Salt Dough Ornaments

Tis the season, fa la la.  Time for the funs and joys of holiday crafts.  If you would like a fun family craft or are a new household making salt dough ornaments is and easy way to craft decorations for the tree that are personal and best of all inexpensive.  All you need are some salt, flour, and cookie cutters, and of course and oven.  Salt dough ornaments can be as simple or complicated as you would like.  To make the dough first:

•             1 cup salt

•             4 cups of flour
•             1 1/2 cup of water (add gradually)

Combine the salt and flour then pour in the water gradually, stopping when it has become dough-like and not too sticky. There should be no residue left on your fingers when you touch it. Knead it on a floured surface for a few minutes to make it soft, workable and stretchy, like you would with any dough. This step is wonderful for strengthening those small hand muscles essential for writing and cutting!

Lay them on some greaseproof or baking paper and on a baking tray. Cook them on a VERY low heat (around 225 F) for 3-4 hours. Keep an eye on them and watch for scorching.  If the shapes are over 1cm thick then they will probably need to be turned over during cooking.

 Tips for decorating

•             Cut hole for string before cooking – use a straw, toothpick, or dowel.  Depending on how big you want the hole.

•             Since it is dough you can make small embellishments to decorate.
•             Use stamps to add a personal touch, rub ink in the stamped part to bring out the color.
•             Use stamps to add a personal touch
•             Use scrap booking skill for extras, nifty ribbons and charms

Now the fun part of these ornaments as they are good for any holiday or religion.  I made some Hanukkah ornaments for a friend using Hanukkah cookie cutters.  This is a nice weekend project and you can create some beautiful personal gifts for friends and family.  So have fun.

Magic City Half Marathon Review

Well I ran my 3rd half marathon the other weekend, had worst time yet at 2:13, bleah.  I did not train long distance enough and around mile 10 my legs started being unhappy.  By the finish line I was shufflin.  Ah well, time to run longer.  So to post my comments about the race.
The Swag Bag - swag, we have no swag.  Nice dry-fit shirt, standard for many races now.  And that was it.  Not even a little packet of Bio-freeze.
The Weather - BEAUTIFUL.  November is tricky and it turned out to be a cloudless day.  Right nippy in the morning but warmed up a bit.  I get hot when I run so the jacket was off by mile 1.  Breeze was blowing so every now and then as I chugged along I got a nice cooling breeze.
The Course - mostly flat, some hills at the end.  I would have preferred the hills at the front and flat at the end.  Went by historic/interesting locations of Bham - Legion Field, Rickwood Field, RailRoad Park.  Pretty standard city running.  They had a 5K at the same time which merged with us for about a mile.  It was disconcerting to be jogging along and all of a sudden you run into a pack of 5k walkers.
The volunteers - They were GREAT.  At every drink stop they cheered, and smiled while handing out the Gatorade/water/gel packs.
The Police - at every intersection (and there were a lot). They put the runners 1st and traffic second.  Waving some cars through the breaks in the runners, and yelling at the idiots on phones while driving. Thanks very much to them.
The Spectators - what, was there a race that weekend?  Not so much, mostly at the finish line.
The Food - standard after race fare of bananas, cookies, etc.  Did not see any other water/Gatorade stations other than the water I was handed at the finish line.  Cold pizza was also served, not horrible.  There was a mini beer garden which had some samples, no beer was served on the course.
Entertainment - hubby was my chauffeur, big thanks, and he just milled around for a couple of hours.
The Medal - Design was OK, did not see an engraving station (I'm to cheap to do that anyway).

Overall it just seemed a long jumped up 5K style run.  It was only the 2nd year and they have to compete with the Mercedes Marathon for sponsors so I guess they are still feeling their way around.  It was a good test run for Disney to let me know I need to run more, but I don't plan on attending next year.

Half Marathon Fun

As we count down to the Disney Princess Half Marathon 2013 I decided to do a half marathon this year. So tomorrow I will be running in the Magic City Half Marathon.  Pray for me.  I admit to not running as much as I should so may be walking most of this half.  We shall see.  I did create some cute half and full marathon items on Cafe Press - Gryphonwycks.  The bad part about designing for CafePress and Zazzle is the design size.  It would be nice to make one design that fit on all their merchandise but they have different dimensions and different bleed areas.  Highly annoying. So time to surf the interwebs to see how others have dealt with this issue.  Now off to do a bit of a run before the torture tomorrow.  Good luck to all the runners out there.

Owl Wedding Cake Toppers

While surfing the web for Cute Hoots to pin on Pinterest I came across some owl wedding cake toppers.  They appeared to be salt/pepper shakers that had been decorated.  I followed a link to a web site DIY cake toppers and the photos are amazing.  You take a simple unpainted bisque salt/pepper shaker:

Any unpainted salt/pepper would work and make a nice themed idea for a wedding.  Once you have your shakers you can then decorate as you like.  The photos below are from the website linked above, these people have some mad skill.  I also think this would make a cute idea for christmas presents to a couple.

 

Thor's Hammer Ceramic Ornaments

I am not the greatest ceramicist in the world but I do love making things.  So I decided to make some Thor's Hammer ornaments for my Etsy Shop.  Mjolnir has become very popular with Chris Hemsworth playing a very hot Thor so normal people have become more aware of the Norse myths. The ornaments I crafted are ceramic and designed to hang in the house or on yee ol' Yule tree.  Since I cannot draw I ordered some very nice stamps from Highlander Celtic Stamps.  The stamps I ordered were unmounted to be flexible on clay and did have a nice deep etching so the patterns were visible once stamped.  I have another set of Celtic symbol stamps but these are only good for paper and are to detailed for pottery.

  

I do believe the stamps turned out nicely giving a good pattern to the hammers.  I must try with some different glazes.

Owl Pumpkins

So it is now September which means October (aka HALLOWEEN) is almost here.  So since I love owls I was wandering the internet for fun things to pin to my Cute Hoots pinterest board when I came across owl pumpkins. 

Of course Martha Stewart has some of the most interesting.










Another fascinating take using sunflower seeds can be found at Better Homes & Gardens

For traditional carving here are some links to interesting owl patterns:

• Zombie Pumpkins - this one is a bit difficult, you need to be a member to print but the site has many unique stencils.
• Fantasy Jr easy owl stencil
• Celebrating Halloween has an owl in a tree plus some more interesting ideas including a Ganesha pattern.
• A scary tree with owl
• If you don't want to carve a pumpkin use some stick on's like this one from The Cute Little Shop

If you find a really good pattern and have talent you can always use the fake pumpkins found at craft stores and keep a good pumpkin year after year.

More fun with ceramics

Well I've been having fun with cookie cutters and ceramics.  My best friends son recently did a tour on a NOAA ship tagging sharks, right during shark week too.  So I had a shark cookie cutter and was making ornaments for Gryphonwyck on Etsy and made some ornaments for them.

They turned out ok.  The octopus is kinda wonky looking though.  So I also made some druid charms, a few more Cthuluments, and some Auburn ornaments for friends.  Now if only stuff would sell so I could justify making more, agghh.

I am continuing to train for my half marathon.  So far still only doing about 3 miles cause it is hot as heck around here and I refuse to run at 6 am.  Not a morning person.  But Halloween is coming up and the costume stores will open soon so I can put together my outfit and as it gets cooler I can run longer. 

Off to do house work and I will leave with a big WAR EAGLE since my orange cat posed on a blue rug today: