Mel's Mouthful on Mothering: Christmas on a Budget: Decorations: CD Mobiles

Every year we have a number of traditions around Christmas time, and one of these are making and creating all sorts of decor for the house to create that Christmas atmosphere.There are some that we tackle every year like Christmas trees made from magazines, snowflakes are a big favourite and of course anything that takes lots of arting and crafting, is always fun.

As some of you may know I am married to the most amazing man who specialises in anything online. And with that comes all the paraphernalia - cords, cords and did I mention cords? And for more than a year I have been eyeing out a pile of old CD's and DVD's that have been tucked away in one of our drawers. I kept an eye on them and noticed that they have not moved in the last year - which of course I was very quick to mention to the aforementioned hunk. (I can say these things because he's MY hunk and we have been married 13 years which makes him especially hunky;) He relented and I had a pile of disks just begging to be part of this special time of year

And so this is what we did: We got a pile of paintbrushes, paint and some varnish and started to create.

First we had to put our base colours on, we used Dala Craft Paints for this. I just got the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and then a black and white. This way we could pretty much make any colour we wanted to - though to be honest, when I mix colours I always seem to come up with the most obscure shades. Like oh my word orange, pukey pink or fungus green. Sorry but being a mother to 3 boys, kind of gives me permission to use gross terms too.

We had to start with red of course, being a house full of red heads! One coat may not be enough. We did one side first, waited for it to dry and then added further coats until we were happy before we turned them over and painted the other side too.

Also a bit of advice, don't paint on paper, because guaranteed someone will mess a little bit of paint on the underside of a disk and you'll have to unglue and remove the offending bits stuck, which will mean lots of mom involvement and a bit of a mess. As you can see I am getting more art savvy - slowly. I also put them in the kitchen just in case there was any mess or water spillage, which didn't happen because I put them in the kitchen. Guaranteed if I hadn't, there would have been one. Oh and by the way, this rather 60's looking kitchen is not my own but my parents. I love my parent's home. It's old and I get to experiment in their home without messing up mine. Of course the fact that I was house sitting and they didn't know anything about is .... well... for the best I think:0

We painted and painted and painted. It doesn't take long to dry. We painted and then took a break and had a swim and by the time we got back it was time to paint the next layer. Also the nice thing about this activity is that it even works for little ones because as you will see later on, with a bit of glitter paint, you can make any design look beautiful.

We put all our disks on a dish rack, because sometimes when paint is not fully dry they end up sticking to each other and pulling some of the paint off which we didn't want to happen after all the hard work.

And then we go crazy and decorate to our hearts' content. Besides the Dala Craft paint, we also used their Glitter Craft Paint in gold, red and green which just gave everything such a lovely sparkle. You can see that even Ruthie created some real masterpieces.

In the beginning the children were quite reserved and stuck to very basic designs but as they gained confidence and also became familiar with the way the paint worked and how to use colour, they really enjoyed coming up with designs unique to each one. I especially enjoyed seeing how their different personalities determined the type of patterns and colours they chose.

We painted different designs on both sides. We painted our designs first and then added the glitter paint.

The last layer we added was Dala Deco Varnish Dead Flat. We chose this because we like to keep our decorations. We don't toss them away at the end of the Christmas season, even if they are homemade. We always keep them until the next year.

Of course there were times where I wanted to grab the paint brush out of their hands and "fix" what they had maybe done, or correct their lines. (colour between the lines kind of thing) But I resisted the urge. I tried once, but my one son was mortified that I would dare. So I quickly put myself to work and got busy with my own disks. I found this hugely addictive and loved working alongside the children. In fact, even after they went to bed I worked on some of mine.

And then we hung them with some string in front of the windows. We made rows of 4 or 5 at a time. We mixed and matched and just hung them so that they would catch the sun and breeze.

And there you have it. And look how pretty it looks. They catch the slightest breeze and just turn and rotate. They really are such lovely creations, and they just beautify our view. We had a couple of extras which we also put on our Christmas tree which also looks lovely. Such a display of colour and life is just befitting for this wonderful Christmas season.