Christmas Ornament Countdown: Crochet Wreath

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Eight days til Christmas and we are now more than half way done with our Christmas Ornament Countdown. Cheri’s Teeny Tiny Places was just awesome!

My ornament for today is based on some crochet work I am doing for another Christmas present and just sort of made itself up last week. It is a simple wreath made of green cotton yarn.

Crochet wreath ornament.

I used a 3″ in diameter metal ring for the base, making a single crochet stitch around for the first row. The next row is half double crochet and the last row is half double crochet as well, but is stitched into the front leg of the first half double crochet row. This gives the wreath a nice thickness and also makes what I call a pie crust edging.

Close up of crochet stitches in wreath ornament.

The bow is made with red cotton yarn. I pulled the yarn through the stitching at the bottom of the wreath and made a standard shoe tie bow and then used the ends of the thread to make two more bows. Nice and easy!

Close up of bow in wreath ornament.

Happy Holidays from Kristin!

Daily Squiggle

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Daily Squiggle
The bigger they are the more everything flaps.

Lynne: I love it when my dogs start bouncing and their fur stands up. I am fascinated by the process of rendering objects in motion on a sheet of paper. The squiggles give me a chance to explore the motion before the actual form takes a more static shape.

I used colored pencils and blended a yellow, red and blue to get this particular shade of brown. It’s a brown I use a lot, because I like the yellow undertones. I emphasized the tongue with marker. There is nothing cuter than a dog with its tongue hanging out.

Christmas Ornament Countdown: Buttons, Buttons Everywhere!

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Christmas Ornament Countdown
Snowball ornament made of vintage glass buttons.

Cheri: I received a call from my sis, (Lynne), the other day discussing the button give away. She wondered if I could make the next ornament in the Christmas Ornament Countdown with vintage buttons to coincide with the Vintage Button Giveaway. And my reply was, sure, let me see what I can come up with.

I love buttons, and as I have said before, I have a lot of them. So I picked up two of my jars and poured them out on the coffee table and started sorting them. As I was looking at them, I noted that I had a lot of vintage white glass buttons. These buttons are beautiful, but they are pretty plain.

I spent some time looking at them conjuring an image in my head of what I wanted to make. I decided I would use a styrofoam ball and hot glue to make the ornament resemble a snowball.

I started gluing, and gluing and gluing. I was shocked at how many buttons I ended up using, but I really love how the ornament looks. I think the glass buttons give it a really nice reflective sheen and the glue that you can see looks a little bit like ice.

I hope everyone is able to get in on the button giveaway and I hope you all have a Very Merry Christmas.

Christmas Ornament Countdown
Vintage Glass Button Ornament Snowball

Daily Squiggle

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Daily Squiggle
Squiggles have the rights to petition and to assemble.

Lynne: This squiggle was a lot of fun for me to do. I have been thinking about politics and this just seemed to pop up. Even squiggles believe in having something to say.

I used red-violet and yellow-green for the basic colors and had fun with a blue eye and orange shoes. I used markers as the base and colored pencils to add the shading.

Christmas Ornament Countdown: Teeny Tiny Places

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Christmas Ornament Countdown
Teeny tiny plastic terrariums.

Cheri: Teeny tiny terrariums are pretty fascinating places. Those little spaces made with very few items can evoke a whole world by what you see when you look into it.

These little spaces are really quite easy to make and once you have your materials, you can make several at once.

I love to buy things from gumball machines, not only do I like the prizes, but I think I like the containers the prize comes in even more. They certainly lend themselves to this kind of craft.

Gumball vending machine containers

Air dry white clay

Small piece of mirror or tiny glass

Glitter

Small animals

Chenille stems

To start with make a hole in the container. To do this you need to remove the cap and hold the clear dome so you have the convex part toward you. I heated an ice pick to make the hole.

After I had the hole completed, I took a piece of wire and made a loop on one end. I threaded the end of the wire without the loop through the hole and made another loop on the outside of the dome and cut off the wire.

To make the base of the tiny space, I used the cap of the container. I glued a small bit of air dry clay into the base and squished the piece of glass, or mirror in the center. Then I took a piece of chenille (I used tinsel chenille) and cut it very small to look like a tree. I glued this into the clay.

I glued very small animals beside the chenille tree to make it look like a snow scene and let the bottom portion dry overnight. I do this to make sure that there is no shrinkage. After it dries I take a small paintbrush and brush glue over all the surfaces that I want to put snow/glitter on. Shake off the excess and glue the bottom onto the top. This makes it permanent. Make sure you use just plain old glue for this part. I used an epoxy once and melted the face off of a deer (kind of creepy).

And there you go, all done. The little ones would look great on a small tree and the one that is a little larger I made just to set on my desk. I really enjoy looking into it and feeling the mood of the season any time of year.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Christmas Ornament Countdown
Two deer at the water's edge.
Christmas Ornament Countdown
Swan on the lake.
Christmas Ornament Countdown
Close-up of snow scenes.
Christmas Ornament Countdown
The gumball containers are teeny tiny places.
Christmas Ornament Countdown
Teeny tiny places in teeny tiny spaces.

Daily Squiggle

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Daily Squiggle
Pink is a fetching color for a dog.

I drew this dog the other day after a lesson with Teri Partridge. I had shape, contour and shading but I didn’t have light. Light is coming from the top right in this drawing and I am amazed how it gives the dog more animation. Thanks, Teri.

I did most of this in colored pencils. I pushed the tongue to a deeper red by using a marker.

Christmas Ornament Countdown: Wire-wrapped Spider

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I first heard about putting a spider ornament on your Christmas tree from Cheri years ago, but had never heard the story until recently. I have put a spider in my wreaths and decorations for years now.

Here is my spider for this year:

Wire wrapped spider.

He is a simple fellow. His legs are made with black bead stringing wire and the body is the same wire in silver. He only took me about an hour to make, but will last a long time.

Wire wrapped spider.

And in case anyone wants to read it, here is the story behind the Christmas spider.

On Christmas Eve, a gentle mother was busily cleaning the house for the most wonderful day of the year, Christmas Day, until not a speck of dust was left. Even the spiders had been banished from their cozy corners and had fled to the farthest corner of the attic. The Christmas tree was beautifully decorated. The poor spiders were frantic, for they could not see the tree, nor be present for Santa’s visit. Then the oldest and wisest spider suggested that perhaps they could wait until everyone went to bed and then get a closer look.

When the house was dark and silent, the spiders crept out of their hiding place. When they neared the Christmas tree, they were delighted with the beauty of it. The spiders crept all over the tree, up and down, over the branches and twigs and saw every one of the pretty things. The spiders loved the Christmas tree. All night long they danced in the branches, leaving them covered with spider webs.

When Santa Claus came with the gifts for the children, he saw the tree covered in spider webs, and smiled to see how happy the spiders were, but he knew the mother, who had worked so hard to make everything perfect, would not be pleased when she saw what the spiders had done. With love in his heart and a smile on his lips, Santa reached out and gently touched the spider webs. The spider webs started to sparkle and shine! They had all turned into sparkling, shimmering silver and gold. Ever since this happened, people have hung tinsel on their Christmas trees and included a spider among the decorations on the Christmas tree.

Wire wrapped spider.

Happy Holidays from Kristin!