Hey, who took my glass?

How many times have you heard THAT this week? With Christmas and Holiday parties and dinners, we’ve all heard that 100 times. You pick up your glass of wine, take a sip, put it down for a minute and then turn around and its gone.

“Is that my glass?” you ask.

“Um, I don’t think so. Gee, you know I’m not sure” they reply.

And there you both stand trying to figure out whether your sister is drinking your Chardonnay. If only there was a way to be sure….

Enter the wine glass charms!

I saw some for sale in Macy’s a few weeks ago – a set of 6 for $20. I had them in my hand and was going to buy them, and then I thought to myself, I could make those…

So I went to my local craft store and picked up some “Shrinky Dink” plastic, a package of elastic wire, some beads and headed back to my craft table to get started.

I grabbed a few sets of festive mSB Stamps and got to work. I started with a couple of snowflakes from the ”Let it Snow” set. I stamped my images onto my plastic sheet using black Stazon Ink – this is CRUCIAL…you MUST use Stazon ink or you’ll be in for a world of frustration. Take my word for it…

After stamping my image, I used a 2 inch punch to cut out a circle shape, and a scallop shape. I used a hole punch to put a hole in the top of each one so that I could later string my wire through it. If you have a crop-a-dile, use the bigger size hole as it will shrink down when the plastic melts. If the hole is too small if will close up and you’ll have no way of putting your wire through.

Now bring on the heat – if you’re like me and you have a gas oven, then you can’t bake your charms. Instead, pull out your heat embossing gun. Using a pair of tweezers or a small embossing stylus, hold the plastic in place as you heat it. Move the heat tool around so that you don’t scorch the plastic.

As the plastic gets hot and starts to shrink it will start to curl up and flop all over the place. DO NOT PANIC! It will fix itself when the shrinking process is done and flatten back out. The result will be a much smaller, much thicker piece of hard plastic. You may need to flatten down a little bit, so just take a stamping pad or a book and put it on the charm while its still warm.

Once I felt confident with doing the snowflake charms, I got a little braver and used some of the stamps from the “Deck the Halls” set. I used Copic markers to add some color and then heated them up and shrunk ‘em down. (note: If you’ve never used “Shrinky Dinks” before you have no idea how much fun you’re missing!)

Once you have all of your charms made, then you can string them with beads or whatever you want to decorate them and make them your own. Make sure to use “Elastic Wire”, this is key to getting the charms to stay on the stem of the glass and not keep falling off. You can find it in the jewellery making section of any craft store for under $3.

When you have the beads strung, cut the elastic wire and tie a series of knots. Multiple knots are important because as you stretch the wire to pull it over the glass bottom it will pull on the elastic. If you only have one or two knots tied they’ll just pull out and your beads will fly all over the place….again, trust me….I found that tying about 12 knots one on top of the other worked perfectly.

And there you have it, a beautiful, one-of-a-kind wine glass charm! Try tto make each charm a little different, add beads to some, add bling to others, let your creativity run wild…the point is for each one to be unique so that when you pick up a wine glass you know who it belongs to

Have a wonderful, safe and prosperous New Year. Here’s to 2010!

Marci

myStampBOX Design Team