Salt Dough Ornaments

I have really fond memories of elementary school around Christmas time.  I remember lots of homemade ornaments whether it was glittery pinecones, crayon colored angels, pipe cleaner candy canes, or salt dough ornaments.  I loved every minute of it and I've often done crafts or activities with Grant I used to do in school.  I love homemade ornaments and every year when we decorate my mom's tree we still pull out some of those ornaments we made in first grade and it brings back so many memories. 

When we decorated our own tree this year, I was so excited to see our ornaments since we haven't gotten them out in about 2 years because of the time we were living with my mom.  I pulled out Grant's first "school" homemade ornament (actually it was from daycare but it reminded me of some of the ones we did in school).  It was made of foam, glitter, his picture, and had his name on it and I want my tree full of little ornaments like these so 20 years from now I can pull them out and reminisce about these years that will fly by. 

This year I really wanted to do salt dough ornaments with him.  I thought he was finally old enough to help with the majority of the process and could use cookie cutters and paint to decorate them easy enough.  Here's the recipe I used:

1cup salt
1cup flour
1cup water (add just enough to make the dough stick together and not be overly sticky)
-mix the flour and salt.  Slowly add in the water until it's the right consistency.  Knead the dough then roll it out and use cookie cutters to cut your shapes.  bake at 300 degrees for an hour or more depending on the size and thickness of your ornaments.

We used a star, heart, reindeer, and circle cookie cutter for the majority of the ornaments.  Then I decided to make one onesie shaped ornament to decorate for the new baby.  Since I didn't buy any pregnancy or "baby on the way" ornament I thought this would work great. 

I'm actually pretty pleased with how the onesie turned out.  It's far from perfect and I couldn't figure out exactly what I wanted it to say so I decided to keep it simple and just put, baby #2, on the front with the year.

I had Grant use washable Crayola paint.  I read online to only use acrylic paint because others would eventually chip off., but I had visions of acrylic paint all over his clothes, pants, and my dining room chairs and decided it wasn't worth it.  Once they were done I thought I probably should have only given him one color of paint per ornament instead of small amounts of 4 different colors because of him mixing all the colors together rather than using them one at a time.

I had him hang one Rudolph on the tree and took the others and hung them from a shelf in our dining room.  I also had him do a handprint and used acrylic paint on it.  I've been wanting a painted salt dough handprint of his since he was born and as sad as it is, it's taken me 3 year to do it. 

I kept it simple and decided not to go full Christmas theme with it since I don't think I will put it away after the holidays.  I enjoy looking at his cute little hand hanging on my wall and he loves showing it to anyone who comes into our home.

After having made all these Grant is still asking me when we can make more.  I think he really had fun and I can't wait to do this again next year.

 

Family Ornament: Reindeer Thumbprints

I wanted to make a family ornament this year and start a new tradition.  My husband hates, I mean really hates, having his picture taken so I knew I couldn't do anything with photos.  I saw reindeer thumbprint ornaments on pinterest forever ago and had immediately thought of making my Mom an ornament with the grandkid's thumbprints and the year.

When I started making hers I thought, why not make one for our tree.  I think my husband was relieved his part took all of 2 seconds and only consisted of dipping his thumb in paint.  I put our last name on the back and the year in permanent marker.  I used brown acrylic paint for the thumbprints then added the details with acrylic paint as well.  My intent was to add a green ribbon bow to the top but I can't for the life of me find my green ribbon.  I know it will turn up eventually and I wanted to get the ornament on our tree so I left the ribbon off for now.

I think a family ornament was fitting this year since it will be the last Christmas we are a family of 3.  I can't wait to come up with a new family ornament next year for the 4 of us!

Felt Tree Advent Calendar

I jumped on another bandwagon this year, the Advent Calendar.  I've been wanting to make one
 for about 2 years now and never could decide how I wanted it to look or what I wanted to make it from, cardstock, felt, fabric, etc.  Last year I saw this advent on Homemade By Jill and thought it was perfect.  I had grand plans of starting way early and creating all these really intricate and beautiful felt ornaments for Grant to place on the tree each day.  Then reality hit and November came to a close and I was scrambling to get them all done.  I'm really proud of the ornaments I made.  I didn't really follow any patterns because I think felt can be difficult to work with when you're cutting small intricate shapes, so I freehanded the majority of all the pieces.

I did look to google for inspiration by googling "felt advent tree calendar" and "felt ornaments".  If I saw something I liked I saved the picture and then made my own version of it.  When it came to making the tree itself I used 1/2yd of green felt, folded it in half vertically and freehanded what I thought looked like a pretty good tree shape.

I laid out all the ornaments on the tree to figure out where to sew the buttons that would be used to hang the ornaments later on, then I hand sewed each green button to the tree.

Each of the ornament pockets were made with red felt and were 3x3inch squares.  I hand sewed the numbers onto the front.

The entire project was completely hand sewn using a blanket stitch around the tree and trunk and each of the pockets.  One thing I didn't really think about when making this calendar was the size it was going to turn out into.  My calendar ended up being about 5ft tall.  I think my ornaments were a tad larger than other blogs I looked at and that required my tree and pockets to be larger as well.  Regardless I think it turned out really nice and I'm so glad it's finished because it was definitely a small labor of love.

 

I went ahead and made some patterns for those of you out there who work better with them than going freehanded.  I'd love to be able to say I have a pdf of them but I'm not that computer savy.

 

 

 

If you notice there are patterns for 3 ornaments I ended up not using, the bird, the round bird, and the skate.  I left them on the pattern pages because I thought maybe someone else might need them but I had forgotten I made 3 ornament balls with mine, Grant's, and Derrick's name on them so I didn't have room for the other 3.

 

Happy Advent Sewing!

 

 

 

Snowman Ornament

My friend posted a picture on facebook of snowman ornaments and I decided I wanted to make 1 as Grant's yearly ornament.

I a bought plastic Christmas ball at Hobby Lobby, I don't put anything glass on our tree since little man was born.  I filled it with tiny fake snow I found at Hobby Lobby in the same section as the plastic balls.  I free handed the face with acrylic paint and pulled the baby sock over top.  You could use something to adhere the sock to the ball but mine has stayed on just fine as is.

 

I cut off the tip if the sock where the seam was, in order to put the hook on the ornament.

 

 

Once the hook is in place take the tip of the sock you cut off, stretch it out, and use it to tie a knot around the top of the ornament.

 

 

Use your scissors and cut strips down the sock all around.

 

 

And you're done! simple and quick and oh so cute.

 

 

 

 

More Photo Ornaments

Every year I used to give my sister a sister Hallmark ornament and my mom a mother/daughter Hallmark ornament, while I still adore Hallmark ornaments I just can't justify paying the price for them anymore.  I decided I wanted to do an Aunt ornament for my sister this year and a Grammy ornament for my mom but finding them ready made is nearly impossible so of course I had to make a couple.  They both loved the ornament I made my grandparents so I thought one similar would be perfect.

 

I did the photos exactly the same as my grandparent ornament.  I used acrylic paint and free handed the words on the back and filled the space behind the photo inside the ornament with little pieces of curly ribbon.  I didn't like the look of just the back of the photo so I felt the need to jazz it up a little.

 

 

 

 

The only thing missing from them is ribbon tied to the top because I ran out earlier this week, so back to the craft store I go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandparent Christmas Ornament

I made this ornament for my Grandparents:

It is simple and classic and I'm in love with how it turned out.  I didn't want anything over the top or fancy because, to me, the picture speaks enough for itself.  It's their wedding picture over 50 years ago.  I've seen these ornaments done all over blogland and didn't ever really read a tutorial, I thought "how hard can it be?"  Well I don't know how other's made their ornaments but here's a few issues I ran into.

Originally I was going to make wallet size copies of the picture, cut them to size and put them in the glass ball.  FYI, it doesn't work.  I bought regular glass ball ornaments so I had to roll the picture up to get it inside the ornament and the photos don't unroll all the way.  Luckily I practiced with another photo first.  What I ended up doing was scanning the photo into my computer, printing it out on regular computer paper in a 3x5 size.  I cut a circle shape (trimming as needed), rolled it up, stuck it in the ornament, then used tweezers to maneuver it and straighten the paper out.  Once it was situated to my liking I stuck the top of the ornament back on making sure the metal things that stick down in (have no idea if they actually have a name, but you know what I'm talking about hopefully) were positioned behind the photo.  This prevents the photo from falling backwords.  I used some simple red ribbon to tie the bow on top and TA-DAAA, all finished.  I made 8 total one for each of my aunts and uncles as well as my Grandparents and plan on giving them at Thanksgiving so they can hang them on their trees this season.

Total these ornaments cost about $0.33 each since all I had to buy was the ornaments, everything else was already in my craft stash.  This is the perfect gift for a group of people or if you have multiple family members you want to gift to without breaking the bank.  Best of all it brings back memories for people and I think that's the best part of it!