Craving Some Sparkle

I have long loved natural, rustic decor for Christmas but lately I've been needing a little more sparkle in my life. I blame it on a friend who's no longer in the Grad school world and has a lot of fun decorating her home. I'm determined to stick within my budget of $0, for a little while at least, so I tried to add a little sparkle using only what I could round up at home.

For a few years now I've had these foam cutouts from American Crafts waiting to be used:

That was my launching point. Since my tacky glue is running low, I turned to a staple in our house: regular washable school glue. Tell me I'm not the only one who stocks up on this stuff when it's on sale for a quarter...

I decided to try a couple different types of sparkle. First, was fake snow. I bought a bag of this a few weeks ago hoping to make snow globes but it hasn't happened yet. I love the mixture of textures and opacities in the bag and wanted to see if this would work.

After covering the snowflake with glue I buried it beneath a pile of "snow" and pressed down to make sure it was stuck pretty well. Then I just let it sit as a happy little haystack and dry for a few hours.

You may have seen this coming, but the snow stayed put in a bulky pile and had to be cut away for the snowflake shape to show. I don't have a picture of the cutting because I was a little all-consumed by it, but I'm sure you can imagine that part. And yes, it is very messy. I'm lucky my kids weren't home during this phase. Oy Vey. That would have been a mess and a half more than the mess I ended up with on my own.

Next, I tried a tube of silver Crayola glitter glue. My kids love the idea of those things but once it gets about halfway used they really struggle to squeeze the glue out and we have a bunch of half-used tubes hanging around. It seemed perfect, and not messy since there would be no loose glitter or snow floating around.

I found the glue really thick and tricky to maneuver so after doing this one snowflake I decided one was enough and moved on.

Which brings us to regular, fine grained, silver glitter of awesomeness. Seriously, who doesn't love a little glitter? In other news, this project got me to finally vacuum.

I love the mixed pile of glitter/snow leftovers all mixed together. You better believe I scooped that stuff into a baggie to use next time I feel like blinging something up a little.

Which ones do you like best?

I can't quite decide. I had more fun making the glitter snowflakes because the snow ones were a bit cumbersome to cut out afterwards, but I really think they are worth it. The texture is awesome from the fake snow, but the glitter bounces light around better. So, really, I like them both and keep changing my mind about which I like better. 

I mixed some into my garland just for a little bit of contrast and I really like how subtle they are. Then I used some for another project I'll show you tomorrow!

How do you feel about a little bling in your Holiday decor? I'm rapidly becoming consumed by it.