Snowflake Embellishments

Loretta always taught me the value of making things myself instead of going out and buying ready made products.  Don't get me wrong- I love to shop for craft supplies and do so as much as the budget will allow.  However, I really love making my own embellishments for cards and projects.

And speaking of embellishments,  I recently took inventory of the supplies I had on hand to make holiday cards.  As we head into November, it is now time (and I really should have started in early October) to start making these holiday cards.  I wanted to use some snowflake embellishments on some of my cards and looked at Michael's and Hobby Lobby, but could not find what I wanted so I started thinking about making my own.

I frequently shop the bakeware aisles at the big box craft stores for fondant molds (the silicone molds used in cake decorating).  I use these molds with resin to make embellishments and so went to these stores in search of a silicone snowflake mold.  Since there were no snowflake molds on offer at the stores, I did a search on the Internet and found this snowflake mold (excuse the fact that my mold pictured at left is a little grungy - I have been churning out resin snowflakes like crazy).  The mold did not get good reviews on Amazon.com because apparently some of the reviewers felt like it was a little shallow for using it with fondant, but it is just fine for resin!

I use this resin that you can purchase at Michael's or Hobby Lobby and likely other places as well, but those are the two places where I have purchased it. I use a coupon to make it more affordable (regular price it is about $13.99 - I purchased a few packages over several days this week with the Michael's 50% off coupons). The resin is really easy to use - just follow the instructions on the package.

I mixed the resin according to the instructions on the package, added in a few drops (two or three) of acrylic paint, mixed it all up with a wooden craft stick and poured it into the mold.  Easy, peasy!

Since the snowflake mold is shallow, the resin sometimes overflowed out of the area of each snowflake on the mold (You can see this in the photo of the filled mold to the right).  I just used a squeegee to level off the resin in each of the snowflake mold areas.  If I had some excess resin on the snowflake after I removed the hardened snowflakes from the mold, I just cut it away with some small nail scissors.

I usually pour the resin into the mold in the morning and leave it to harden overnight.  The snowflakes pop out of the mold very easily.  These photos show a few samples of the snowflakes I have been making. The white ones were made using a few drops of white acrylic paint in the resin and the blue ones were made with an Apple Barrel acrylic paint called "Cloudless."  I mixed two drops of the cloudless color and one drop of white into the resin mixture which resulted in the light ice blue color I wanted to achieve.

I started making cards using these handmade embellishments and was really pleased with the results.  The card pictured below was made using Papertrey Ink rustic white card stock as the card base and Recollections Bright and Jolly patterned paper from a pad purchased at Michael's last year. The Merry Christmas sentiment is from a Hero Arts Holiday Cheer Messages stamp set. The card is a 5 inch by 5 inch square card with the corners rounded using the WR Memory Keepers 1/2 inch corner chomper.

The snowflakes were also brushed with mod podge and sprinkled with clear fairy dust glitter by Donna Salazar.

Making these snowflake embellishments is so much fun.  I know Loretta is smiling down at me as I make my own instead of buying them.  This type of resourcefulness is definitely something she taught me the value of.