All lights and no baubles..

Well now, some weeks ago, I chatted about making some small gifts for the staff at my Mama’s care home. So here we are on the Friday before Christmas, which for a lot of people this year is the last working day. How lovely, if you’re one of these worker bees, I hope you enjoy the small extension to your Christmas break. A small procrastinating-type diversion there. A good indication of what happened to my intentions. I decided this year that I wouldn’t make edible gifts. Too many gluten, nut, alcohol, dried fruit, veggie, vegan requirements to trip over. So I hit on the idea of cookie cutter baubles. Not too difficult and relatively easy to source. Yeah, right. I could only get them in sets, so already there are erm, ‘choices’ for the recipients to make. Which takes the stress of wrapping doesn’t it...I can just present them all on a tray for people to choose from! Cool Yule.

So I chose my weapons, and soon realised that it wasn’t the quantity that was going to make things slow. It was what I wanted to do. Ergh. I wanted to glue the cookie cutters to sparkly (non-shed) glitter card. And the only glue that would grab properly was silicone. Ergh again. I hate silicone, it’s so difficult to dispense and a steady hand is not one of my skills. Good grief, I haven’t got good enough eyesight for steady anything! so, once all were stuck fast to the sheets, I cut round them and used red tape to hide the join, especially useful on the messy ones. Red tape was then dusted with glitter. Punch a hole with the trusty cropadile and thread some ribbon for a hanger. Then a little bit of decoration. It hasn’t been too complicated. 

I found some MDF shapes in the back of my Christmas stash and decided this morning to make a few more ‘just in case’. They are very different to the cookie cutter style, but hey, choice is good. Today was to be delivery day, but I failed on that. My glue gun needed recharging and doesn’t work plugged in, only charged. So I had to use more silicone. Lots of silicone.

And that means drying time. So Monday will be delivery day. It’s all good- after all, I know with amazing certainty that however many people did finish work for the holiday today, a lot of people don’t finish work at all. Saved by other people’s vocations! And don’t fret gentle Christmas holiday reader, I too have noticed the lack of ribbon in the slow drying MDF baubles. Cool Yule. And phew.