Christmas Crafting Day!!

Happy Saturday!

Christmas Eve is only one week away and I still have so many projects to work on!!

I started out this morning to work on some specific things that I felt I had to finish before Christmas

I was dying to finish this beautiful pair of embellished ice skates.

 

 

I contemplated some of the very creative mixed media skates I was seeing.  I LOVED the oh, so artistic creamy colored skates covered in old sheet music, holding greenery... 

In the end, I decided they ought to be pink and aqua and be displayed in my dining room with the other pink and aqua whimsies there!!

These are little girls size 2, Katarina Ultra Ice skates.  They started out like this!

 What little girl (and many big girls) didn't want to be Katarina Witt in the 90's??  

 

She was beautiful and graceful and looked great in pink and aqua!! 

I have always thought of figure skaters as being akin to ballerinas...

 

To begin my project, I taped the blades and heels of my skates as best I could and then I primed.

Karla Nathan of  Karla's Cottage swears by Zinsser Cover Stain spray primer and well, so do I! 

It will cover anything and is totally worth the $8.00 bucks and trip to Home Depot!

 Cover Stain is an oil based spray primer that blocks stains and bonds to anything.  "Bonding" is the key word.  Because these skates are made of synthetic material (like plastic or vinyl), I wasn't sure if spray paint would adhere to them without primer and didn't want to make a mess finding out!

Use a coat or two, whatever it takes to cover it good.

I don't really recommend it but it was cold out the day I did this, so you can see that I worked inside.  I was really careful not to make a mess but the primer smelled BAD!  I moved the cardboard and skates into the kitchen and turned on the exhaust fan until they dried, overnight!

I  spray painted my skates in "Ballet Slipper Pink" by Krylon 

 I used a hot glue gun to add some lace, crocheted snowflakes and a couple of blingy vintage snowflake pins.

I laced them with seam binding in aqua... the nice thing about this is that if I decide to, I can change the laces to another color. 

I wanted to add snow to the blades... I asked some crafters and got answers for products that look like snow.  To save money and a trip to the craft store, I opted to glop on some white craft paint and sprinkle generously with a couple of different white glitters I had on hand.

Lacing seam binding into the tiny holes without unraveling it was the trickiest part.  I used the hole end of a very large needle to help me stuff the ribbon into the lace holes and then used the pointy side to pull it though the back. Estimating how much ribbon to use was impossible so I cut off way more than I needed!

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I love my new decorated skates!

That's the only project I have time to share now but I expect to work on several more this coming week!

I find it so relaxing and satisfying to just immerse myself in a project that I want to work on.  I wish I had more free time for this!!

I hope everyone is in the Christmas spirit and having fun with it!

Hugs,

Jennifer

Joining in the linky party fun with:

Cindy for Show and Tell Friday at My Romantic Home

and Beverly for Pink Saturday at How Sweet The Sound