Making Ornaments

The cookies this year were completely Out. Of. Control. It's not going to happen this way next year. Next year, we're going to make ornaments to give to all those people that should get Something, but not Too Much. The great thing about the ornaments is not only are they fun to make, but I can make them a bit at a time all year, I don't have to wait for the holidays. Then, come Christmas next year, we just get them out and choose one for the various piano students, visiting teachers, friends that don't get "real" presents, and whoever else suddenly needs to have something. So I've been looking for ornament tutorials online. There's really quite a lot out there. Here's some of my favorites:

Family ornaments from polymer clay. The same lady has some cute snowflake ornaments. Since they use everyday sharpies on the polymer ornaments at the mall, I'm guessing that's how you get the names & numbers & things on these. If anyone knows differently, please leave me a comment!

Over at Feathered Nest, she's got a tutorial for these adorable mitten ornaments. I'm loving the idea of doing these because she's used tatted lace on them, and I know how to do tatting. But not how to fix mistakes, really. It must be possible, because I've seen some really BIG tatted pieces at the temple, but I don't know how. And finding people who tat is not the easiest. So this is tatting right at my speed. I may do these first. Does anyone know if dying the mittens with coffee like she suggests means that you need to wash them before they're done? Won't the coffee be... icky... if you don't?

PrideStampers has a very cool glass ball ornament idea that I'd also like to try. This one will likely wait a little longer as I don't have many Christmas stamps at all. But it's very cool. Also very cool, I discovered that there's a nice forum group for stamping! They have stamping challenges, and it's people that know what they're doing with their stamps who will let me pick their brains! It's called Splitcoast Stampers, and it looks like fun. From there, I browsed my way over to this place that has Page Maps for scrapbooks - that is, layout ideas & also some examples of what people have done with them. They put out a couple each month. I'm trying one out this evening (I took a break because we're having an ice-n-snow storm & the power keeps flickering & I don't want to loose all these lovely links) so when it's done I'll take pictures & post them if it turns out as cute as I think it's going to.

This one is a bit involved - I'd need to find a kiln to make her ornaments. But they're very cute. Maybe when I grow up I can have a kiln. But over at Earthenwood Studio she's making "Scent Cookie" ornaments. I guess that the ornaments take various smells pretty easily. Which is also cool. Also, she has a link to a place that makes custom rubber stamps for her. Definitely going to have to check that out & see how expensive that is.

This idea was grown up shrinky-dink ornaments, and it looks like a blast! I'm thinking those are also going to be early on the production list. Especially since I don't think that the shrinky-dink stuff is terribly expensive & her ornaments turned out super cute.

Here are some nice looking paper ball ornaments. These are also very easy looking. I don't have a scalloped circle punch (yet) so I'll probably wait for these until I get one of those - I think I'd miss the scallops if I tried to make this with a plain circle. And a punch big enough to make this ornament is going to cost some bucks. But probably not as much as all those cookie ingredients...

And, finally, there are these hanging paper ornaments. Personally, I think they're way too big for the tree, but I like them nonetheless. I made a couple of these and they're currently hanging above my stove. They're cute! I used a "deckle" blade when I cut the strips with my scrapbook cutter, so my edges are a bit fancy & I like it.