Paper Ornaments

Yes, it's true, Christmas has past, but it's never too late to start for the following year.  So I felt it was still ok to post this...  I've been lucky enough to be invited to an annual ornament swap at a friend's home.  Each year we have a theme based, hand-made Christmas ornament contest.  Yes, the home owner/swap coordinator is a very competitive one, but I still try to bring my "A" game to the swap to see if by any chance I can beat her at what she does best.  Sometimes, I really swear we are sisters from another mister!  Crafty and competitive....great combination I think...teehee.

This years theme was VICTORIAN...grumble, grumble, grumble, so not my style.  For the life of me, I couldn't come up with my own Victorian idea.  I know lace, pink, flowers, cherubs, etc....but I also wanted to make something that I would put on my own tree....which, by the way, none of the above described.  I read that in the Victorian era, people created their ornaments from things around the home.  While surfing researching, I came across a blog that I really enjoyed.  "That's My Letter"  this blogger is very inventive and she had just the idea I wished I had...a paper cone ornament.  I see the wreaths in the local craft store, I've even seen other decorations made of paper cones, but I never thought of making my own ornament.  BINGO!  This would be my ornament.  

As always, I tried to take photos along the way, but let's face it, I'm no photographer.  I point, I click and well...they're not fuzzy, so here we go.  

Supplies Needed:

Old Book
Paper Cutter or Scissors
Glue Gun, Zig Glue, your preference
Card Stock
Fine Glitter
Embroidery Floss


Select an old book, possibly one from your home, garage sale, library sale, etc.  An old book with yellowed pages, because seriously, who wants to age 200 2" x 2" pieces of paper??  I selected an old Laura Ingalls Wilder book, properly titled, "The Long Winter".  


I was making 12 ornaments, so I began by cutting 240 pieces of 2" x 2" paper  (I had to measure here, it's important to make the ornament be uniform) 

Cutting the paper into 2x2" squares

240+ paper squares?  No, this was before I realized that I measured wrong...yea, duh, rectangles will not work!

I needed to fix all 240+ rectangles to squares and then I needed to cut circles from card stock to have something for my cones to be attached to.

 3" Circles cut from plain cardstock

Next, I rolled each square into a cone...and yes, it actually took me a little to figure out how to do it.  Sounds simple enough though right?  After I rolled each cone, I glued from edge to edge. I used Zig, a tape runner and paper dots....the tape runner seemed to do the best job on the older paper.  The Zig worked, but I found that some of the cones were popping open.  I used a new sheet of paper and the Zig did well, so I really think the two just didn't work well together.  In any case, my cones were finished using the tape runner and I had no problems after that.

Paper Cone

Before I could start gluing the cones to the card-stock circles, I needed to punch a hole in each circle and string it with the embroidery floss to hang .  You can use any method you wish to hang your ornaments, this was how I wanted mine to look.   

After all the cones were rolled I turned on my trusty glue gun and placed four cones on the circle across from each other like a compass.

Now, to get uniform (or as uniform as I felt like getting) ornaments, I suggest you start each one like this.  You can fill in as you go.  Some of my ornaments have 15 cones and some had 19...just depended on what I thought looked best.

Needs many more cones

Lookin' Good

After I had the amount of cones I wanted on each ornament, I cut a smaller circle from decorative card stock and glued it to the center of each ornament.  I then tipped some of the edges with craft glue and sprinkled Martha Stewart Fine Glitter across the edges to give it a finishing touch.  Here's how they look on my tree...

My "Victorian" ornament....what do ya think?

 Here is a picture from "That's My Letter" blog....Jamie, thanks for the inspiration.  My friends really loved your idea!!

 

 

Photo from That's My Letter Blog