Crafty Moms Share

Advent Week 3: Joy

Have you entered my current giveaway yet? Last day to enter is the 16th at midnight!

We are beginning the third week of Advent. The theme for this week is Joy. The joy Jesus brings the world. Now this week is special because it has the pink candle. Now last year I did a little research on Advent and Advent wreaths and discovered how the pink candle became pink. At one time Advent was a more solemn time similar to Lent. The Pope decided to lighten the mood on the third Sunday of Advent and passed out pink roses to his congregation. This became a tradition and eventually the candle was changed to pink to take on the rose tradition. (Source)

Our craft for the week of Joy is some clay ornaments. Since we had not made the Peace ornaments yet, we did those too. We also made some clay Hope ornaments (and Love) with the leftover clay. For Joy we used a star and used a "joy" rubber stamp. We used Sculpey polymer clay and had to bake them. I have my parents old toaster oven to bake polymer clay in since you should not use the same oven as you cook food in due to the fumes.

For Peace we used our dove cookie cutter. Since we do not have a "peace" rubber stamp, we had to write it ourselves. We used one of the tools from Hazel's scratch paper. (We used this tool for the holes to hang the ornaments as well.)

I let Hazel write "Peace" herself. Her spacing was off, but she did a good job. I guess my toaster oven burned the white clay a bit since they came out an orangy brown. I baked them on the correct temperature and for less time. Oh, well.

For Hope we used the star again. We also attempted to swirl the two colors together and was more successful than we had been for the Joy ones. We again had to write Hope ourselves and Hazel did her own. I am happy with how they came out. Now I need to add strings so we can hang them.

So now we get to light the third candle--the pink one. With each candle we remember the past themes. We have been leaving one of our ornaments by the candle to remind us.

I loving having them there! What are you doing to celebrate Advent?

For more on Advent check out:

Sharing Saturday 13-48

Sharing Saturday last week. If you have not had a chance to check out the amazing ideas shared, you should! Thank you to everyone who shared and to everyone who visited others!! There was not a most clicked, so we will go straight to our features. Here are a few of my favorites (and I did try to pick some non-Christmas ones this week).

1) From Growing in God's Grace: Mystery of History Lessons 43-45 (Yes, they made an aqueduct!)

2) From Where Imagination Grows: Salt Dough & Melted Bead Tree Ornaments

3) From Imprints from Tricia: Button Christmas Ornaments

4) From Blissful Sewing: Felt Christmas Ornaments Tutorial

5) From My Nearest and Dearest: Scented Wreath Craft for Kids

6) From Danya Banya: DIY Educational Toy: Emo Dolls

7) From Crafting Connections: Abstracted Painted Scarf: Gift and Wear (with help decorating by kids)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess:
This week we shared our activities for the second week of Advent: Peace, an easy paperclip angel ornament and Christmas craft round-up of the past three years, an child-made photo display that we are giving the grandparents, a fun flamingo craft and review of flamingo party items from Oriental Trading.

Don't forget to enter our Giveaway of homemade magenta leather doll clothes and accessories & a gift certificate for Leather Hide Store!! Giveaway ends 12/16!

Now for This Week's Party
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Flamingo Friday: Getting Ready for a Flamingo Birthday Party with Oriental Trading

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

It is hard to believe it is almost Christmas. Once Christmas is over, we begin to really focus on Hazel's birthday. This year I am trying to have most of the work done before Christmas or at least the things I can do ahead of time. Oriental Trading was kind enough to send me some flamingo items to review, so here is my review as well as a preview of the party.

Easily Updated Photo Display for Grandparents

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

So I was thinking of getting my parents and mother-in-law one of those frames that opens in the front so you can easily change the photo or artwork. Then I saw a pin for using a ribbon, miniature clothespins and a child's painting. I wish I could find the pin to share the source with you, but after almost an hour of searching, I'm giving up. (If it was yours, please let me know so I can link to it.) I had Hazel paint to canvases that I had already bought. Then I stapled some ribbon to them on the back.

Once the ribbon was hung, I just hung a photo well actually two (both her school pictures this year) on each one.

I buy the canvases when they go on sale at the craft stores. I picked up a package of miniature clothespins for around $3, so this is a pretty inexpensive, but personal gift and it gives them a way to easily adapt to whatever size photograph you give them each year, or to display more than one depending on the canvas size you use. What do you think?

Christmas Crafts Round-Up from 2011 - 2013

Last week I did a round-up of some of our favorite Christmas books that really share the story of Christmas or the giving spirit. This week I thought I would share a round-up of the Christmas crafts we have done since Crafty Moms Share started. But before we share our past crafts here is a clip angel we made for one of Hazel's angel crafts from her Advent calendar this year. I was inspired by the Easy Paperclip Angel Ornament on Crafty Journal that I saw on Pinterest.

We used glittery pipe cleaners instead of ribbon and wooden beads instead of pearls.

I think the pipe cleaner made it easier for Hazel to do on her own. We made two before breakfast one morning. Now as I was going through my Christmas crafts of the past, I discovered I had too many for just one collage (Picmonkey wouldn't let me put them in one), so I made four. Two are general Christmas crafts, one is nativity crafts and one is "gingerbread" house crafts.