TAD 18: Yarn hat ornament

Yesterday this arrived with my mail.

 

A friend of mine has packed up some assorted craft supplies she was not going to use and sent them to me. (I have to say this is a foreign concept to me…supplies you KNOW you are not going to use??)

There are tiles, beads, grommets, pom poms, and some stickers. I wanted to make something with one of the items right away so I could show her I appreciated her generosity.  Although it only uses one of the pom poms, this little hat ornament was quickly made up.  I tried twice, but could not recreate the perfectly smooth top from the original instructions. It is also hard to hold a bundle of yarn perfectly straight and tie it without it getting lopsided when you are working alone.

Advertisement

TAD 14: Pine cone ornaments

We were visiting friends in the mountains this weekend. I needed to bring along my craft, so I needed something that was small and could be done fairly quickly.

The pine cones were already glittered. They were saved from an old Christmas arrangement. This was easy to make because it really just takes a dab of hot glue and a wooden bead to turn the cones into something that can easily be hung.

I was going to try to take a picture of them outside, but it was -4f/-20c causing me to opt for an inside shot with them hanging off the handle of a soup ladle. It can get cold in the mountains.

TAD 9: Sheep ornament

I had to abandon my first project today because a cat got overly interested in helping. That will wait for another day when they are sleeping.

This sheep is made by wrapping yarn around a metal washer. I had trouble freehanding the face, so I found some clip art for a little cheat.  If I were to make it again, I would find larger washers, the one I had is probably only about one and a half inches, and I think I’d prefer it if the face was felt, I was just getting too tired and wasting too much material to complete it that way.

December 3, 2015: One more for good measure

Since I did two days of felt ornaments, I decided to keep going with it and make one more. This time I raided the button tin for a pair of snowmen (snow people?) on an ornament.

When I was going through my buttons for the wildflower bag, I tried to put most of the white buttons into one tin. They are usually small shirt buttons and there are always so many of them in old collections. I realized today that while they might all technically have once been white, they have aged over the years to various shades of cream, tan, and ivory. It was a challenge to find a large 4-hole button and a small 2-hole button that were similar shades of not-quite-white and even more of a challenge to find 2 of each.

Also, do you see the snowflakes? FRENCH KNOTS. In the past I would have stitched little asterisks in place of the french knots, but this time, I charged ahead with confidence. I’m allowing myself to be mighty pleased with this turn of events.

The pattern and instructions are from  Cutesy Crafts blog.

 

December 2, 2015: Felt skates

Since the box of felt was out, I thought I’d keep going with the felt ornaments. When I was cleaning out a drawer today that had inadvertently become a junk/catch-all drawer, there were 2 silver paperclips in the bottom of it which reminded me I wanted to make these.

The directions and a printable template for the skate are found here.

My favorite part of these is the trim. I looked through my trim box and found an old card with the trim wrapped around it that had come from someone’s grandmother’s stash. The notation at the bottom said it was originally sold as 3 yards at 4-1/2 cents per yard. I would love to know what garment it was originally purchased to adorn.

 

 

December 1, 2015: Stacked felt Christmas tree

I love the folk-art look of felt ornaments, but I don’t always have the patience to carefully cut out shapes in felt. Because they are most often done with raw edges, I can’t count on bobbles and jagged bits to get hidden in a seam.

This little ornament was able to be done with a rotary cutter, solving my poor-scissor-skill problem. To give you an idea of the scale, the largest green square is 1-1/2″/about 4 cm large, and the whole tree took less than one half a piece of felt.  I used this pattern, but did not have brown felt, or feel like cutting out circles for the base, so I used black squares instead.

Somewhere in my craft room is a small pack of star-shaped buttons. Sadly, it is not in one of my button tins where it belongs.  If When I unearth them, I will add one to the top. I really need to get better at putting things back in their proper place right away.

October 27, 2015: Filled glass ornaments

I’ve had these 5 glass ornaments sitting around. Apparently I used one at some point because it was originally a box of 6. I kept moving them from shelf to shelf in my craft room so decided to finally fill them with things I had at the house.

Here is what I ended up with, along with some notes on assembling them.

(Clockwise from top left)

1. Sea shells and sand. I started out with a lot more sand in this, but the shells sank into it and you couldn’t see them. These are some shells (and a stone) I picked up in Costa Rica, so this is also a memory ornament. Only very small shells fit into the hole at the top of the ornament, so that is one drawback if you are trying to use items you’ve collected.
2. Rosemary. These are springs cut  from two plants in my garden. One is dark green, and the other has a dusty green look. A chopstick came in handy to poke the pieces in after the first two as they were inclined to stick up through the hole.
3.  Melted snowman. Made from Epsom salts, peppercorns and a small triangle of orange felt. The pieces do sink in the salts, but a gentle shake brings them back up to the surface.
4. Beads: These are the cheap mardi gras style beads, and they are easier to get in the ornament if you cut the strand first rather than trying to feed them in doubled up. It took me until the third strand to have this revelation.
5. Peacock feather. Because doesn’t everyone have spare peacock feathers in their house? This one also needed the chopstick to get it inside all the way, and to make sure it was curving toward the glass.

You could also use sheet music cut into strips, yarn scraps, small buttons, really anything that is small enough to fit and would look good in a jar would do nicely.

September 22, 2015: Cork horse ornament

I don’t know how many of you use Pinterest, but I do to organize projects I want to try. Sometimes I’ll get a notice that one of my pins has been repinned. When that happens, my curiosity always makes me look to see what it was. Sometimes, it is a project I pinned a long time ago and have forgotten.

That was the case with this little horse ornament. I used some of the synthetic corks that I have in my stash, and a bamboo skewer cut into smaller pieces for the legs and neck. As I was working on it I realized two things. First, hot glue does not stick to synthetic cork the was it does to natural cork. And second, it would probably be nicer if I were to drill holes into the cork body and then insert the skewers rather than having the little gobs of hot glue show at the joins. This might also help with the hot glue not sticking to the synthetic cork issue.

What I ended up with is  an ornament that seems too fragile to withstand the test of time. (The one back leg is already a bit wobbly despite a second application of glue.) But…if I were to use natural cork and spend a few extra minutes to drill a few holes for the legs, I believe this could be a viable ornament. I am also thinking that using brown yarn for the tail, figuring out some antlers plus adding a tiny red pompom for a nose could result in a fairly passable Rudolph ornament.