Tag Archives: Christmas ornament

finished rhinestone covered ornament

Christmas Advent 2015 – Rhinestone Ornament

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I previously bought a box of plastic rhinestones with pointed backs for a project that did not work out, so I have re-purposed them as a wonderful Christmas ornament.

Materials:

  • Styrofoam ball (3″)
  • Pointed back rhinestones
  • Superglue
  • Small piece of wire

finished rhinestone covered ornament

To start this project, I made a loop with the small piece of wire and pressed it into the Styrofoam ball and super glued it to provide a place to put the tree hook.

Next, I started pressing in the pointed backs of the rhinestones to form small depressions in the Styrofoam ball. I then placed a drop or two of super glue in the depression and added a rhinestone. I kept working circles around the foam ball to the bottom and I was done.

start of gluing rhinestones to foam ball almost done gluing rhinestones to foam ball

This will look absolutely fabulous on our Christmas tree. The lights will just make it glitter and glow!

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

finished pinecones

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 11 Chenille Pinecones

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Day 11! Today I made some pine cones out of chenille pipe cleaners. Specifically, I made them out of chenille bump stems in a lovely light brown color.

Materials:

  • Chenille bump stems (brown)
  • Large wooden beads
  • Felt (brown)
  • Scissors
  • Tacky Glue
  • Superglue

individual layers of pine cone scales

First, I made leaflets with the chenille stems as shown above to create layers of pine cone scales. Next, I glued a bead on the underside of one layer and glued another layer to the bead, as show below, using tacky glue. This can take a little bit of time as you want to let the tacky glue dry really well before you add another layer of leaflets.

how I glued the layers together with a wooden bead

I was working on three at once, so I kept them all in a neat pile with their corresponding beads.

layers glued together and beads I used

I will say that the wooden beads in the middle of the picture worked the best. Made a nice sturdy and pretty pine cone.

felt pieces cut and pasted for top layer of scales

Then, I cut individual scales from the felt to make the tops of the pine cones. I glued these with the tacky glue into sets of three. I put 6-7 of these trios on each pine cone. I put  I also cut 1/4″ x 3/4″ strips of felt in the same color and glued them into rolls to make the stems of the pine cones.

finished pine cones stacked on top of each other

You can see above where I glued the stems to the top of the pine cones and then added the felt leaflets around the stem.

Once everything had dried, I them touched up all the connecting points with super glue to make sure that everything would stay together and form a strong bond. At this point, you could easily add a tree hook to the top and hang them from the tree. That would look really nice. I have another purpose for these that you will see in about a week.

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

paper circle ornamnet

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 10 Paper Circle Ornament

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Day 10 and I am neck deep in crafting supplies. My house is truly a disaster. Maybe my final advent  picture should be of the absolute mess I have made.

Today is a very simple and easy ornament you can do with your kids.

Materials:

  • Scrapbook paper
  • Paper cutter (scissors work just fine too)
  • Tacky glue
  • Ribbon

paper circle ornamnet

I cut strips of paper in varying lengths between 4″ and 7″ long and 1/2″ and 1″ wide and in varying colors, then formed circles and glued the edges together. Then I selected the circles I thought looked best together and glued these together making sure the glued edges where on top of each other. Once they were dry, I tied a ribbon to the top, dabbed a bit of glue on the ribbon knot so that it did not come undone and attached a tree hook.

All done!

This one is so easy I felt I needed to pay a cat tax.

kitty picture

My dopey cat wondering why I will not sit still.

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

confetti in glass ball

Christmas Advent – Day 8 Confetti Ball

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Day 8 and I went for an easier project today as I am working on two of the future advent projects already. The snowflake confetti I bought has come is so handy throughout this year’s advent and even a small bag of it was a LOT of confetti. I am just now halfway through with the bag.

confetti in glass ball

Materials:

  • Clear glass ornament ball
  • Snowflake confetti
  • Glitter
  • Ribbon
  • Thin wire
  • Jump ring
  • Pliers

I pulled the top off the ornament and filled it full of snowflake confetti and glitter, then put the top back on the ball. I did fold up the arms of the snowflake confetti before I stuffed it inside. I then took the thin wire and made a loop then threaded some pieces of ribbon on it. I then used a jump ring to connect it to the ball. Done!

confetti in glass ball

Placemats and another awesome wreath are in the works. You should see them soon!

Happy Crafting,

Kristin

napkin rings

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 7 Napkin Rings

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Loryn has been doing lots of entertaining lately and has the most awesome table. It is gigantic and sits our family very well. I decided that for this advent, I would make the table decor for Christmas family dinners. Today I made the napkin rings.

napkin rings

Materials:

  • Scrapbook paper
  • Tacky glue (white glue)
  • Foam sheets
  • Mod Podge
  • Sponge brush
  • Wax paper

I cut strips of scrapbook paper in three different styles to 1 1/2″, 1″, and 1/4″ wide by 7″ long. I used a sponge brush and some watered down tacky glue to glue the papers one on top of the other. I then squeezed these flat between some wax paper and heavy books.

I cut 1 1/2″ by 6″ long strips of the foam sheets and once the paper strips were dry, I used some more watered down tacky glue and the sponge brush to glue them to the foam strips. I again squeezed these flat between my sheets of wax paper and heavy books.

I then trimmed the paper on one end to evenly match up to the foam and left a 1/2″ edge of paper on the other end. I smeared straight tacky glue on the inner side of the leftover edge of paper and a bit on the end of the foam and curled it around the tacky glue bottle (nicely doing double duty here) and glued the ends of the foam/paper strips together, making sure the paper strips lined up, wiping any excess glue away, and ensuring the rings formed good circles.

napkin rings

After the glue was dry, I used another sponge brush and covered the rings with one coat of Mod Podge. I am not too worried about durability and if I need to make more next year, I will gladly do so. This was fun and easy and only took a couple of hours.

I only show five of the rings above as the others were all still drying. I only made a few to start to be sure I liked how they turned out. I also used several colors of foam sheets to add a little more color. (I know the insides of the napkin rings will be hidden by the napkins themselves, but they do spend a lot of time on the table with nothing in them after everyone pulls their napkins out.)

Stay tuned for napkins and other table decorations coming soon!

Happy Crafting,

Kristin

confetti ornament

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 6 Confetti Ornament

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It has been a nice, quiet Sunday around here today. A positively beautiful day that my dogs are thoroughly enjoying.

We are now at day six and I have a really awesome ornament for you today. I have this bag of plastic snowflake confetti that I have been using for various projects and I made up this confetti ornament last night.

confetti ornament

Materials:

  • 3″ Styrofoam ball
  • Confetti snowflakes
  • Sequin pins
  • Small piece of wire
  • Super glue
  • Ribbon
  • Nail set (not necessary, but I found this very helpful)

I took my small piece of wire and made a loop that I stuck into the top of the ball and super glued. This gave me my loop for the tree hook. This appears to to be the start of all my Styrofoam ornaments.

I bent up the snowflake arms of the confetti to give my ball a 3-D appearance. Next, I started pinning the bent snowflakes to the foam ball with the sequin pins. I pinned these in circles around the ball. I snugged them all together so they the bent snowflake arms are all intertwined and there is very little of the foam ball showing.

start of confetti ball

I used the 1/32″ Nail Set to push the pins in all the way so I would not bend up the confetti snowflakes. The nail set is a simple tool from the hardware store, used to inset nails in trim and such. You can see it in the photos below. It worked great for this project. It even had a small cup on the end so the pin doesn’t slide around as you push the pin into the ball.

materials used for confetti ball

AlmostDone

After starting this ornament, I thought that it might be very pretty to have painted the ball before adding the snowflakes. I wanted a very white ornament to contrast to the green tree, so I left mine white. I made a small ribbon bow and attached it to the top of the ball with the tree hook.

I do not recommend dropping this ball on the floor if you have carpet and pets. I have a lot of dog fur on my floor no matter how many times I sweep and I was terrified that I would drop the ball and end up with it covered in fur. The bent arms of the confetti snowflakes make them almost velcro-like in its ability to pick up lint and fur. I didn’t drop it, but I just wanted to forewarn anyone else who made this.

Happy Crafting,

Kristin

paper fold ornament

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 5 Paper Ornament

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Ha Ha! I got both my projects finished today! My project for day 5 is an ornament (Styrofoam base) that I covered with strips of red and green paper, then finished off with some wired silver/multicolor mini-garland.

Materials:

  • Styrofoam ball (3″)
  • Sequins
  • Sequin pins
  • Scrapbook paper
  • Paper cutter
  • Silver/multicolor wired mini-garland (trim ribbon)
  • Small piece of wire
  • Super glue

paper fold ornament

I took the small piece of wire and formed a loop at one end. I stuck the other end through one sequin then stuck the wire into the Styrofoam ball. Then using the super glue, I glued it securely. This gave me somewhere to safe to attach my tree hook at the top of the ball.

My next step was to cut lots of 1/4″ by 2″ strips of green and red paper. In reality, I only used 2″ x 10″ pieces of paper in each color and cut them all into my 1/4″ strips. I then folded these strips in half. I grabbed a sequin pin, put a silver sequin on and then attached the folded paper to the ball with the pin/sequin.

I did seven rows of these, with no particular spacing, just what I thought looked good, and covered about 2/3 of the ball, leaving the top uncovered. Lastly, I took the silver/multicolor wired mini-garland (trim ribbon) and pinned it to the ball in circles to cover the rest of the ball.

Since I had already put in the wire loop for the hook, all I needed to do was add a green tree hook and I was done!

paper fold ornament

I like this one and ended up curling the ends of the paper strips to give the ornament more depth. I think it looks like a Christmas acorn.

Happy crafting,

Kristin

Three green foam tree ornaments.

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 3 Foam Tree Ornament

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I made it to day 3 of the Christmas countdown! This feels a bit monumental, as we have been absent from craft blogging for so long.

Today, I made little tree ornaments out of foam sheets (Foamies) in various shades of green.

First my materials:

Photo of materials used.
The materials I used to make my foam tree ornament.
  • Small plastic snowflakes
  • Head pins with eyes
  • Jump rings
  • Tiny jingle bells
  • 4 sheets of green Foamie sheets
  • Wire cutters and pliers
  • Pointed yarn darning needle
  • Circle cutter (Thank you Martha Stewert)
  • Superglue (not pictured)

I used my circle cutter to cut out 24 circles of various sizes of green foam from 1″ to 2″ in diameter. I then poked a hole in the center of the plastic snowflakes and the green circles with the darning needle. Using the head pins, I slid on one snowflake, one circle, and another snowflake, twisted a loop and cut the wire. I ended up making 24 of these and then using the jump rings, I strung them together for a total of eight green circles on each ornament. I attached a single jingle bell to the last foam circle with a jump ring to add a little fun and noise.

Lastly, I cut three more circles at 1 1/2″ diameter and cut them in half. I glued these into cones with superglue and then slid another snowflake on a headpin, then poked the headpin through the bottom of the cone, made a loop at the top of the cone and attached an ornament hook. I used another jump ring to attach the cone to the rest of the tree ornament and Voila! I was finished.

Green foam tree ornament.
Pretty green tree ornament.

I am very happy with how these turned out. My one recommendation is to use a circle cutter as cutting these out by hand makes them look very lopsided and wrong. The circle cutter makes them perfect and even.

Three green foam tree ornaments.
Just as easy to make three as it is to make one!

Happy Crafting,

Kristin

Paper clip snowflakes

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Cheri-I hope everyone is having a wonderful Holiday Season so far.

These are two ornament that I made from paper clips.

Supplies

Large paper clips

Round nose pliers

Grommets

Small gauge wire

Glue

I first started by experimenting  with different paperclip bends.  I knew that I wanted to make a snowflake so I made sure that I would have a way to connect them to each other. After I had a pattern I liked, I began to work on the connection. The grommets worked great for the 2nd snowflake as I had a loop to affix it to. The top one I decided to wire, after I wired it I put a drop of E-6000 on each wire. This stabilized the connection.

Hope you are enjoying our Christmas countdown and again Happy Holildays.

 

 

Paper Punch Ornament

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Okay, I am 2 days late with this post, but you will have to forgive me, between class, a major migraine, and a massive snowstorm, I have been a little bogged down.

In my last post, I used this wonderful paper punch and I just have not been able to resist using it again. This time, I used gift-wrap for the paper cut-outs. I have discussed before my one-time hobby of making temari balls. I have massive amounts of supplies left over from this hobby and I raid it regularly for other projects. For this project, I nabbed a wrapped ball that I had already made. I use stuffing and wrap it with loads of sewing thread. I was a little more proactive this time and added my hanger before I got started adding the paper punch-outs.

Paper ornament with paper punches

I cut out loads of the paper punch-outs and used beading pins and sequins to attach them to the ball. I started at the bottom of the ball and went around in a spiral adding paper punch-outs as I went around and up the ball.

Paper ornament close up

It is a really easy ornament to make and only took me about a 1/2 hour. This does not include the time it took me years ago to make the thread-wrapped ball, but that only took me about 20 minutes at most. You could also use a foam ball for your base as well.

I am really happy with how the ornament turned out.

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

Small photo of paper ornament.