Odds and Ends = Ornaments

I'm not one of those folks that can just look at a bunch of supplies and immediately have a creative idea for a project or layout. I've seen April and Scarlet do this several times when they are working on their monthly gallery contributions and it always blows my mind. They will lay out a bunch of stuff and then in about 30 min, there is this wonderful and creative layout. No sir, not me! I usually have to have some sort of plan or idea before I start.....but not today. I challenged myself to be more spontaneous and create on the fly.


I knew that I wanted to make some ornaments for our tree this year, a new tradition that I wanted to start. I'd played around with several planned out ideas and let's just say, they were not what I had in mind. I was sitting at my desk yesterday and decided to pull out some odds and ends and see what I could do with them. After all, I've watched the pros do it...maybe I could make it work too!


Here is what I started with:

April gave me a container of 7 gypsies clear buttons the other day and we talked about covering one side with paper and making some sort of design...so that is where I started. I laid them out on the October Afternoon paper that was my favorite from the Nutcracker add-on. After laying them out several different ways, I decided on this one:

I cut the paper into strips and then used Zip Dry to attach the buttons. Once the glue dried, I used my Basic Grey files to sand off the excess paper. Once I got all of the edges clean, used the Zip Dry again to glue them together. I used a little white thread in the top button to attach the ornament hanger.

April also gave me a little mini album from a few months ago. Instead of making it into an album, I took it apart and used a couple of the pages to make these little hanging ornaments. On the first one, I used MM paper and glued it to the backside. Then, I took my BG files and cleaned up the edges. I used a hole punch around the edges and then threaded the trim through each hole. For the final touch, I used some little chipboard pieces and wrote Joy on it to put in the middle. On the second one, I found some scraps from a make-it-take-it from CHA in July. It was a die cut from the Pink Paislee booth. I put it in the middle of the page and then added another one of those little pieces of chipboard with Love on it. I finished this one off with a piece of velvet ribbon. Take a look:

I found myself wishing for some glitter, something that surprised me, I never use glitter. Maybe I'll branch out a little and try some before we get the tree up next weekend. Well, these were nothing fancy, but just a little exercise to prove to myself that I could just sit down and make something without a plan. I hope that they inspire you to do the same!