fun with sparkly pipe cleaners!

The other day after work I took a peek into the dollar store to see what fun holiday themed goodies I could find. I ended up being drawn to a very sparkly bag of xmas pipe cleaners and (of course) picked it up! Who could pass up a big ol' bag of red, green, silver, and gold goodness just waiting to be crafted with! So I brought the sparkly joy back home and decided that these particular pipe cleaners were destine to become xmas candy canes! Yay!

This craft probably qualifies as kid friendly since it is incredibly easy, minor motor skills are required, and all you need is pipe cleaners and snips. It also lands in the "my favourite kind of craft" project because it takes all of one minute to complete. Ready? Let's go:

Step 1: Pick out a nice combination of candy cane pipe cleaners and line them up

Step 2: Twist away!

Step 3: Grab the kitchen scissors and snip your twisted sparkly stick into smaller pieces. I decided to go with three canes per cleaner, but you could easily make them as big or small as you'd like

Step 4: Bend the top of your piece into a festive candy cane shape and you're set!

Step 5 (optional): Go crazy and make yourself an army of canes!!!

Now wasn't that fun? What do you with your masses of festive candy canes you ask? Well those options are endless!  I decided to hang some of the candy canes on my little tree as tinsel and they really add some extra sparkle when the twinkle lights are on. I taped some to some holiday parcels as a little gift topper and ended up decorating a stocking with them too! Finally I sent the remaining canes along with a few xmas cards to some pals who will hopefully have their own imaginative new homes.  If I had a cat I would have happily taken pictures of nameless cat (probably) going wild over how fun they are to play with! Hooray!  What do you think? Any pipe cleaner candy cane uses I haven't thought of? 

Saturday Earrings

Remember that post I did a while back about those ultra simple earrings that were totally my kind of project (link)? Well unlike the majority of craft projects that make it to my "to do" list and then I never actually manage to get around to - I did this one! Yay! I even photographed it and put together my own little three step DIY for you! Hooray! Let's go!

Like most crafters out there, you probably already have some of these materials. I only had the pliers, but after a quick stop to Victoria's best bead shop (which is Bead World in Market Square as far as I'm concerned) I was ready to go! I did spend a good five minutes drooling over all the seed bead colours though...but otherwise it was a pretty quick and painless process! Onto the second step...

Okay, I may have compressed the making process into one giant step - but it is just so easy! Make sure you don't bend that end piece of the wire too sharply or it will be hard fitting that part in your ear when it comes to the third step...

Yay! As it happens I am quite the overachiever (or easily addicted crafter if you will) and threw in an optional fourth step!

Hooray! Wasn't that fun? I now have a million pairs of these (seriously...you should see the ones I didn't photograph) and have already given a few away! I figure they are the perfect Saturday project because (yup, list time):

1) it gives you an excuse to go shopping (for supplies)
2) they are ridiculously easy
3) you can finish them up in a matter of minutes and feel like you've been productive! 

Yeah! The perfect start to a weekend! Happy Saturday! Let me know how the earring making goes...