Time to prepare for Christmas!

I have my last show of the season today and I'm still in the process of moving. But in the meanwhile I thought I came up with an awesome project to show you. Recently I participated in an ornament exchange and one of the people who was in the exchange was Misty Orlove and she had brought in a unique item that I used the idea for in my project. Instead of an ornament made out of a gourd like everyone else she had a better idea and brought in a very large Christmas bell.

While I was trying to come up with something to pass along to you, I thought why not a Christmas bell like the one that Misty had made? I was at the house that I'm moving from and was limited in what I had on hand, but tops cut from gourds was not one of them. (smile) I liked the bell that Misty had made so much that I decided to make a door hanger with two gourd tops and here is what I used in this project:

Proxxon Jigsaw
Proxxon Delta Sander
Proxxon Drill
Red Acrylic Paint
Gold Acrylic Paint
Extreme Glitter Paint in Red and Gold
Black Metallic Acrylic Paint
Lots of Red Glitter
Decorative Spray
Wide Red Ribbon
Large Jingle Bells
Wire
Wire Cutters
2 Gourd Tops
Paint brush
Sealer

I started out with two tops that I had picked out of my big scrap pile. After cutting off the stems, I re-cut the tops with my Proxxon Jigsaw to the same height and sanded the edges with the Proxxon Delta Sander. I then painted all but the inside edge with the Metallic Black paint. When that was dry I then took my Red acrylic paint and gave each top a good coat of paint.

When that paint was dry, I coated the tops with the Extreme Red Glitter paint and sprinkled Red Glitter liberally over the paint while it was wet.

(Now that's some sparkle!)

Now this paint and glitter took a while to dry so I just let it set overnight. Before I got started back on the project the next day, I made a bow out of the wide ribbon and put it together with the decorative spray that I got to go with it.

Once the glitter and paint was dry I sprayed the gourd tops a couple of times to seal the glitter to it. I then painted around the bottom edge of the tops with Gold Acrylic paint and then with the Extreme Gold glitter paint. I didn't put extra glitter on that part.

Once everything was good and dry I drilled a hole in the top and side of each of the bells, threaded gold wire through two of the Jingle Bells for each of the tops and used wire to put the two tops (bells) together and string the Jingle Bells into each one. I then used the wire to attach the bow and decorative spray to them also. Here's the end result:

I think this turned out so well that I will take this project to the new house this weekend and put it on the front door! You don't have to buy all of the things that you decorate your house for Christmas with, you can make quite a few of them yourself.

Barbara