Snowman Light Bulb Craft

I love snowmen. Other than rabbit crafts, I have made more snowman crafts over the years than any other topic. There are snowmen covering just about every surface in our house during the month of December, but there's always room for one more. 

My latest snowman started out as a light bulb in the master bathroom. When it burned out, I painted it white, then painted on an orange nose and black buttons, eyes, and a smile. I decided to dress my snowman with yarn. Here is the tutorial for the little yarn hat. To make the scarf, I braided three pieces of yarn, tied a knot on each end, then unraveled the ends of the yarn right up to the knots. Then I tied the scarf around his neck and trimmed the ends to the length I wanted. 

So cute and so easy!

The Ultimate Christmas Recycling Craft

Steve thinks I have a problem. Specifically, he thinks that I "hoard trash." Clearly, he doesn't understand how important it is for a kids' craft blogger to have a large stash of cardboard tubes, corks, plastic lids, and empty Tic-Tac containers available for craft emergencies. Obviously, I don't have a problem. I have a perfectly normal collection of valuable crafting materials.

Yet, for someone who accuses me of "hoarding trash," Steve is my biggest enabler. He changed a burned-out light bulb the other day and asked me if I wanted it. Of course I did. Because otherwise, I couldn't have made this:

I'm assuming you spotted the light bulb right away, but can you find any other "trash" in there? Look closely! Did you spot an empty spool? A plastic lid? A Tic-Tac container? I used all of those and more in this project that I'm calling The Ultimate Christmas Recycling Craft. "Hoarding trash." To that I say, "Hogwash!" And anyway, I'm USING the trash important craft stash, not hoarding it.

To make my creation, I painted the light bulb with Classic Green Folk Art acrylic paint (affiliate link here and elsewhere). It took two coats to get good coverage. I added a coat of brown to the empty spool. When those were dry, I added self-adhesive enamel dots to the tree and glued a craft foam star in place. Then I attached the spool to the light bulb using Supertite. I'm a relatively new convert to Supertite. It has the holding power of hot glue, but is repositionable for much longer than hot glue and obviously doesn't have a cord or heating time. I always get it on my fingers though, so I probably should be using my Hot Glue Finger Caps with it, now that I think about it.... 

Anyway, here's a look at my workspace midway through the project. As you can see, my next step is gluing a scrap of felt to a plastic lid. It BARELY fit, but the whole point of my project was to use up stuff, not cut a new piece. 

Once I had my tree skirt, I glued the tree in place. I decorated the presents by wrapping ribbon scraps around them. Finally, I glued them under the tree. 

Clearly, I use recyclable materials cleverly, not "hoard trash." I challenge each of you to make your own version of The Ultimate Christmas Recycling Craft. It's a lot of fun!