Deck your halls with ornaments that tell a story year after year
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
This song gets stuck in my head every year, but I love it. And it is; beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We have our tree up with the burlap/bow garland and now we have some ornaments.
Ornaments are so very special to me.
They remind me of family members that may not be with me anymore, friends that are in other states, or special experiences I’ve had through the years.
Every year, I try to buy at least one ornament and remember to write the year in Sharpie like my grandmother did for me every Christmas.
This year, I found two ornaments that really stood out at the Magnolia Town Market last weekend.
This market in Hayes, La. was really enjoyable. We were a vendor promoting Creative Crafter and I got to meet so many awesome artisans. From rug makers to crafters that made hair bows.
I also noticed that one crafter made string art, which I wrote about in a previous article, and her work was beautiful. As mentioned previously in the string art article, a ton of crafts are coming back in style, one of those being macramé.
There was a crafter at the market that made macramé hangers. I bought one of her ornaments as it reminded me of the macramé my mother would do. The other artisan I bought an ornament from did woodworking and I loved the natural look of this ornament.
Crafting ornaments is really a lot of fun. I actually got a head start on this craft over the Thanksgiving holiday.
I bought four glass ornaments from the local craft store and then gathered up my paint and glitter. I wanted to make simple retro ball ornaments with glitter. I chose red, green, and gold paints and matched them with corresponding glitter colors. I wanted to keep one of the ornaments clear which I paired with silver glitter.
For the three colored ornaments, I squirted paint in the ball and moved the paint around until I got full coverage inside the ornament.
I then turned the ornaments upside down on top of small bathroom cups to let any remaining paint drain and then let the ornament dry. After letting them sit upside down for a day, I turned them right side up to let them continue to dry.
Once dry, it was time for Mod Podge and glitter. Since I was making these ornaments for my co-workers, I wanted to do something for them that correlated with their name but still kept the retro feeling I was going for.
Tami’s ornament is the green ornament so I painted rings around the ball with Mod Podge to correspond with the crossing of the “T”. I only did half of the ball, sprinkled with green glitter and then set it upside down on the cup to dry. When dry, I finished the other rings.
D’Anna’s ornament is the red ornament.
I painted horizontal lines to reflect the horizontal line in the letter “D” and then covered with red glitter.
Cassie’s ornament is gold and I chose to do swirly designs to denote the letter “C” which I covered with gold glitter.
The last ornament I made for myself.
I wanted to do a keepsake ornament to commemorate the first year we have chickens. I gathered chicken feathers from our coop.
I looked up how to sanitize the feathers and found that using equal parts hydrogen peroxide and alcohol clean the feathers to be used in crafts. It said to let them sit for a half hour and then you can dry them with a hair dryer, but I just let them air dry on a paper towel.
I did notice that if I left them longer, the hydrogen peroxide did change the color of some of my feathers, just like with dying hair.
After all my feathers were dry, I put the smaller feathers in the glass ornament and the larger ones; I had to cut to fit.
After placing all the feathers in the ornament, I put the cap back on and went about decorating the outside. I did diamond shapes on this ornament to represent the letter “K” and then covered them with silver glitter.
After all the ornaments were dry, I wrote on each ornament my co-worker’s name and the year 2018. I was going to use twine to hang them but it didn’t quite look right so in true office style, I unbent paperclips to make hooks to place them on the tree.
Today (Saturday, Dec. 8), Creative Crafter will be at the Market Expo in the Civic Center from 9am-3pm so if you have any questions on any of the crafts I have done, stop by our booth and I will be happy to tell you about them. Also, we will have back articles of Creative Crafter available for you to take. As always, Happy Crafting!
<hr /><p class="p2"><em><strong>Creative Crafting with Kim</strong> prints on Saturdays. If you would like to advertise your crafting business or sell leftover crafting supplies call the American Press Classified department at 337-494-4000 or email <a href="mailto:djean@americanpress.com">djean@americanpress.com</a>. Deadline to place a display ad is Wednesday at 4pm and line ad deadline is Friday at 4pm. Feedback about this article can be sent to <a href="mailto:kwright@americanpress.com">kwright@americanpress.com</a>.</em>