I don't like much being compared to a mule. :) So my first problem was how to avoid Ruination with the viewability of the image. I decided that I would put the image inside the ornament, but what to do about the back. I'll just print the image on the back as well. I can ink the edges and all will be forgiven.

I had wanted to incorporate some clocks into the tree, Santa had his shot, but I didn't know what time to put on them. So I tried thinking of what times were meaningful to me. Eureka! Again! I decided to put the times that the boys were born. 6:30 pm and 3:53 pm. So I found a clock image {again} at The Graphics Fairy and then made a couple of clock hands using Photoshop shapes, I googled free photoshop clock hand shapes. After creating the clock faces I made sure that I could print them out on the front and back of the sheet by positioning each one a 1/4" down from the top of the page and 1/4" away from each edge.

After printing, I had one of each clock image on either side of my paper. I cut them out (I made my clock faces 2-3/4" to fit inside the ornament) and then inked the edges. So how do I get them to stay upright inside the ornament? More glue! So I {very carefully} dripped a couple of drops of glue into the bottom center of the ornament and then rolled the paper up and shoved it inside. I then used the backside of a paintbrush to kind of uncurl the paper and get it positioned in the glue. Then I clipped a small clothespin to the top of the image. My clothespins were small enough to fit inside the lip of the ornament, and kept the image upright and in place until the glue dried, which took forever!

After the glue dried, I just dumped a small amount of glitter into each ornament to hide the glue spot and shook it around. Then I put the hanger back in and hung up.

Easy Peasy, and it holds a lot of sentimental value!

I hope you guys have a terrific day! I'm off to make the last of the ornaments for tomorrow and then hopefully start sewing. :)

Have a great day guys!