Ornament Exchange!

Every Christmas my friend Lauren hosts an ornament exchange party. She invites all kinds of creative people and I look forward to it every year! This time I wanted to REALLY try and make good ornaments that I could be proud of. Here is what I did!

First I made pom poms! I took my supplies and made these during bar trivia last week. I LOVE my pom pom makers. I have four different sizes. You can DIY it with cardboard (Delightfully Tacky posted a great tutorial last week!) but they store bought makers are faster. I have a stash of yarn that I pick up at the Goodwill Outlet whenever I see it. It is only about 15 cents a skein!

I decided to make birds so I tied the smaller pom poms onto the bigger ones. I ended up trimming the yard on the heads to make the beaks stand out more, and to make the size difference between the head and the body more balanced.

Phyllis was really helpful and insisted on being in my lap. I ate lots of satsumas while I worked. Yummmmmm.

I wanted to make glitter crowns. Jade glue and Martha Stewart glitter are the PERFECT combo. I have had that bottle of glue since my "Intro to the Studio Experience" class in 2003! Memories.

Just lovely.

A whole flock of little birds.

Killing me with cuteness!  The beaks are cardstock and the eyes are pony beads. Hot glued of course. I made felt wings but they didn't look right. So they are just fuzzy birds.

Glittered the insides of the crowns next.

My little work station. I haven't crafted in so long. It felt really awesome. Art school/failed job hunt kind of ruined making art/being creative for me. I always get really anxious and feel like nothing I make it good enough. I need to do more stuff like this and get my confidence back. I also watched about 6 episodes of Rupaul's Drag Race while I made these. I made me want to call everyone darling. And put glitter on EVERYTHING. You can see the little bird I used as inspiration to the left.

Glitter fingers. I STILL have glitter stuck to my face, two days later.

The girls sat next to me all day. Lookit them holding hands!

Here is the finished product! I was dark by the time I was done so this picture isn't great, but look at how cute! I made two for myself. I was so happy that they came out like I imagined. That night I went to the party and had a really great time. I learned how to do a "tim tam slam". Have you heard of that? I should do a post about it because it was one of the most delicious moments of my life.