My kids and I love to do crafts together. It is one way that we like to savor time. While I plan on sharing with you some of the crafts that we do at our house, I recognize that many of these things will be something you could easily find somewhere else on Pinterest. So I wanted to do something a little bit different with my craft tutorials: I will show you exactly how long they take to make (since this blog is focused on time, after all) and give you a final verdict on if I would consider them a “quick craft”.
I am notorious for seeing something on Pinterest, never clicking on the tutorial, and then just “winging it” based on what I saw in the picture. So when I was looking for something fun for Mini-Me to do with a friend at an upcoming playdate, I thought of the wooden clothes pin snowflakes that I had seen on Pinterest. I thought it would be super fun if they could paint and customize them the way they wanted (because when you’re six, it’s all about the bedazzling anyway!)
So I gathered my materials (glue gun, ribbon or twine for hanging, and clothes pins – eight per ornament), then I started the timer.
The first step was to pull the springs off the clothes pins. I only had one spring go rogue and fly across the counter. Not too bad!
Then, while I waited for the glue gun to heat up all the way, I did a dry fit of the snowflake to make sure everything would fit together the way I wanted. I also cut a small length of twine for the hanger.
Then it was time to glue! I put a strip of glue on the flat side of one clothes pin and pressed another piece on top, using the groove in the clothes pin to gauge how well I had them lined up. (Try to avoid actually getting glue in that groove, otherwise you’ll have a bunch of glue ooze into the opening in the snowflake.)
For the hanger, I just looped the twine and put the ends in the glue before adding the other wood piece, sandwiching it in place.
Once I had all of the glued pairs, it was time to assemble the snowflake. I glued the first four pieces (the ones that make a cross shape in the picture above). When those were pretty much set, I started gluing the rest of the pieces (the ones that make an X shape). I found that if I glued fairly quickly, I had a little time to adjust the angles before the pieces were completely set.
At this point, I had one snowflake completed and it had taken me about 21 minutes (which included the few pictures I took).
Now that I had the system figured out, I did the other two at the same time (I glued ALL of the pairs together before moving on to assembling, which saved quite a bit of time).
All in, I was able to make three wooden snowflake ornaments in 36 minutes total. Factoring in clean-up, I was done with this project in less than 45 minutes. And believe me, there was no rushing involved. If I tried to rush with a glue gun, I would end up rushing my accident-prone self to the emergency room! If you are a little more talented with a glue gun, you could probably make these even faster.
So this definitely gets my seal of approval as a “quick craft”. Even though I didn’t include the kids in making the actual ornaments because there was so much hot glue involved, I know the kids are going to have so much fun bedazzling them later (although I really love the rustic look of the plain wood!). I have also seen where they take the mini clothes pins from the dollar store and make a second snowflake shape to glue over the hole in the center. Those are super cute, too! I’ll have to pick up some of the mini clothes pins if I decide to make my own rustic snowflakes later on.
So what do you think I should have the kids use to customize their snowflakes: Paint? Stick-on gems? Buttons? Markers? I’d love to hear your suggestions!