Ornament Month! Flower pot bells

My last ornaments for the month are these cute little flower pot bells!  My mom loves bells so we always have bells on our tree.  When I saw these little flower pots at Michael's, I immediately thought of bells!

They were pretty easy to put together, but I admit I had to think a little bit about how to rig up the clapper for the inside.  I started off by painting the flower puts in cute bright colors, just because that's what paint I had on hand.  These guys aren't going to end up matching anything I have on my tree...

 After that I had to figure out how to make the clapper for the inside.  I wanted it to tied together with the hanger, but the hole in the bottom (well now the top...) of the flower pot was too big to just tie a knot on either side of the hole.  Instead, I put a button on either side of the hole and strung my cording through that.  I used a 2-hole button on the top, but a 4 hole on the bottom.

 Let's see if I can say this clearly... I tied a knot on top of my outside button strung the cord through the 2 holes of the top button, and then I strung them through two opposite holes in the inside button.  I another piece of cord through the other two holes of the inner button, and attached a bead and then tied a knot under the bead.  THEN I tied the two ends of the hanger cord into a knot, and trimmed all the edges.  You can kinda see what I'm talking about in this photo.  Maybe...

So, that brings us to the end of ornament month!  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.  I still have a few more ornaments that I haven't posted about yet, so I might be putting some of those up in December.  Or I could just save them for next year :)

Ornament Month! Button Wreath

 Today's ornament turns this:

 And this:

 Into this!

 When I started this ornament I wasn't sure it was going to work out, so I didn't take many "in process" photos, but I'll try to describe how I put it together as best I can.  I started out by "sewing" together a bunch of large green buttons in a circular shape using dark green wire.  I didn't really have a method for this, just up through one hole in the button, down in the opposite button, and then up through one hole of the next button and down through the opposite and on and on and on.  I twisted on more wire whenever I needed it, and twisted together the two wire ends to connect the circle ends.  My circle was pretty flimsy at this point.

Then I added a layer of smaller buttons on top of that, sewing them on to the previous layer using the holes in the bigger buttons.  The more buttons I added the more solid my shape became. I kept adding buttons where they were needed to fill out my wreath and where I needed to add stability, always twisting together my wire ends when I got to them  I kept going until I had a pretty stable wreath.  Here's a photo of the finished wreath before I added my red "berries" on.  You can also see the circle guide I drew for myself before I started.

 After I got all my greens "sewn" together I cut off all the excess wire sticking out - there was a LOT - this thing was a mess...  To help you picture this, here is how scraggly it looked after I attached the five red holly berry buttons.

 And here's a close up of some of my twisted wire,  maybe this will give you an idea of how I put this together.

 Then I attached a red ribbon onto my wreath for a hanger.

 I made sure to hide it under the buttons on the front, like so:

 Then, although it was pretty stable at this point, I figured it could still get bent up pretty easily when it was packed up for the year, so I hot glued a felt ring on the back of the wreath.

 Now all that was left was to glue my ribbon bow on the front.  It was a lot of work, but I'm so so happy with how this turned out - it is pretty much exactly how I pictured it.  It's my favorite ornament creation so far.  Is it dorky to say that I'm really proud of myself?

Ornament Month! Cute Crocheted Baubles

If you know how to crochet this is a super simple, super fun, super cute ornament you can make.  In fact, I made mine while I was lying on the couch, sick with some sort of horrible cold, and I made it in like twenty minutes.  While I was on my sick day I came across this great tutorial on Craft blog.  I thought "Hey, I have everything I need to make this right now!"  So I did.  And it came out great - better than I thought it would. For mine I used purple sugar n' cream yarn and a size G hook. I think I'm going to try it again with some thinner yarn, I think it will look a little more delicate that way.  The directions were really easy to understand,  I think anyone with a little crochet experience could pull it off, so go ahead and give it a whirl! I think you'll be happy with the results.

Ornament Month! Pom Pom Ornaments

If you've been following me for a while, you may remember that a long time ago I made a whole bunch of pom-poms for no apparent reason.  Well, I put those pom-poms in a box, and they have been there ever since.  Until NOW!  I finally came up with something to do with them! (Apologies in advance for the photos - it was really hard to focus on these little suckers!)

 I selected a couple of ornament sized pom poms from my stash, then added on some holiday embellishments.  I just put a little glue on the ends of the embellishments and stuck the ends into the the center of the pom-pom.  Then I added a tied a hanger onto each one using some cording I had on hand.  I did this by cutting a fairly long piece of cording, folding it in half and tying a loop towards the folded end.  Then I strung the loose ends through the pom-pom and tied a knot on the opposite side of the pom-pom.  I secured each side with a little glue.  I wish I had remembered to take photos of this part - it would probably make a lot more sense if I had...  Anyways, here's a close up of the multi-colored ornament.

 I'm very happy to have finally come up with a use for my pom-poms!  They came out so cute too!  Hooray!  They came together so easily too - I know anyone could do it :)

Ornament Month! Button Snowman Ornament

Here's another quick stacked button ornament I pulled together.  Today it's a little snowman!  (This is one of the shapes that Martha highlighted in her tutorial)

He was slightly more complicated than the little tree, but not much.  He just required a little more button matching.  Once I had all my buttons sorted out, I strung them on double ply black wire, and twisted in a few strands of brown for the arms.  I opted not to put a nose on mine like Martha suggested, but I'm thinking I might tie a little red ribbon on the neck for a scarf.  Totally cute right?