Category Archives: Other Crafts

The preparations for the confirmation party continue. It’s traditional to have a decorated lighted candle by the entrance, beside a guestbook for the guests to sign. My mother is providing the guest book, but I decorated the candle this morning. It’s not perfect (you can see some creases if you look closely) but I like it anyway and my girl loves it.

I’m not going to make a tutorial, because I followed this excellent video tutorial, almost to the letter.

What is did differently was this:
I measured the candle beforehand, and sized the picture accordingly. I also printed out a bw test picture on regular paper to be extra sure of the size. I can recommend that, I tweaked the size a little bit after trying out the tester.
I fastened the tissue paper with pins. Works just fine. I found that I needed more pins than this when I started melting, as I used an ordinary blow dryer.

And I needed several attempts to get the printing to work properly. The printer had a tendency to “eat” the tissue paper.

What worked for me was to cut the tissue paper  1 cm (0.4 in) smaller on each side that the card stock.

I found the image I used here.
To isolate a single label, you first click Download Different Info
The pdf with multiple labels opens up.
Zoom in on the first label. Select the image, right click and choose copy, or press Ctrl-C on your keyboard. (Command-C on Macintosh)
Paste the image into a word document. Save. Make a text box for the text.                              I used the Kunstler Script font.

The lace doily is stiffened with “mod podge” (40% white wood glue, 60% water) and let dry over an upturned glass:

And just for fun, here is a new photo of the confirmand, on her way to her schools annual celebration.

Confirmation Party Decorations

Yesterday’s Mason jar project failed miserably. Although I have now learned that ModPodge is indeed available in Iceland, I decided to go in another, simpler direction:

That is, lace rests and recycled lace, glued on jars, with a tea light put in. As simple as can be, but pretty. At least I think so. The doilies are on loan from my mother. I’m going to decorate the tables with a lot of those in different colors. I have some myself, and my sister is going to lend me some.

There are also going to be paper flowers, made by the confirmand herself. More on that later.

I think I can safely state that I’m pretty good at many textile arts. Embroidery, knitting, crochet, sewing – no problem. I’m not really a crafty person, that is I don’t do paper crafts, mason jar projects etc on a regular basis. But I’m no stranger to such things. My latest one (and the one that is is constant use) is the embroidery floss storage box and some time ago I painted this small thing.

Failed Mason Jar Craft Project

Today I ventured into on of these projects. I had seen many a lovely tinted mason jar on pinterest and I wanted to try. I used this tutorial , which is great by the way. The first thing I needed was mod podge. That is not available in Iceland (that I know of) and definitely NOT in my village. But I had seen this tutorial on how to make your own mod podge, so I was all set. Or so I thought. The village shops (there are two) didn’t have any Elmer’s glue, but someone told be that I could use white wood glue instead. So I mixed that with water, half of each

according to the instructions, and added the food color. Into the jars it went – only to discover that it didn’t work at all, it was too thin. I tried adding way more glue – but it was only marginally better.

Then I tried undiluted glue. Added the food color, and swirled it around in the jar. It looked very promising, I must say:

But it didn’t work either. At low heat, the glue just blew up in bubbles, and at (slightly) higher hear, it went brown in places.

These are the two best attempts, you can just imagine the rest…

The jars were supposed to be a part of the table decorations at my daughters confirmation party. I think I will skip that and find something else instead.

But my carrot cake cupcakes, that I baked later today did not fail. Not at all!

I baked two large carrot cakes to freeze. They are the first cakes I bake for the upcoming confirmation party. But the cupcakes are just for the family to eat. And they are delicious.