My last ornament post! Phew!

This one should really barely even count as an ornament post since it’s hardly a tutorial. But I figure that Martha has done demonstration after demonstration on how to glitter something, so maybe I should point it out as an option.

I went to the dollar store early in my planning, and scooped up anything that fit my theme, knowing that it didn’t matter what it looked like as long as the shape was recognizable. Everything looks good under glitter.

I mean, aren’t these birds just the mangiest looking things ever? With those creepy bulbous eyes?

But covered in glitter they give me a really great punch of color.

This is the loan mammal on the tree, done before I thought about the implications of that. I tell myself that this is fine because the scale is so off, and because I’m a maniac and no actual animals were harmed in the making of this tree.

I cut this deer out of fun foam, just like I did last year’s snowflakes and this year’s bats. It’s just a great technique. Then I covered it in glue, and poured glitter all over it.

Here’s a simple pattern for any last minute ornaments. Just click on the picture to get to flickr, click on “all sizes” and then download the original side.

There. Woodland tree accomplished! Eventually I’ll address a tree skirt, I always put that part off, but for this year I am completely out of time for fussing with decorations. I’m still frantically making presents.

And by the way. If I cave again next year and decide to make a scrapbook for someone? Please. Please, dear readers. Someone smack me around until I come to my senses.

I googled from one end of the internet to the other looking for inspiration for an acorn ornament, and I ran into the same problem every time. If you have an acorn cap, you can make loads of great stuff. But it all hinges on the acorn cap.

And I live in San Diego. Oak trees aren’t exactly lining the streets. Palm fronds, yes. But no acorns and no acorn caps.

But I think I solved it anyway.

For the acorn part, I balled up a bunch of wool yarn until my ball was about 2 inches in diameter. Then I took the balls I made, put them inside a pillowcase so my washing machine wouldn’t eat them, and washed them with tons of soap and the hottest water I had. Then I did it again, then I ran them through the dryer so they came out thoroughly felted.

I decided to make the acorn cap out of polymer clay. I know it seems scary if you’ve never worked with it, but this part is easy. I worked the clay in my hands until it was nice and soft, and then I rolled it up into a ball that was around 3/4″ wide.

Flatten the ball into a disk, and then begin pinching the center to bring up that little point. Rub your fingers over the clay to smooth out your pinching marks, and then poke a large needle through the point to make room for an ornament hanger.

While the clay is still wet, try it on your wool acorn, and bend it into position. Then bake according to the directions on the package, and when they’re cool, glue onto the wool piece.

By this point I was running through my checklist of all the materials I wanted represented on a Woodland tree. Mushrooms, acorns, dirt, twigs, berries, leaves, wood…but I still had to deal with moss. So I thought it would be appropriate to pull out the old “Just glue stuff to a ball” style ornament.

I’ve learned to always paint my object first before I treat it with anything. When you don’t, you either have to live with white styrofoam peeking through or do a million coats.

I found these sheets of fake moss at a floral design store, and just gluing them didn’t really work. They were too heavy. So I cut a couple of rectangles and started pinning them to the ball with dressmaker pins. This worked out great. It was totally secure, but it still left all the little stray bits free to look all mossy. I pinned the rectangles onto the ball almost like how a baseball is sewn together. One rectangle going vertically, and the other going horizontally. But it was completely forgiving. In some places where I cut it short I just added more and it blended right in.

With the exception of a glittered deer I made before I thought the whole thing through, I didn’t put any animals on this tree. I was thinking about doing some cool things with faux fur, but then I decided that was kind of morbid. In my imagination this was a tree the animals from Bambi decorated for their own celebration, so with that thought in my head, hanging animals just seemed gross.

Birds, on the other hand, actually belong in a tree.

Using the pattern I’ll include at the end, I cut out two pieces for the body and two little wings. Then I used a quick zigzag stitch to applique the wings in place.

I sewed the two pieces together with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, leaving open about an inch of the belly to turn the whole thing right side out, and leaving open the end of the tail.

I opened up a little bit of the sewing on the head so that I could insert a loop of ribbon for an ornament hanger. I tried to do this part as I was sewing the pieces together, but it was a pain. Nothing would lay flat, the hanger kept getting in the way, so I just said forget it and added an extra step. Turn the bird right side out.

Now here’s the part that was interesting. Open the tail and fold the edges in about 1/4 of an inch. Stuff in a small piece of batting so that the tail becomes perpendicular to the rest of the body. (I’m so not a Stuffie maker, so I was way too proud of myself for finding such an easy way to add a little dimensionality.)

Topstitch the tail closed by sewing a triangle. Start in the middle of the base of the tail, go out to the edge and across, and then back down to your starting point.
Stuff the bird and close her in your favorite method. Mine is fabric glue since it’s just a Christmas ornament.

To download the pattern, click on the picture to go to flickr, then click on “all sizes” above the photo. Download the original size. Although you could really print this simple pattern at any size you wanted to make a whole flock of different sized birds.

Years and years and years ago, inspired by the Carol Duvall show and all the embossed velvet projects she features, I made this garland consisting of a gazillion embossed velvet leaves I glued on to wire and braided together. When I brainstormed what would be on a woodland tree, I knew that I’d have to revisit this project.

* Oh look! Here it is. Complete with TERRIBLE pictures. Either I’ve gotten better at picture taking this year, or last year I was just LAZY!

Being a MUCH better crafter this year than I was ten years ago when I made that sad garland, the finished project looks WAY better this time.

Cut two pieces for each leaf you want to make. I folded my fabric wrong sides together and cut them both out at the same time to get as close to an exact match as possible.

Run a bead of hot glue down the center and place a length of floral wire into it. Watch those fingers!

Run a little more hot glue around the edge of the leaf, and place the other leaf piece on top.

To stop any shedding the velvet might want to do, and avoid dealing with hemming anything, and to add one more opportunity for my beloved glitter, I ran a line of fabric paint around the outside edge of the leaf. I know you probably hear fabric paint and shudder at the thought of puffy atrocities, but if you apply a thin coat then all you’ll see is the glitter and you’ll still solve all those other problems.

To put them on the tree, I grouped a few together and then twisted their wires around a tree branch. For a garland I just braided the wires together.

There’s nothing special about my pattern, I just drew a bunch of leaf shapes so you could use whatever pattern you want, but I thought I’d share mine just to make things easy. Click on the picture to get to my flickr account, click on “All Sizes” at the top of the photo, and then download the original size.

I still have so many ornament ideas that I’m going to have to post twice a day until Christmas, so I’m going to try and be brief. I don’t think it will surprise regular readers to hear I went overboard again. Go figure.

If you live someplace relatively rural, you could probably make a fabulous Woodland themed tree from what you found in your backyard. For us suburban or urban types, even finding stray branches can be a challenge.

I found this bark covered wire in the floral section of my craft store, right next to the wreath making supplies. I’ve never worked with it before, but now I can think of all kinds of things I want to make with it – including just wrapping it all the way around a wreath form.

I didn’t measure anything, I just cut off a hunk and started bending, so all measurements are pretty much educated guesses.

Cut off about 2 to 2 1/2 feet of wire. Make your first bend about 6 to 8 inches from one end.

Open that bend to about a 45 degree angle, and bend again about 3 inches further up your wire.

Bend again about 3 inches further, crossing the rest of the wire underneath the first side of the star’s leg, and then out through the center of the star to cross over the top of the other side.

Bend again, going under the first wire it crosses, and over the next one, meeting the other end and forming the last leg of the star. Twist the wire together to close it off.

Leave a gap big enough for a tree branch, and then twist the wires again to make the hanger. Cut off anything left over.

I figured that since I was making stars, it would only be appropriate to make one big enough for the topper, too.

I made this the same way, except instead of that final twist, I cut one end off and twisted it around and out of my way, and then I took the rest of the wire and coiled it around so it could sit on that tippy top branch.

These ornaments wouldn’t have been possible without my Halloween Swap partner Moriah. She made me the coolest paperclay monster ornaments, and ever since I got my hands on them I’ve been wanting to dive into the world of paperclay.

This was a good first attempt. Not terribly complicated, but a good way to start playing with the medium.

Start by molding a piece of clay into a stem shape, and poke a wire through that’s long enough to go about halfway down the stem with a few inches left hanging out the top.

Mold the mushroom cap. Since there is no end to the varieties of mushrooms out there, you can make this look pretty much any way you want. I made mine by rolling the clay into a ball and then squishing it into a disc shape.

Run the wire through the middle of the cap, squishing that stem and cap together, and let dry at least overnight, but a couple of days works even better to get that thick stem all the way dry.

I had a little trouble getting my pieces completely adhered, so when everything was dry I ran a line of glue around the seam, like caulk, to keep it all nicely together.

When everything is thoroughly dry, it’s time to take that wire and make your hanger. You just bend that wire into a loop with a pair of needlenose pliers, but if you haven’t done this in jewelry making before, you start by bending that wire way over to the side….

and then bend it around into a loop. The sideways bend keeps things centered and looking great.

The color difference is subtle, but I painted my mushrooms a light khaki color all over, and then I took a thin paintbrush and painted these gills on the bottom with a dark brown. Just regular old acrylic craft paint is all I used.

Then I thinned the paint down a little bit with water, and flicked speckles all over the top.

I have to admit, the perfectionist in me cringes a little bit looking at these photos. I wish I knew all the tricks for how to get the lumps and bumps and fingerprints out. But if I waited to try something until I knew all the little secrets, well, I wouldn’t have very much to blog about. That’s for sure.

This ornament is hardly new. I’m pretty confident it’s been around for generations, in fact. But it’s a standby for a reason. It’s just so pretty!

You will need:

1 medium styrofoam egg
3 yards of 1/2″ ribbon (including some different colors makes a really pretty contrast)
a whole mess of pins (the short little sequin pins work great)
white craft glue
thinner ribbon for the hanger

Cut all your ribbon into 1 inch lengths. The very bottom of the pinecone will be visible through the “leaves” (What are those pinecone parts called anyway? Ah! Google says they’re scales!)so we have to cover it by just pinning a piece of ribbon over the pointy end.

I found it worked best to dunk the pins in glue before sticking them into the styrofoam. The kind of foam these eggs come is fairly porous, which means the pins go in easily, but they can also work their way out. The glue fixes that problem.

Take one piece of ribbon at a time and fold the short ends up to meet one of the long ends. This should make a little point, and also make it so that all the raw edges are together on one side. Pin this onto the styrofoam, overlapping the bottom covering piece.

There’s no right way to do this – remember all that talk from yesterday about nature being messy – and a lot of people like it better when it’s not lined-up-with-a-ruler perfect. After a little bit of practice I found my own technique. You just want to use the scales to cover up the pins and raw edges of what came before it. I kind of positioned them so that the side points of each scale were touching, and then I’d take a half step up and to the right so that the bottom point of the next row would cover all that up. Oh goodness I’m so over-complicating things. Just pin the ribbon points on in a way that covers any messiness.

When you get to the very top, things get so tight that the ribbon triangles can be too big to work with. I just folded the edges under before pinning on the last couple of rows.

Keep pinning on leaves until you get the whole thing covered, and then pin on a couple more so that the remaining pins can be covered by the ribbon hanger.

Pin down one end of ribbon, loop it around and fold the other end under before pinning it in place.

This could be really pretty made out of all one color, but I love the contrast here just in using different styles of ribbon from the same color family.

I think any crafter worth her salt keeps abreast of what Martha Stewart is up to, and if you keep even half an eye on her, you have to have seen faux bois. She seems to be on a one woman* campaign to bring this style to national prominence.

*One woman with many many minions, but still.

Faux Bois is basically a fake wood, and although it started as a specific kind of antique, it’s now used to refer to anything with a faux woodgrain pattern on it. You can find it on bathroom accessories, or carpets, and even entire blogs devoted to it. It’s kind of popular, is my point. And a perfect fit for my woodland tree.

At last years post Christmas sale, I snapped up a bunch of brown ball ornaments, knowing that the beginnings of this tree was percolating away in my brain somewhere. Then I picked up some of Martha Stewart’s flocking powder available at Michael’s. It’s great stuff and totally addictive. Imagine tiny little velvet fibers you can stick anywhere to make things fuzzy. Oh man, I think this may become just as much of a standby for me as the glitter is.

Before we start, a word for the panicked crafters. I do not draw. Yet. So don’t think that unless you have fine art skills or can pipe a pastry bag like a pro that you can’t do this craft. A woodgrain pattern is EASY! I promise! And even if you mess up, guess what, you just made it more authentic. Nature is messy. Instead of saying, “Mine looks messy.” Repeat after me. Say, “Mine looks *Organic*.”

With a decent craft glue, draw an elongated oval. This is the knot in the woodgrain. I put a dot in the middle because the knot pattern can get really tiny, and that was the way I decided to deal with that. I used Martha Stewart’s craft glue because hers has a really great thin applicator tip. I had to stop a couple of times to wash it out – it gets clogged somewhat easily – but I got a much thinner line than I would have any other way.

Draw more lines radiating out from the knot. You’ll notice how sloppy my glue application is. Bumpy, with lots of waves. When the glue dries clear and you’re just left with fuzziness, you won’t see any of that.

Add additional knot shapes, of varying sizes, to take up all the space around the first half of the ball.

There’s no wrong way to do this. A woodgrain pattern is just a series of concentric ovals, so draw straight lines, draw crooked lines, whatever, it will look like woodgrain if you just toss in the occasional knot, and they don’t even all have to have a dot inside. It’s ORGANIC, remember?

When you get half of the ball all glued up, shake the flocking powder over it, and shake off the excess. Make sure you shake it onto something you can use to gather it up. The flocking powder likes to clump, so I basically had to dump the whole bottle out every time I used it.

Let it dry, then repeat with the other side of the ball.