Sibling Gifts :: Glittery Barrettes

We have finally reached that glorious day, Epiphany, the last of the twelve days of Christmas, when we pull down the tree and most of the Christmas decorations get wrapped back up, placed lovingly in their box, and put away in a corner of the basement for next year’s festivities. It is normally not a task I look forward to, but this year, for the first time I can remember, I was anxious to get the tree down and everything put away and tidied up. Granted, there are still a few things hanging around, but for the most part we’ve moved on. I suspect come the first heavy snowfall that I will miss my twinkle lights and glass balls, but now that we have internet radio, I feel assured that I can sneak in some time on the window seat with a hot cuppa somethin’ and get my fix of carols. Keep your fingers crossed for me; I am desperate for some good snow.

For the past three years I have managed to get the kids together to make a little something for their siblings for Christmas. With so many children and as many birthdays, more shopping trips for toys is not exactly what we need, but I treasure the time I get to spend with each kid planning and making gifts for their siblings to open. And the kids are the perfect age to enjoy this right now, so I am making hay. This year, due to all our right-before-the-holiday-viruses passed around and me down and out with the flu, we got it in right under the wire, but we still finished in time to have something wrapped from each sibling to the others.

The first project I’ll show you is one from our son to his sisters. This was originally his idea, whispered into my ear before a birthday, and remembered by this addle-brained mother just in time. He wanted to get barrettes for the girl’s because they could never find matching ones when they needed them. So one day when we were in the pharmacy filling yet another prescription, we grabbed a few sets for each girl along with a few bottles of glittery nail polish carefully selected by our five year old guy.

It only took a few minutes to get one coat on each set; four pair of large for the biggest sister, four pair of small for each of the littler ones.

There was a whole lot of concentration and not much chatter during craft time, and he also started with the color he believed his biggest sister would like the best.

I placed the barrettes onto the back of two index cards that I cut, so he could more easily see where the paint was, and I could more easily run my nail around the edge of the wet polish so it would release from the card when it dried. That turned out to be a good idea, the running if the nail around the edge. It took a few coats each for every set and the black barrettes looked better and needed less than the simulated tortoise shell, but overall, it was simple enough that a five year old could do it mostly on his own.

I think the results were simply spectacular!

The girls have certainly enjoyed them, and the baby has even kept hers in her hair without tossing them off in less than ten minutes as she does any type of clothing we put on her.

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