Turning Toys into Ornaments

For my latest AP craft story, I wrote about several methods of turning small toys into Christmas tree ornaments. You can read the story HERE (as usual, if the link expires, just Google my name and a keyword or two, in this case, toys and ornaments).

For the Harry Potter ornaments, I followed a great tutorial at the Craftberry Bush blog. The others were made using a new product called Sugru, that feels like Play Doh but cures overnight into flexible rubber.

(Full disclosure: I approached my son about using one of his Lego Star Wars clone troopers for this  project and he flatly refused. Apparently each of the dozen or so minifigs he has is ESSENTIAL and would be immediately missed. Sigh.)

I also experimented a bit with the Sugru to make a few bud vases out of some glass ornaments I had leftover from some other craft projects.

I just rolled bits of Sugru into balls and stuck it on the bottom of the ornaments. It was tricky to get the placement just right, and even after curing, the single-ball vases seem slightly unstable, at least when they’re empty. When they have water in them, they’re a bit more stable. It was also quite tricky to stick the three ornaments together (by then, I had mixed a bunch of Sugru together, and such a tiny bit comes in each package, that all I had was this rather unattractive brown. If I was doing this again, I’d use white, or maybe green, that would blend in with flower stems).