Party favors and decorative magnets

Is it too late to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year? No? Ok, good! Because this is my first real post of the year, and I forgot to tell you all in my last post. I guess I was too busy trying to ask for help (which I still need btw, blog design is a tricky thing).

It really wasn't in my plans to absent myself so long from my blog. But school comes first! So I took almost 3 weeks off (even work in the lab) to study for my finals. Then Christmas came, I went back home for most of the holidays, and the rest I just vegged on my couch, spent a whole day reading Hunger Games (I am now done the trilogy now, absolutely loved it!). I also took a lot of time to reorganize just about every storage place I had in our little apartment(closets, drawers, shelves), it's a lot more functional now!

I did manage, however, to snag a lot of pictures for future posts during the holidays! I made a few of gifts, mostly inspired by all of you in blogland! So today I am sharing the first of many. Even though Christmas has come and gone, there is always next year, and birthdays!

While I was back home, I invited my closest girlfriends for a little girl time. We hadn't been all in the same room since probably high school, 6 years ago. I had a lot planned out for that day, but in the end, we ended up mostly talking, which was totally fine! I wanted to make them a little something with my new crafty talents, and naturally I had pinned a few things, but in the end made these:



I'd seen these toilet paper roll favors all over in the last few months, and I couldn't help but make my own! They are really great for small gifts.

I ended up searching for a tutorial since it was my first time with Mod Podge and I wasn't exactly sure how to go about. I followed this tutorial from Crissy's Crafts.





The trickiest bit I found was folding the ends over, they just never seemed quite as nicely folded as everyone else's. Once I had the Christmas scrapbook paper Mod Podged on, it became somewhat easier, though.

The decorative magnets have also been ALL over blogland (I'm sorry if you're tired of seeing them) and it's not hard to understand why. These were so simple to make, cheap, and you could give to just about anyone. The original tutorial I followed was Potentially Beautiful's.



I bought a scrapbook paper page with a lot of different colors and designs on it to be able to make different sets. All but the blue one came from that one page, and I do find them quite different!



The magnets I used were from a small dollar store, and they seemed a lot more powerful than the brand they have at the big chain Dollarama. In fact, in these pictures I took, I had to separate the magnets a bit so they didn't repel each other or stick together, that's how strong they were! I really don't think they would've been very useful with just magnet tape (which I tried, but I really didn't feel much pull when I stuck it to the fridge).

Just a little tip if you're using hot glue like me, if I too little then the cold magnet cools it down too quickly and I couldn't squish it down properly and it bulged out more than I wanted it to. Took me a few stones to figure that one out. So I used a really good blob of glue and was able to get it right and push it down close to the stone ;)













I just used a bit of fake snow to cushion them inside so they wouldn't move all over, and voila! A little something for everyone!


Did you end up making something in bulk to give out during the holidays? I'd love to get ideas for next year!


Next time I'll show you what we did end up doing for the 6 hours we were together. Let's just say you're never too old to enjoy some simple Christmas traditions!

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!




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I party at these parties.If you would like to invite me to your linky party, please do so on my linkies page, thank you!