Santa's Belly Ornament

 

Soul Sisters! Hide your eyes! This is not for you to see until our SS Ornament Exchange on the 10th!

I LOVE my ornament this year and it was pretty simple but makes a big visual impact. I'll show you how I made it!

Supplies:

Clear Glass Ornaments
Red Glitter
Clear Glitter
Mop and Glo
Thin Velvet Ribbon
Black Felt
Faux Fur 
Hot Glue Gun

Directions:

Remove the top of the bulbs and drip about 1/2 tsp of Mop and Glo into the bulb. Cover the opening with your thumb and shake until the entire inside is coated. Pour out the excess.

Using a funnel, pour red glitter into the bulb and, again, close the opening with your thumb and shake until the inside is now coated with glitter.

Replace the tops onto the bulbs.

 
Measure the distance from the opening of the bulb to the bottom of the bulb.

Cut a strip of faux fur to fit. Mine was about 1/2 inch by 3 inches.

Hot glue in place as seen below:

Measure the circumference of the bulb and cut your thin, velvet  ribbon to fit.

Hot glue in place, this is Santa's belt:

Using the felt, cut a belt buckle. Mine is about 1 inch by 3/4 of an inch like this:

I hot glued it in place before I realized it doesn't really show up on the ornament. So I removed them and painted them with clear glue and dipped them into clear glitter.

Much better! NOW they show up and look more like a buckle!

Cut a short length of fur to hot glue around the base of the top to finish it off:

Have you made any ornaments yet this year?  Share! I'm always looking for good projects!

Soul Sister's Annual Ornament Exchange!

We all got together once again for our annual Soul Sister's Ornament Exchange!  The rules are simple, you must sip drinks, eat good food, laugh, pose for pictures, and exchange handmade ornaments that cost you $10 or less to make.

Here are the winners this year:

I made this felt Christmas Tree.  I layered the sections together and used embroidery thread to outline it in chunky stitches.  I hot glued the same shapes onto the back to hide the back of the stitches and sandwiched the twig for the bottom and the hanging string at the top.  I stitched a tiny star charm to the top and sprinkled the whole thing with some super fine clear glitter.

The Treat Girl knitted these teeny tiny mittens!  They are like 2 inches tall!  She used this pattern.

Marzipan went old school with traditional cinnamon ornaments she baked in the oven using this recipe.   The aroma is heavenly!

 Marjorie was inspired by some plastic sheeting she was given by her brother.  This plastic and felt hand stitched holly was so cute!

Finally, Megan started out attempting to make a salt shaker snow globe ornament like this one but the ridged glass wasn't clear enough, so she compromised by coming up with a Salt Shaker Snowman!  We all said it reminded us of Mr Salt from Blues Clues!

Merry Christmas from the Soul Sisters!  Here is to a 2015 full of crafting and laughing!

Selfie  S.S. style!

Annual Soul Sister's Ornament Exchange!

It was another fun night of good food, laughter, waitress name guessing, and ornament exchanging again this year!  I'm not sure if anyone else in the place had as much fun as we did, but we had enough fun for everyone.

Marzipan went first and gave a sweet, beaded curly wire Christmas Tree that stores flat in the box then springs into action when you pull on the ribbon to hang it on the tree.

See it sparkle by the light of the tree?

Treat Girl went next and gave this sweet little Claus couple she made in her ceramics class that we teased her about endlessly!

Look at the shy expression on Mrs. Clause and the eyes are amazingly full of life!

Joy was inspired by the magazine article she is holding up that used cut branches to make a huge art installation:

She gathered each tiny twig and cut it and glued it into a star-shaped cookie cutter. She covered the cutter with this sweet candy cane striped ribbon and some tiny jingle bells!

Megan went after her and gave us these amazing balls filled with feathers from her backyard guinea hens!

The feathers are naturally beautiful and glow in the lights of the tree.  Check out the perfect polka dots made by nature!

I went last and gave my Melted Snowman ornament I taught you how to make last week:

 

Some kids' clay and a few more supplies helped these snowmen come together quickly.

Have a great Christmas Eve Eve!

I'm Mellllltinnnnnggggg...

The Soul Sisters get together every year to exchange ornaments at Christmas time - and today is that day!

There are a few rules...

The ornaments must be hand made
The supplies to make the ornaments must cost under $20.

Ready to learn how to make this year's Soul Sister's Ornament, Melting Snowman?

This year's ornament was inspired by this cute little  cookie that has been making it's way around Pinterest for the past year or so:

photo credit

Supplies:

Crayola Model Magic (I used two 4 oz. packages to make 6 ornaments)
Red felt
Orange paint or orange marker
Black Sharpie marker
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun
Twigs or sticks from the yard
Drinking Straw
Blue Acrylic Paint
Tiny Buttons (I found them at JoAnn's behind the button section in a tiny bag)

Roll your model magic clay into 3 balls, each a size smaller than the last.

Press the clay balls into a flattened circle.  You could use a rolling pin, but I liked the look of using my fingers to flatten and make the circles not perfectly round.

My largest circle is about 3 inches in diameter, but you can make your snowman any size.

Next, I used a watered down blue acrylic paint and applied it to the edges of the circles with my fingers (you will see I tend to to this a lot in projects!)

Since the circles are not dry, you can stack the middle sized circle right on top of the largest circle and they will stick to each other!

Cut your felt into a small scarf, fringe the ends with the scissors then, fold the scarf in half and hot glue to the middle circle like this:

Hot glue the smallest "head circle" on top of the scarf like this:

Now, roll a tiny carrot nose and color it with orange paint or an orange marker.  You can make little lines in it by pressing into the top with a toothpick.  Hot glue into place. (it's starting to look snowman-ish!)

Hot glue tiny buttons into place. (love these tiny buttons, but I have NO idea what I'll do with the rest of them!)

At some point, you will use the drinking straw to poke a hole into the clay so you can hang your ornament:

Using a marker or paint pen, simply dot the eyes and mouth onto the head of the snowman:

Now slide a string or ribbon through the hole and run outside in your slippers to get a picture on the tree in the back yard while your neighbors watch out the window shaking their heads...again...

I'll show the rest of the ornaments the girls made after our party!

Handmade Christmas Ornament Exchange

Here are the Soul Sister's Annual Ornament Exchange ornaments revealed!

Joy made a flattened out pom pom from t-shirt strips and embellished with glitter edged felt stars:

Megan made a disassembled clothes pin star that she spray painted and glittered and embellished with our "SS" (soul sisters) logo:

Marzipan sewed this darling felt owl that she tucked into a tiny jeans pocket:

Treat Girl knitted a tiny candy cane cozy embellished with a button!

Mine is so hard to see, but I saved little "wishes" from dandelions and other plants this Autumn and pushed them into a glass ball using a chopstick - then stenciled the word "wish" on the outside with silver acrylic paint.

And those are our handmade ornaments from this year!

Soul Sisters' Christmas Party!

ALL of the Soul Sisters finally got together for our annual Christmas party and handmade ornament exchange last night and it was as fun as ever! 

Sick kids, sick Soul Sisters, and lots of holiday conflicts kept us from getting together in December and I think we all agreed that we liked postponing until January. It took the pressure off and we really enjoyed ourselves!

We shared some drinks, had some good food, played our "name the waiter" game (thanks for being a good sport, Jeff!), and laughed until we cried.  We chased away all nearby tables with our hoots, laughter, and flashbulbs.

We exchanged ornaments and gifts and took lots and lots of pictures! I'll share all the ornaments next week.

We told stories...

And there was some good-natured teasing about phone sizes.  But in the end we had a great time and hated to say goodbye when the night ended too soon.

Friends are food for the soul...

Soul Sisters Annual Ornament Exchange

The Soul Sisters met for a dinner and drinks and our annual ornament exchange last week! We played our usual game of "guess the food server's name" and laughed until we snorted and exchanged our hand made ornaments. The dress code for the evening was dubbed "sparkly" and we had a ball! Our honorary S.S., Ordinary Miracles, was there in spirit

Do you remember the rules? We must make 4 ornaments to exchange and not exceed $10 in materials.

Let's go!

Marzipan made delicate paper ornaments with scrolled card stock coated with glitter:



The Treat Girl made a White Glitter Snowman Ball Ornament:



**can you see our own Soul Sisters Christmas cards we exchanged in the background??**

Joy filled this glass globe with a paper tree and ornaments:



And Girl in the Sticks choose scrapbook paper that represented each of us to make her pleated circles:



I was so busy snapping pictures of my Sisters that I don't have a photo of my ornament, but soon I will teach you how to make a Snowman Pine Cone Ornament! Do you have any holiday traditions with your girlfriends?