Handmade Holidays - Ornaments To Make Yourself

Holiday decorating is such a joyful time. Sprinkling bits of magical sparkles and light throughout our homes reminds us of the light we bring to the world, each in our own unique way. To make it even more special, skip spending a fortune on your decor and make some yourself.

Today we’ll share ideas for tree ornaments you can make by hand - the perfect additions to your tree or to give to your loved ones as gifts. They even make great gift toppers, because who doesn’t love a special handmade accessory that can be used year after year.

Felt Ornaments

Creating a beautiful ornament from felt is simple with just a few skills and supplies. You’ll need - felt sheets, (you can purchase 100% wool felt here) embroidery floss, wool batting, (found here) a needle, and fabric scissors. An optional (but helpful) tool is a cookie cutter in your desired ornament shape. To add extra detail, you could add beads, embroidery, or needle felting to one side of the ornament as well (in the photographed star ornament, I needle felted an E on it for my son’s name.)

Use a cookie cutter or pattern to cut out two identical shapes from felt. Embellish them as you wish or leave them blank and stitch the two sides together with a blanket stitch, leaving an opening wide enough to fit stuffing. Fill with wool batting and close out the blanket stitch, closing the ornament. Tie off and cut your thread, reinserting it into the back of the ornament, close to the stitching. Go back through the back side of the ornament with thread, bring it in and out a couple times to ensure it’s secure and create a hanging loop. Finish the loop by reinserting the thread back through the back side of the ornament again, near the stitches, and repeat a few times to secure. Cut the thread and tada! Ornament complete. Be proud of your beautiful work!

Pom Pom Ornaments

Possibly the simplest of all these ornaments are pom poms. Made simply of yarn, pom poms make wonderful ornaments, garland, and gift toppers. Use a pom pom maker like this or a fork to wrap yarn many, many times until it reaches your desired thickness. Tip - the thicker you make it, the more full your pom pom will be. Slide the wrapped yarn off of your maker. Use strong string or heavy duty thread to wrap around the center of the yarn ball in a loop, closing in the center as tightly as you can, and tie off with a double knot. Use fabric scissors to trim the sides of the pom pom into a ball shape. When complete, use your thread or decorative twine or other string to wrap around the center of your pom pom and form a hanging loop.

Orange Slice Ornaments

These ornaments are a bit time consuming, but also super simple. All that you truly need are oranges (or any citrus, really, but navel oranges are my personal pick) parchment paper, a sharp knife, and some twine or string to hang them with. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees (or as low as you can) while you slice your citrus. You want the slices to be thin and evenly cut, aiming for around a quarter of an inch thick. Pat them as dry as you can with a cloth or towel and space them evenly on a sheet of parchment. Place the parchment sheet directly in the oven for best results, turning the slices over every 30 minutes or so to ensure even drying. Repeat this for 2-4 hours, until they are no longer damp.

Once they are dry and cooled, use the point of scissors to make a hole through the skin and attach string or twine in a loop through it. And that’s it!

Or, if you’d like to jazz them up a bit, try adding a cinnamon stick to the top by looping the twine around it before tying off your hanging loop, or a twig of pine branch, a wooden bead or two, or tie a bow with ribbon or yarn. I’ve also seen star anise added to the center which adds a lovely, and wonderfully scented touch.

Needle Felted Ornaments

Have you tried needle felting? It’s one our favorite crafts here at RVA Naturals. Little needle felted treasures make lovely additions to a Christmas tree. You can craft just about anything you can dream up, from stars, suns, snowmen, a Totoro, mushrooms, animals - only your imagination sets the limit. I felt a few new mushrooms for our tree each year, soon enough our trees will be one giant toadstool.

Supplies you need: wool roving, felting needle, felting pad, and string or embroidery thread to hang from.

Choose roving in the colors you’d like for the shape you aim to create. For the mushrooms for our tree I use white and red roving. Gently pull the roving you need to form your base shape from the ball of roving. You can add more later, if needed. Stab this roving again and again to form the shape desired. The stabbing is to tangle and condense the wool fibers together, the more you stab, the more sturdy and firm the shape will become. If you need to attach two shapes together (as I do with the mushrooms - attaching the white stem to the red top) leave the end of the shape where you will attach them together more loose, with wispy ends that can join with the other shape of wool. As the shape forms up, you can begin the more detailed work of defining the shape better. The process gets easier as you practice, so be patient with yourself as you learn.

Keep an eye on our Instagram for a tutorial of these felted mushroom ornaments soon.

Salt Dough Ornaments

Salt dough is such a great way to get even young children involved in ornament making. It only requires a few ingredients you likely already have on hand, and who doesn’t love to play with some dough!? Plus, with older kids, you can let them shape the ornaments and paint them once they’re dry for an added touch of color and love.

Basic salt dough ingredients:

4 cups all purpose flour

1 cup table salt

1 1/2 cups warm water

Process:

-Preheat oven to 200 degrees

-Whisk together flour and salt in a large bowl

-Slowly add water to dry mix, while stirring

-Once it has come together, finish mixing and kneading the dough with your hands. This takes around 5 minutes to get it smooth and easily pliable.

-Roll your dough into a sheet about 1/8 inch thick and use cookie cutters to create your shapes.

-Use a toothpick to create a hole in the top, large enough to get string through to hang the ornament from.

-Place ornament on a parchment lined baking sheet. Space shapes evenly on sheet.

-Put in the oven and bake for one to two hours, checking them at the first hour mark and every 20 minutes after that until they are hard.

Once your ornaments are dried and cooled, you can either paint them or thread string from the hole to hang them up.

You can also add fun, wintery scents to your dough by adding in spices like ground cinnamon or cloves. They hold the scent for years!

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