Tuesday, November 3, 2015

A Glittery Web

Last summer, I took a break from unpacking to think about Lucky's second birthday party.  We are going to a wedding the weekend after his birthday, and his dad has some travel, so the best time to have the party is on Halloween itself.  What fun!  Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays so I'm excited to throw a two themed party.  (Plus I will then have many awesome decorations for years to come.)

Isn't this web fun?
I immediately started a Pinterest board and started looking up fun DIY Halloween crafts.  One that I knew I wanted to try right away was this Glittery Web Table Decoration.  It looks simple enough, right?


To start you don't need a lot of items, just glue, glitter and some wax paper.  

I'm doing a smaller scale test of the craft now to see how well it works out.  If I like it I might make some other glittery table decorations and allow Lucky to "help" me out.  (Can a 22 month old really help with glue and glitter?  Hmmm...)


I taped two pieces of wax paper together (with the tape on the bottom) for a bigger work surface and started drawing a web with my glue.  The instructions I was following recommended chilling the glue, but I found that it wasn't that runny at all.    I started with a cross and then added more lines into the asterisk shape until I liked the density.  (8 full lines, 16 spokes total)  

I wish I hadn't taped the wax paper and didn't use a crease.  Some of these spines aren't going to stick together well so I might have to do some surgery in the end to hold it together.  We'll see.  This is learning after all.  


I started connecting the spokes with a swoop from the outside in.  This helped me space things the way I wanted.  I also found that the connections over the crease seem to be stronger now so maybe this will actually hold together.

silver glitter
When I was adding the glitter I ran out of silver before I had completely covered the web.  I added some white glitter to the missing spots and then shook the glitter around a bit to try to cover every part of my web. 

silver and white glitter

Right now it is looking awesome!  Unfortunately I am now a the hard part: waiting.  I have to wait 24 hours for this to dry before I shake off the extra glitter and then I have to wait another few days to peel off the wax paper.  I also have to hope that my toddler doesn't pull this off of the dining room table and decide to roll around in it, I don't feel like cleaning glitter glue off of Lucky AND our newly finished floors!  Despite my impatience, right now I think this web looks really fantastic!


The next morning I tried to tap off as much glitter as I could.  The web is pretty, although a little wrinkly in the center where there was the most glue.  I love the sparkles!  As tempted as I am, I am not about to try to peel the web off of the wax paper right now.  I did sort of check a corner and it didn't feel like it would peel off easily... but I didn't really try because I didn't want to ruin it at this point when the instructions say to wait two days.  


I ended up waiting more than two days to peel off the web because I wanted to have enough light to photograph it and I didn't want to do it while the toddler was around (he was quite attracted to it, I was afraid we were going to get a glitter explosion!)  The first bit was really easy to separate from the wax paper.

I had a few breaks in the web overall, but ultimately it looks pretty intact when laying on a table!


I wasn't sure how I was going to store this delicate web, so I put it on a sheet of cardboard and sealed it in using plastic wrap.  Now I can store it gently until the party in 2.5 months!


You may wonder why I take so many step by step photos when I'm doing something that has a written tutorial.  The true answer is that it is for my own memory.  There have been times when I've wanted to re-create a craft but couldn't remember what size canvas or paint color I used and I've been able to turn back to the blog to find out the brands that I used.  ChemKnits started out as my crafting lab notebook, after all.