Christmas ornaments

Hi...anyone have any good ideas for making Christmas ornaments? Think it good be fun to make some new ones. One year I did a whole 'earring tree' with all the ones I used to take to shows. Or how about suggestions on 'theme trees'?

Tyke, I LOVE making Christmas ornaments! Here are some ideas for some I've made before.

Lightbulb ornaments ~ using big outdoor Christmas light bulbs that go on the strings of lights. Glue on a hanger and some ribbon. If you don't like the Crayon-color theme, use clear ones for household lamps, the ones that are kinda'-sorta' shaped like a flame.

Feathers ~ same as above ~ just glue on a hanger, some ribbons and/or lace to the quill end. Large white goose feathers work best.

Dried roses ~ my fave ~ dry rosebuds upside down. Get some with nice, big leaves. Dried Baby's Breath is WONDERFUL with this, too! Snip the stems of the blooms to about 3 inches long. Arrange some Baby's Breath around the dried bloom and put a large leaf behind it ~ you can use a spot of hot glue to keep them together if you want. Keep the stems on everything long enough that you can tie a piece of wire around it ~ leave the wire long enough to affix the ornament to the tree. Then add ribbons and such ~ gold ribbon looks so nice on these.

Dried flowers ~ same as above ~ just make nice little nosegays of dried flowers, seed pods, leaves, etc. You can spray paint them silver or gold, too.

Paper snowflakes ~ fold the paper like you learned in Kindergarten to make the snowflakes, but use an exacto knife to cut the piceces out ~ you can cut smaller, more fine designs with the exacto. Iron them flat, then spray with flocking. You'll need to do one side at a time and in layers so the paper doesn't get too soggy that it disintegrates.

Hot Glue snowflakes ~ Use your hot glue gun to make "trails" of hot glue in a shallow pan of water. Flock them like the ones above or spray paint gold, silver, etc. You can add glitter if you want.

Pine cone mini-trees ~ spray really small pinecones with flocking and attach a piece of wire or hanger to the tip. You can also use white glue and glitter ~ brush the glue on the tips with a paintbrush and sprinkle on the glitter. They make a matte finish white glitter now that has a few sparkles, but not so many, and looks just like snow ~ I like to use that.

I've got more and as I think of them, I'll post them. You might try posting this on the Home and Crafts forum, too. Bet you'll get a LOT of ideas over there!

Thanks Wingnut...great suggestions...I'll try some...I should read my posts more carefully before sending...sounds goofy where I said 'think it good be fun'...should have been 'would'...but guess you all know what I meant to say...my fingers get ahead of my brain.

You're very welcome, Tyke! Got your tongue wrapped around your eye teeth and couldn't see what you were sayin', huh? *Grin* Yeah, I knew what you were talking about. Actually, it's weird, but I guess my brain filled in what was supposed to be there as I never even noticed! LOL!

I thought of a couple more ideas:

the classic cinnamon sticks held together in a bunch with ribbon and maybe a little glue)

dried hot pepper pods ~ if these are a nice red color, they look GREAT with some green ribbon or holly at the top

Large dried tree leaves spray-painted gold or silver or flocked, then add ribbons and such like the feathers above ~ I did some of these one year out of Spanish Oak and Magnolia using shiny high-gloss paint. I let the Spanish Oak leaves curl up like normal, too, instead of being so flat. Everyone that came over liked them so much that I ended up giving a couple to each person and they're all gone now! LOL! Oh, well ~ that just means that I get to make more. ;)

egg shells ~ blow out the insides by poking a tiny hole in one end and a slightly bigger hole in the other, then paint or decorate the shell however you want to (plain silver, gold or flocking looks great, too!). Use a thin crochet hook or extra long beading needle (one of those "no-eye" needles that have the "eye" running the length of it ~ you know the ones I'm talking about?) to run a doubled piece of ribbon through so that the loop is at the top for hanging, then knot it up against both ends of the shell. Have you seen those beaded "covers" for ball ornaments? They look like beaded netting. That would look exquisite covering a gold eggshell! If you do these and add beads, I'd dearly love to see a pic if it's not too much trouble ~ I'll bet they'll be fabulous!

dried orange/lemon/lime slices ~ attach them with a ribbon through the middle or decorate both sides of the middle with a little something like tiny dried flowers glued on and hang from a hole near the edge. I haven't made any of these yet, but was going to last year, so researched it ~ found a site that said you can dry the slices in your oven on low all night ~ I thought putting a small fan on low and aimed away from the oven door would help move the moisture out a little better. I may try this this year. I think a garland of slices that have been decorated in the middle, then attached to each other at the edges, would look great and go very well with a few individual ornaments done the same way.

Man, I LOVE Christmas decorating! *Grin!*

Plain white paper folded into accordian shapes and then cut into snowflake designs. Each cut different and sizes varied for interest. Add opalescent glitter spray and hang on the tree. Tale some and suspend them from the cieling with clear nylon thread so they can twist and turn freely. The kids and I made up over 2000 of these one year and had only lights and snowflakes for decorations. It was the prettiest tree we ever did. That was many years ago but all the kids still talk about it and last year both my youngest son and my daughter did this in their homes.

While they were growing up we did the tree differently every year but this is the one they all loved the most in spite of the fact we were broke and Santa was only able to leave a couple of very cheap toys.

Borax snowflakes.
I make them every year, they look great. I sometimes change the shape (add more details)

kids love them to :)

http://www.teelfamily.com/activities/snow/boraxsnowflake.html

zameluzza, that is cool, looks like a lot of fun to make, wish my kids were younger, but I think they will still enjoy making them.

pepple,
yes, they are way to cool. you can add foodcoloring to them, but myself I prefer the plain once.

I have some that I did years ago, they still look great.
you should try to make some.

I will post a picture tomorrow of one.

here are a two pictures of the borax snowflakes.

Thanks so much everyone! That'll keep me busy for awhile. Wingnut, my tongue sure did get wrapped around my eye teeth...:)

Thanks Zameluzza - those are striking!

you welcome :)

Wow! I e-mailed HOwie and our friend Amy about these, Zameluzza - those are great. Gosh, you could make the pipe cleaners into all sorts of shapes, even spell out words in script. Hmmmmmm....There's just so much you could do with those. :)

I haven't made any for a few years, but I made some dough ornaments with a recipe made from white glue and white bread. The dough is very elastic and you can roll it into tiny threads and shapes. I can't find the original recipe, but these both look the same: http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/buildmodel/feature/famf88clay/famf88clay3.html and http://www.angelfire.com/ms/mini/pics.html (this last one has some pictures of miniatures a lady made with it).

I added a little food coloring to mine and they turned out fine. Try to keep the thicknesses uniform and dry them really well before moving them.

This message was edited Friday, Nov 1st 8:06 PM

thanks GW.

I have made some other shapes, but these look the best for me.

hmmmmm words !! thats a great idea :)

will look in to the recipe you posted thanks

Carmen

My mom still has ornaments my Grandpa Leonard made decades ago with pipecleaners, when she was a little girl (decades!). They spell Noel and other words. :)

GW thats so wonderfull,
thats something to trasure for life :)

my dream is to have a huge tree full of handmade crafts ornaments.

I hope that next year I can participate in a handmade christmas ornament exchange.

Carmen

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