Happy Little Ice Creams

Okay, so it’s not Tuesday, I’m two days late on the blog love post, and I haven’t put up Flickr Friday, but damnit, I don’t care because I’m so excited about this tut – which is why it’s going up early.

Hot Christmases like we have in Australia are still a very strange concept to me, growing up Christmas was about snow (or grey British drizzle!), log fires and roast dinners, then five years ago I suddenly had to adjust to cold prawns for Christmas lunch, spending the day in the pool and generally sweating the entire day out, which makes these decorations the perfect addition to an Aussie Christmas, because who doesn’t want an ice cream around now? For those of you lucky people in colder climates, this is a nice reminder of the summer to come… and of course, how can anyone resist food with faces?

You will need

You Will Need

• Baubles – these were a pack I picked up from the Reject Shop for $2, they’re much smaller than the usual bauble, more like ping pong ball size.
• Mini Ice Cream cones, they had a couple of brands of these in my local Coles, these set me back $2.50 I think.
• Silver spray paint
• Strong glue of some form, I used a hot glue gun
• Glitter Glue
• Blue-tac/plasticine/play-doh
• Permanent marker
• Sprinkles!

Spray. Glue. Stuff.

Spray your ice cream cones, I find when spraying things it gives a much better result to do two thinner coats instead of one coat that tries to cover everything. Of course don’t forget safety precautions of ventilation, a mask, etc.

One they’re completely dry drop a small ball of blu-tac into the bottom of each cone, this will weigh it down so it hangs upright on your tree. Get yourself set up with your glue gun and baubles, run a thin bead around the inside of the cone and press your bauble into it.

Highly Detailed Ice Cream Ornament Cross-Section

You’ll want to put the bauble in on an angle with the stem (?) towards the outside to allow plenty of loop to be on the outside to allow for hanging, I can’t explain clearly, but the diagram to the left should clear things up. Of course if you don’t intend to hang them, this isn’t an issue.

Paint smiley faces on all of them with your permanent marker.

Ice Creams In Waiting

Place your cones somewhere that they can stand up to allow the glue to flow down the side naturally (I was wandering around my entire house trying to work out what to use until my Mum emerged like a highly knowledgeable ninja and told me that an egg holder from the fridge was the way to go, when I told her I was worried about getting glitter glue on my egg holder she told me to coat it in margarine so any glue that got onto it would just slide off when dry. I one day intend to make a fortune hiring her out so she can spread her fabulous crafty knowledge around the world) place your cones somewhere that they won’t be distrubed by any children or pets for the next 24 hours and liberally squeeze glitter glue onto the top of your baubles, there is no such thing as too much glitter glue so keep going until you think you’re done, then add a bit more.

Sprinkled!

Top with sprinkles! If you do it when the glue is wet they will sink completely into it, if you wait until it’s dried and just tacky then they will sit on top, I like them sunken, but it’s entirely up to you, both ways look pretty good.

Done!

I have no idea how long these would last, whether the cones would survive year to year if packaged properly, or if it would be for the best to crush the cones come January, spray new ones and just place the same baubles inside them when the festive season comes around again. I will keeping an eye on my cones to see how long they last and will update this post to include what I may (or may not) have learnt by then.

If you’ve made a the cute ice creams or any other items from the CB tutorials, feel free to show them off by uploading your images to the CraftBlog Flickr Pool, I’d love to see what you come up with.

As with all the patterns and tutorials on CraftBlog, this is licensed for personal use only, please do not sell or make any profit from the Kawaii Ice Cream Decorations. Thank you!