Crafty Friday: Yarnaments

What better way to spend a cold, blustery day than in the studio, crafting, [and wrangling a busy baby]!

 Today's Crafty Friday project is a simple, cute, yarnament [yarn ornament]. The idea started with these:

If you have a little one, you might recognize these as lids to baby food pouches such as these:

I've always liked the bright colors and interesting design of these lids, and thought they would be great for future craft projects, so I saved them...all of them. 

[Hello, my name is Vanessa, and I'm a craft supply hoarder.]

For today's craft, though, the color and design don't really matter. But, I'm upcycling, which is always a good thing. 

I've been wanting to create yarn covered ball ornaments for a while now, but Styrofoam balls are expensive, and I'm cheap, and I have about 75 of these plastic lids, so I decided to use them as the base. 

To start, I threaded the yarn through the opening and tied a knot, making sure I left a few inches of yarn at the end, like so:

Next, I started wrapping the lid with the yarn, leaving the extra string exposed:

 Because these are plastic, the thread tends to slide off easily unless I held it down with my thumb as I wrapped. You can also secure it with a bit of glue periodically. I kept wrapping until the lid was completely covered. Just a note, I used the same color lid as the yarn I was wrapping it with, so if there were gaps, they were less noticeable. Once the lid was completely covered, I knotted the end with the excess yarn from the beginning knot:

 Then, I made a loop, secured it with another knot, and cut off any excess strings:

Finally, I glued a button to the center of the ornament: 

I continued with the steps above and made a variety of ornaments:

Once the tree was decorated, I showed my sweet Gus, who absolutely loved...

                                                                      his dresser knobs.

Oh well, I like the yarnaments.

Happy crafting!

xo

nessa dee

Crafty Friday: Ornaments

It’s hard to ignore the excitement that’s been filling our household lately. With all of the Christmas decor in stores, toy guides in the mail, and the few early bird Christmas trees appearing in windows, the kids are ready to get this holiday party started. So we decided to kick off the holiday decorating with a festive craft project.

Here’s what you need:

-scrapbook paper
-plastic lids
-cereal box
-glue
-buttons or sequins
-ribbon
-scissors

Step 1: Take an empty cereal box and cut small triangle shapes out of it, approximately 4 inches tall. These will give the ornaments a sturdy foundation.

Step 2: Use the triangles as templates to trace the shape onto the scrapbook paper of your choice, and cut it out.

Step 3: Cut a strip of ribbon 4-5” long. This will be the loop to hang the ornament on the tree.

Step 4: Load the cardboard triangle up with glue. Make a loop with your ribbon and stick it in the glue at the peak of the triangle.

Step 5: Take your scrapbook triangle and place it on top of the cardboard piece and ribbon so the ribbon will be sandwiched between the two triangles.

Step 6: Embellish your “tree” with buttons or sequins to act as ornaments.

We used the same process to make little birdie and round ornaments. For the round ornaments, plastic lids formed the foundation instead of cut pieces of cardboard.

Let the decorating begin!

xo

nessa dee

P.S. Stop on over at The Shabby Nest and see what other people have posted for Frugal Friday.