Xmas Ornaments

A friend of mine recently got his own place. One of his housewarming gifts was a Christmas tree. I'd asked another friend earlier if he had one, and if he'd need ornaments - question answered! I wanted to make something untraditional and funky, and since we've often been covered in dye, I thought tie-dyed ornaments (sorta) would be just the thing.

I had initially thought to use that tie-dye-printed felt and sew something, but then (when I couldn't find any) I saw these wonderful laser-cut wooden ornaments, and thought they'd make nice frames for tie-dye patterned paper. Stupidly, I thought it would be easy enough to grab that with the scrapbook papers. Wrong! However, I did find some lovely origami paper that looks dyed.

Materials

Cutting the circles

I used my Fiskars cutting tool to make 2.5" circles of paper; the origami paper was thin enough I could do all 6 sheets at once. Then I made circles out of glitter cardstock (one at a time). 

Gluing the paper circles to the cardstock
I color-coordinated the cardstock with the pieces of origami paper, and glued them together.

Gluing the glitter on the ornaments
I took the ornaments outside to spray with adhesive, then used fine glitter to cover them. I did not prime or paint the wood, so the color variations and the singed edges from the laser cutting shows through the glitter. By not painting the wood, I have a natural color, and the dark edges look great. (Plus I eliminated a step by choosing not to paint them.)

Gluing the paper circles to the ornaments
I used Tacky Glue and a foam brush to pounce on a little glue. As you can see, the 2.5" circles aren't quite the size of the ornaments. I considered tracing and cutting, and quickly decided that was way more work than I wanted to do.

Glitter glue edging to "seal" the paper

I glued around the edges of the paper with coordinating glitter glue, to help seal the paper to the wood. 

DONE

I added a length of ribbon to hang it by, and the ornament is done! The origami paper has really subtle color variations, and I'm really pleased with how well this worked. I made a set for three of my friends and a set to keep.

If you're curious about where the ornaments and the origami paper came from, I got them both at Michael's - and the ornaments were on clearance for 79¢ each.