Ornamental

Lately, my focus has been on preparations for holiday sales locally and in my Etsy shop. I still have a few more things to upload, but I took a little break to make some ornaments. The ornaments are a variation on the ones showed in this tutorial. I adapted an idea that came from this creativity warm-up (which resulted in this Spoonflower fabric).

Instead of old family photos or digital pics from my hoard of ornaments, I pulled out the play clay. I'm thinking this might be a fun project the kids could take part in.

It's really simple: You just roll the clay into ropes, and arrange the ropes into holiday shapes. I shaped my clay ropes on baking parchment paper, then took them outside and slid them off onto the fresh snow to photograph them with my digital camera.

I photographed several designs together, leaving a bit of space around each element. My equipment (which is nothing fancy), lets me remove the media card from my digital camera, plug it directly into my inkjet printer, select a photograph, and print it directly to inkjet fabric. Couldn't be simpler.

I brushed on a bit of fabric paint (see the tutorial) while the fabric was still stabilized by the carrier sheet. When the paint was dry, I peeled off the paper and layered the printed fabric with some craft felt I bought at a garage sale.

This one, sized to hold a gift card, is stitched together with two buttons and a jingle bell.

This one will be beaded all the way around, but it could also hold a gift card or small gift if you left it open at the top.

Part of my family's holiday tradition is getting a $5 permit from the National Forest Service and going out to cut a small Christmas tree. Our Charlie Brown release-cutting program opens up space for adjacent trees to grow stronger. The trees we get aren't sheared, groomed, perfect specimens. They won't support heavy ornaments, but these fabric ornaments work just fine. Or they will, in a couple of weeks. In our small living room, about 10 days with the tree up is plenty for us.

What do you think: Is this project something parents or grandparents would enjoy doing with kids?