Batch of links - A Pinterest Christmas

This year, I made a bunch of the Christmas ornaments for our tree, using Pinterest as inspiration. The reason I made ornaments instead of just buying everything is three-fold: a) it was our first year with a tree, so we needed lot of ornaments all at once; b) buying everything would have been expensive; c) I didn’t want the tree to look all matchy-matchy, so making different types of ornaments helped give it that collected-over-the-years look (though I still have a lot of red). I’m not going to give any tutorials for this, but I figured I’d link to the sites with the tutorials, in case any of you need last-minute ornaments or crafts to keep the kids busy during vacation.

I made…
- a button wreath ornament, with inexpensive green buttons found in bulk on Etsy.
- a bottle cap snowman, with 6 caps instead of 3 to make sure the back looks nice, too; I love this one. I channeled my inner tween and made a friendship bracelet for a scarf.
- a twisted felt garland, using felt from the craft store ($6 in all), making 1.50”-wide strips with 2.75”-long slits spaced 0.75” apart.
- a flower pot reindeer ornament (I had the mini flower pot and was NEVER using it, so it made sense, though the cost of the other accessories adds up).
- some colorful painted balls, with a cheaper brand of acrylic paint. I made one red, two turquoise and two orange, to add some color to the tree. Please, use plastic instead of glass, much less breakable!
- some mirror ornaments, to reflect lights.
- two felt mittens with scraps I had lying around.
- two star ornaments (using the image as a rough guide only).
- some clay cookie-cutter decorations, with what seemed like a metric f*ck-ton of red food coloring I had bought in bulk on Amazon and hadn’t used in two years.
- a jingle bell garland with an i-cord knit from really cheap craft store yarn.
- an oversized yarn ball ornament, because I knit and I had cheap yarn left over from the garland. (I have no clue what to do with the rest, because Lord knows it’s too scratchy for garments!)
- a ruffled tree skirt, though I had to make some modifications. My machine doesn’t do ruffled edges or basting stitches, so I sewed a folded-over edge and sewed my strips more folded than ruffled. If you change the dimensions, you’ll actually have to use pi to calculate how much fabric you need! I got printed cotton that was between $3.99 and $7.99 a yard, and the fleece was $5.60 a yard.

The awesome personalized dog ornament is from Orvis; it was expensive, but worth every penny! We don’t have a size-appropriate tree topper, because the store was all out and I didn’t have the energy to make one anymore. We’ll make sure to get one for next year.

The pictures of the lighted tree were taken using the tutorials both here (where I first saw it) and here (where I feel the explanations are more detailed).

[Update, January 26^th, 2024: I could have sworn this belonged here, and since I don’t know where else to put it… I had made these two gingerbread ornaments that, this year, I frankly saw as unintentionally scary. (I thought they were from this batch of ornaments, I guess I was wrong.) Anywhoo, I found <a href="https://www.craftidly.com/felt-gingerbread-man-ornaments/">this tutorial</a> and used <a href="https://www.craftidly.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Craftidly-Felt-Gingerbread-Man-Ornament-Template.pdf">this template</a> at 75% to upgrade them. I had the felt in my stash and reused the ribbons, beads, and buttons. This time, instead of a blanket stitch, I practiced my whipstitch. Etsy-worthy they are not, but they are definitely a step up!]