Sunday, December 15, 2013

Clip On Snowman Ornament


Is this not the cutest tiny snowman you've ever seen? He's only half an inch tall. My mom likes to send personalized ornaments for Christmas. One year she sent tiny snow globe ornaments with these snowmen inside. Mine, however, did not survive the mail. So now we just have a "ZACK" snow globe, but I saved the little snowman from my broken ornament to recycle.

The problem: how to turn it into a new ornament? You couldn't just hang it. Finally it occurred to me to make a clip. I have a couple of Snoopy ornaments that clip, so I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner! I put a ring of quilt batting around him to look like snow, and I added glitter glue for some sparkle.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Christmas Cards

I didn't plan to make Christmas cards this year, but I needed a few extras, and pretty soon I was on a roll:




An updated version of a similar card from 2004.


These ready-made cards needed a bit of sprucing up before sending, 
so I added a snowflake.


Sunday, December 8, 2013

Holly Star Ornament


After making my snowflake star ornament, I realized that with a little alteration, I could make an ornament that was flat on the back and had the three dimensional points on the front. Even with the stand up points, I still added a gold bead to give the center a more attractive focal point. It also definitely looks better hanging from this orientation.

I pulled out some leftover holly fabric. Instead of starting with 14" strips, I started with 15" strips, just so I wouldn't end up short. Then, instead of folding the strips in half equally, I made the bottom of the fold about an inch shorter than the top:
 

The shorter strip is used to create the flat back, and the longer one is used to create the three dimensional front.

After creating the three dimensional points, I ended up needing to trim a bit before I tucked, so 14" might have been sufficient, but better safe than sorry:


Side view



Saturday, December 7, 2013

Snowflake Star Ornament


I came across a lovely ribbon ornament on the Martha Stewart website. However, with no pictures, it's an absolutely horrid tutorial, especially for a visual person. Fortunately, a quick web search turned up a much better tutorial with extremely clear photo illustrations. It is really easy to follow. This ornament is known by many names: German star, Froebel star, Moravian star.

Unfortunately, my attempt at making a ribbon version did not turn out. After more searching, I also found a tutorial for making a flat fabric star. This is my altered version of it. When I followed the instructions, I ended up with just enough fabric to tuck in on one side of the ornament, and enough on the other side that I would have had to trim some off in order to tuck it in. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to make the stand up points of a three dimensional version. I wanted to use holiday fabric (leftover from my Cathedral window snowmen), but since I used only one fabric instead of four, I didn't think the flat version had enough visual appeal, so I compromised and made the extra fabric into pinwheel-style points instead of trimming and tucking. I added a snowflake to create a central focal point.  
Side view
It's about 3.5" from point to point.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Ceramic Snowman


It's a googly-eyed snowman themed Christmas! This snowman is made out of a tiny ceramic flower pot. I'm guessing it was leftover from my flower pot pin cushion project. Since I made those 5 years ago, I was determined to turn this last pot into an ornament. The snowman's hat is made out of tiny mitten with the top chopped off. The scarf is felt. It's about 4" high to the top of the hat.
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