Recycled Christmas Ornament: Altoid Tin

I was recently given a craft assignment: to make a Christmas ornament using recycled materials. 

Okay, okay. It wasn't MY homework. It was my daughter's first grade homework assignment. Nevertheless, I was excited. After all, it specifically said the project was to be a collaborative effort between the student and his/her family!

Momo and I started brainstorming almost immediately. We searched Pinterest for ideas and pinned like crazy! When we finally narrowed down our choices.....we ended up with a Pinterest fail: 

Trust me. It is NOT supposed to look like that!


More brainstorming. We finally we came up with our own idea of using Altoid tins!

Luckily I have been saving the tins to make more of these:

....but it just hasn't happened yet. Of course being a bit of a craft hoarder I have tons of other supplies, such as bottle caps, fabric, felt, ribbon, etc. After playing around with what we had on hand we finally completed our ornament!

We covered the front of the Altoid tin with red felt and a Christmas bow to make it look like a present:

On the inside of the tin we covered both sides with felt/fabric; glued on some bottle caps; drew a face and buttons on the caps to look like a snowman; attached a gift label to one side and then added a ribbon for hanging!(Note to self: next time put the tag on the front of the tin, so it really looks like a present!) 

Imagine all the possible surprises you can hide in an Altoid tin!

It came out pretty cute and I know Momo is proud of OUR project! :)

If you are looking for more ideas on easy, kid-friendly recycled Christmas ornaments check out my Pinterest Board: "Recycled Christmas Ornaments."

Happy Christmas Crafting! 

Cupcake Game

Look at this fabric! Is it cute or what?


Now, what to do with it? How about this:


Know what it is? No? Yes? Maybe? What if I showed you this:


Ahhhh....a felt memory game!

The fabric is by Timeless Treasures - their "Got the Munchies?" line. I thought it was super cute and absolutely perfect to do something with for Momo's cupcake party. With 12 different, perfectly sized cupcakes on the print which are evenly spaced (easy to cut!) I thought it would be great to make a memory game. Since most of our guests are a mere three years old I'm going to package three or four pairs of matching cards to give away as party favors. That should be enough, right?

Cutting. Ugh. Lots of cutting. (How do quilters do it?) Cut the cupcakes, cut the adhesive, cut the felt.....not hard but time consuming.

While I intended for this to be a no-sew project I ended up using my machine. However, it CAN be done without sewing! (You could use a fabric glue or iron-on type adhesive.) I used some iron-on adhesive to attach the fabric onto the felt and in addition did a straight stitch around the edges. Pinking the edges of the felt made it look that much cuter. :)

Can I just mention that I now know the difference between wool felt and craft felt? OH MY....what a difference! Lots of love for wool!

Got a lot more cupcake things to do.....better get on it! :)