Ideas for Making Christmas Ornaments?

Dec 3, 2006
1,002
2
My BF and I decided to make ornaments for each other this year, since it will be our first Christmas together. Unfortunately, I'm not the most artistic or creative person when it comes to stuff like this. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas to help me out? Thanks in advance!
 
We make ornaments every year. Kits are "OK", but they don't speak from the heart and for a FIRST christmas you want to make it special.

Here's what my son and I did one year (though we just used card stock). You can make them with photos, with cardstock, from last year's christmas cards, and so on. It just needs to be FIRM paper, but they are SUPER easy to do! My 9 year old did them with my help.

Of course, I can't find it, but it's a collage of sorts and you make a bubble/ball from them.

There are SOOOO many possibilities, just hop online and type in christmas ornament craft and you will see the sky is the limit and most are so easy to do!

THen, I found this:

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/holidays/p/ornament.htm
 
Cute idea... I have not made ornaments since I was young. But those consisted of those craft store pom-pom ball things, and gluing three together w/ differing sizes to make "snowmen" (you get the idea) and then decorated w/ eyes, mouth, little scarves made of paper or ribbon, etc. I am sure you will want something more grown up than that though!
 
You can get the normal christmas ball ornaments at craft stores but they have clear glass ones and you can fill it with whatever and paint on it. I think this year I may drop different colors of paint in it and swirl it around. Previously I have put glitter inside and wrote messages on the outside with paint and filled it with curling ribbon as well. I'm trying to come up with some new stuff as well though.
 
oh my gosh, that's a really cute idea! I'd go check out those paint-your-own-pottery places and see if they have any little ornaments to decorate because they usually have so many products to paint. THen you can really personalize it! If you're down for disposable ornaments, you can make those gingerbread people, make one of yourself and one of him, then glaze them...I think there are kits for it! Good luck!@
 
Gingerbread doesn't have to be disposable. Make them thicker than usual, then varnish them. Then, you can tie a piece of fabric around his neck for a scarf. Of course, you need to decorate BEFORE baking, but when I did it, we just didn't put a face on it. Oh, and push a straw through the top BEFORE baking to make the hole to put some ribbon through later.

I did that one year, but was a fool and didn't store them (about four years later) in plastic and they got moldy in a basement. So DOOOOO store then in ziplocs between seasons.

This year we are making reindeer ornaments like these.

You could even tint salt clay to do this and "flavor" it with ginger to give it that smell..
 
Thank you so much for the suggestions, everyone. Berryblondboys, I googled what you suggested and found a ton of stuff. I'll be stopping by Michaels on my way home from work today. Thanks again!
 
my mom's a school teacher and every year her kids make ornaments. She uses beads and pipe cleaners to make candy canes and wreaths. And she also makes cinnamon applesauce ornaments, they smell great and you can use cookie cutters to make any shape you want too. It's very easy to do too, just make sure to put em in a zip lock bag when they're dry.
 
I made ornaments last year and I bought some clear ball ornaments from a craft store. In some I filled them with long strands of cheap faux pearls (looks really cute!) or filled them with those little origami stars you make out of paper strips. You can basically fill the ornaments with anything. Very easy and it's not expensive. :tup:
 
A few years ago I bought a bunch of the clear glass ornaments from Michael's (square and round) and poured some red, green and gold acrylic paint in each swirled it around, making sure all of the inside was covered and let the excess drip out by putting it top side down in an egg carton. I also did red, white and blue and also red green and white...and I gotta say they they are really beautiful and unique!
 
I made some this year, for myself, my BF, and his son. For the first set I took some card stock and printed out color pictures of each of us on them. Then I took some wooden ornament shapes (star, bell, tree, etc) and cut the pictures to the dimensions and then pasted them to the wooden ornaments. I spray varnished the ornaments, and embellished them with glitter, the current year, and our names. For the second set of ornaments, I did something similar, but I went further to make more "permanant" ornaments. I have some ink jet shrink paper that's just been sitting around forever, so I printed out 8x10 photos of us on the shrink plastic in full color. Then I trimmed the edges with those decorative edge scissors and cut a large hole in the top. On the bottom of the photo I printed our names and the year in a decorative font. Then I shrinked them. They came out really pretty and shiny, with some intense color. I embellished these also, and threaded glittery pipe cleaners through the top hole to hang them on the tree. Now each of us will always have a couple of ornaments, and I plan to do more this season as well as next year. I'm thinking polymer clay for my next ornaments. I have a trillion ideas. I won't put up the tree or any decorations for a couple more weeks however.