Cheri: While my sis and I were shopping at Hobby Lobby the other day, we were checking out the wire in the jewelry section. Back many years ago when I first started working with wire, I was using baling wire. This is the wire that holds bales of hay together. It was a good thing I was young and my hands were in good shape.
Since then wire comes in all shapes and sizes and colors. The wire I picked up for this ornament was really soft, and my hands really appreciated it. I was able to form the letters very smoothly and if I made an adjustment to the wire, it was easy to get the kinks out.
This ornament is really quite simple. I shaped the word “Joy” and then I made a big circle with a hanger at the top and placed the word in it. I then took small pieces of wire and held the word in place by wrapping it at various points. I think it turned out very nice and should really add a lot to the ornament tree that we are all working on.
Cheri: This little bird is all decked out in his Christmas Regalia. He is just not satisfied with being just a bird, he felt the need to dress for the occasion. And when I say dress for the occasion, he really did. He has a lovely crown, quite nice decoration on his tail feathers and he is wearing some very nice wing bracelets.
The body of this little bird is felt that has been sewn together and stuffed. I then took several pieces of different colored wire and used it in place of feathers. He is a little bit of a steam punk bird with all his attire. I hope you like him as much as I do.
I love Cheri’s Chinese Fortune ornament. It will just glitter and shine next to the lights on the Christmas tree.
For an ornament last week, I did an homage to my stepfather’s sequin and pin ornament and for today I am doing one for my sister. Loryn has this ornament that she received from our grandmother (Memom – the other two sisters’ that make up The Crafty Sisters, mom) in 1981. As we were growing up Memom would give us each a Hallmark ornament for Christmas. One of the joys of decorating our tree was being able to hang the ornaments that were yours. This one in particular was a lovely Ice Fairy holding a snow flake.
This is the original ornament. Unfortunately not ours, as this one still has her wings and snowflake.
I have many memories of this ornament and I know that my sister has even more. Unfortunately, time has not really been kind to the poor fairy. She has lost her wings and snowflake, but she is still a lovely ornament so she is hung on the tree every year. Here is my version of the ornament:
I made her with silver wire. I started with the arms, wired on the neck and head and then continued with the rest of the body. Then I made the snowflake and wired it onto one of the hands and adjusted the other hand to hold it. The wings were made next and each is wired separately to her shoulders. I added her hair last.
Lynne: We crafty sisters have been making ornaments all month, but we are not the only ones. Last week, I went to the Pear Tree Gallery to attend Teri Partridge‘s class on making a tissue paper star.
The ornament is not difficult to make, but it is repetitive and good company with good conversation speeds the whole process. Of course that meant Teri had to talk a little louder while giving instructions, but she is a retired middle-school teacher and up to any task.
Materials you will need:
tissue paper
white glue
white colored pencil
scissors
CD for a circle template (or something similar in size)
binder clips
12 to 20 inches of 18 or 20 gauge wire
pliers
buttons or bells
wet cloth or sponge
You need about 14 circles of cut tissue paper for the completed star. Stack your tissue paper so that you can cut all of the circles at once. We used an old CD to draw around as a template for the circles. Hold the cut-out circles together with small binder clips to keep from having to constantly adjust them. Cut into the circles at the 12, 6, 3 and 9 positions of the clock and then cut halfway between each of those quarters. Make sure the cut does not go all the way to the middle. You need the center section to hold the paper on the wire. The photo below should help with my directions.
Paper Ornament Tree Topper
Have a little glue poured out on a throwaway lid, a dampened sponge or cloth to wipe your fingers free of glue, a white colored pencil (a darker color could mark the paper and show through the point), and the cut circles and you are ready to begin.
Position your pencil with the tip in the middle of each cut and roll the tissue paper around it to make a point. Slide the pencil out and put a little glue on the edge to keep the point from unrolling. Use the 3rd or 4th finger of your hand for the glue and you will not have to keep wiping the glue off the index finger you are using to roll the paper.
When you have all fourteen of the circles finished, you are ready to put the ornament together. Cut your wire anywhere from 12 to 20 inches long depending on how many spirals you want to make and how long a hanger you want. Make a loop in the wire to hold the circles in place. The loop should be several inches from one end of the wire depending on how long you want the hanger to be. You can also use a button or a bell to make a stronger stop to keep the paper from sliding upwards when you tighten the star.
Make a hole with a needle or ice pick in the middle of the circles. String the first 7 circles onto the non-looped end of the wire with their points down and string the other 7 circles with the points up. You want the star to have the top points pointing down and the bottom points pointing up to give the ornament its circular shape. Use a bell or a button pushed up tight to the bottom circle and make another loop to hold the bell on. Arrange the circles so the points show to best advantage and make sure the circles are bunched tightly together to make it pouf out properly. Secure the bottom bell and cut the wire or make some spirals or twists if you like. Bend the wire on the top to form a hanger and you have your star ornament.
The ornament that I made in class with Teri Partridge.
When I got home, I liked the star so much I wanted to make a larger one as a topper for my tree. I made the circles slightly larger by using a 7″ plate as a template for the circles. Don’t go too big or the circles get too floppy and do not pouf right.
I needed heavier wire to make the ornament stand on its own at the top of the tree. I found some 12 gauge white electrical wire at the hardware store and took it to Cheri to have her bend the wire into the right shape. She used the neck of a champagne bottle to bend the wire into a coil to fit on the top of the tree.
Wire coiled around the neck of the champagne bottle.
The 12 gauge wire was harder to bend close enough to the paper circles, so we used pieces of cork above the stop loops in the wire to help hold them close together.
The cork holds the tissue paper circles tightly together.The champagne bottle we used to coil the wire made a great stand for our photo.
The star looks great on the top of our tree and if you like the topper on the champagne bottle, it would make a great centerpiece for your holiday table.
Have yourself a merry holiday!
Our new paper star tree topper.Paper Star Tree Topper
Chinese fortunes fill the interior of this ornament.
Cheri: My kids and I have a tradition. We have a standing date on Saturday where we go to our local Chinese food restaurant, China Lane. We have been doing this for about a year now and we still are not tired of it. It is nice for me because I really get to connect with my kids while doing something we all enjoy.
I always save our fortunes that are in our fortune cookies. So far I have used some of the fortunes on my fortune cookie tree, featured here a few months ago. I am always on the look out for other uses for the items I collect and I thought they would be great to put in an ornament.
This was a very easy ornament to make for the Christmas Ornament Countdown. All I did was get a clear glass ornament, took the cap off, rolled the fortune with the wording on the outside and put it into the ornament. I added some glitter and some snips of ribbon, put the cap back on and tied a pretty piece of ribbon to the top of the cap.
This ornament has a lot of meaning for me when I look at it. It reminds me of all the fun my kids and I have had and I will be able to think of those memories each time I look at this ornament.
This would be neat if you were to have your kids write special little messages or if you wanted to give someone a special message. I love to make ornaments that have special meaning to me. Give it a try, I’m sure the ornament you make will become one of your favorites. Hope you have a Merry Christmas.
I put glitter and snips of colorful ribbon in with the fortunes.Chinese Fortune Ornament
At the beginning of this countdown I wrote up a list of 8 different media that I wanted to use to make ornaments. I have now arrived at paper. I found this wonderful video tutorial for how to make 12-point origami stars and made with some pretty scrapbook these are perfect for holiday ornaments and decorations.
I have found after making them that I have a few suggestions. I originally thought to make these with Christmas wrap, but found that the wrapping paper is just too thin and prone to tearing to be practical. I did have some really pretty scrapbook paper in some excellent colors that was a heavier weight. Don’t use cardstock as it will not fold easily once you get to several layers of paper. Anything in between wrap and cardstock would work very well. I also recommend using something to press the creases down such as a bone folder.
To hang these as ornaments from my tree, I am going to pull a thread through the star with a doll needle (a really long needle) and attach a hook to the thread. Voila! a wonderful ornament form the tree or just beautiful to set on a table as decoration.
Happy Holidays from Kristin!
This post was edited to fix the link to the tutorial. The old link had disappeared and I was able to find a new tutorial on YouTube.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
Two deer at the water's edge.Swan on the lake.Close-up of snow scenes.The gumball containers are teeny tiny places.Teeny tiny places in teeny tiny spaces.
Frilly and festive tissue paper flowers for a Christmas tree garland.My white Christmas tree with its new garlands.
Lynne:Crafty Challenge 5 was a challenge for me. I don’t believe I have made any Christmas ornaments for several years and it was tough to get my mind back into that red and green groove.
I like long garlands and I like them to be lit. Strings of Christmas tree lights seemed to me to be the best way to start, so I bought a strand of 100 clear Christmas tree lights. I needed the light strand to be decorated and the longer I looked at them the more the bulbs looked like the centers of flowers. Why not put a flower around each light bulb? The flower I made for my Do It Best Purse in the hardware store challenge would be the perfect fit to go around the collars of the light bulbs.
I plugged in my strand of lights for two hours to check on how hot they would get. I could still hold them in my hand at the end of the two hours so I used red tissue paper. However, be safe and turn off your tree lights whenever you leave the house.
Tissue paper comes folded in its package. When you unfold the paper the creases are good guidelines for cutting the long strips. I cut through all of the layers at the same time, because there was less chance of the sheets slipping while they were still in the original folds. I used a rotary cutter and the resulting strips were about 3″ wide.
Crease from tissue paper being folded for packaging.
I folded the strip in half and then separated the layers into stacks of two strips each. (The number of layers can vary depending on how thick the paper is and how frilly you want the flowers.) I taped the unfolded edge with scotch tape. I put half the tape on one side then flipped the strip over and folded the tape up onto the other side. Then I used scissors to cut the folded edge of the strip into fringe.
Taping the long strips closed.Taping 2 layers of long strip.I used scissors to fringe the folded edge of the strips.
Once you’ve fringed the length of the strip, cut it into 5″ sections. 5 inches worked best for me but you can make the sections longer if you want fuller flowers. Take each 5″ section and roll it around one of the light bulb plastic holders. The holders are plastic and I found that a dab of hot glue when you first start to roll the flower is strong enough to hold the flower in place. Once you have the flower rolled use a piece of tape to keep it closed. I put a flower on every other light bulb and I was just able to finish the garland in two hours.
I liked the results so much that after the challenge was over I made another garland and bought a white Christmas tree to put them on.
Fold the 5" strip around the holder of the light bulb and tape it closed.Close-up of the flower.Another close-up because they look so pretty and festive.Frilly Flower Garland
the crafty sisters 