Tree-trimming time will be upon us before too long, and this month’s holiday craft will give you a jump on the season.
Interesting and one-of-a-kind ornaments are simple to make – the kind of project in which the entire family can take part – and can be completed on a budget, if need be.
All you need are some clear glass ornaments and a variety of “fillers” of your choice.
To make our samples, we selected 2- and 3-inch round ornaments, purchased on sale at Craft Mart in Marysville for $3.99 for a box of 10 2-inch balls or four 3-inch balls.
For our fillers, we used things we had on hand, left over from previous crafts: scraps of yarn, feathers, sequins and silk flowers.
We tried a few other items, but realized that weight is an important consideration when making ornaments.
Colorful M&Ms looked pretty in the clear glass balls, but when filled with the candies, the ornaments were way too heavy for the average indoor Christmas tree.
Even some of the large evergreen branches in our yard were no match for those hefty orbs.
The beads and small buttons we tried yielded the same results as the candies, so when making your ornaments, stick to very lightweight fillers for the best outcome.
Yarn scraps were, by far, our favorite filler. With the many unusual specialty yarns on the market today, it’s easy to make eye-catching ornaments with very little effort or cost.
We used a variety of yarns: multicolored heavyweights, those with strands of sparkle interwoven, some of the new “faux fur” yarns, “featheries” and a few multistrand combinations of all of the above.
And an added benefit to using yarn is that feeding the strands into the ornaments is a snap. Just your fingers work fine most of the time, and a small knitting needle or crochet hook can help if you hit a snag.
All of the finished yarn-filled ornaments made us happy, as did those that we filled with feathers and tiny silk flowers.
Our least favorite attempt was the ornament we decided to fill with sequins. Unless you are some kind of crafting masochist, bag this idea without giving it a try.
To begin with, you can’t use a funnel to help fill the ornament unless you use the tiny round sequins that aren’t very interesting, and it will take a gazillion of them to fill even the smallest ornament.
The larger, more unique, sequins can be pushed into the ornament a few at a time by hand, and if you start now, and work 15 minutes a day – which, trust us, is all you’ll be able to stand – you should be able to finish one ornament by Christmas Eve.
After wrestling with this technique for about an hour, we decided to put some other things into the ball with the sequins, thinking that we could shake them up and make them look interesting.
Ha! We put in a few strands of yarn and some feathers, gave the ornament a good shake, and grimaced at the results.
Either the sequins – even the largest ones – disappeared altogether, or they fell to the bottom of the ornament in a clump: not a pretty sight.
But don’t let our sequin disaster deter you from using your imagination and trying different fillers, and by all means, don’t leave the kids out of the process.
It’s amazing what the little ones come up with and how well things can turn out when least expected.
Note: If you don’t have a lot of yarn scraps lying around, you’ll need to buy some yarn, which can be a good thing.
You can select the yarns you want and, as mentioned above, there are many wonderful varieties to choose from, but be prepared: specialty yarns can cost between $4.99 and $7.99 per skein, or even more for really unusual varieties.
Jonetta Rose Coffin: jrocoffin@aol.com
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