Christmas Notebook

I have been using Christmas cards that were kindly shared with me to make some new shadow boxes and diorama ornaments. Following are a few of them. Note: the pictures don’t give a good sense of scale. These ornaments range in size from two inches to three and a half inches.

Tutorial for shadow boxes from Christmas cards: shadow boxes from Christmas cards

Tutorial for diorama ornaments: Christmas ornament diorama tutorial

This Christmas card seemed to ask for copper colored embellishments. I have a smattering, so was able to utilize some of them on this project.

I always like the white snowy themed shadow boxes. The Christmas card used for this little box was perfect. The placement of the sleigh and bridge and the river running to the front all worked to make a pleasing scene.

A close-up of the bottle brush tree and embellishments…

I thought this pink ornament needed a pink pipe cleaner trim. I had to order the right color so it sat aside for a few days until the order arrived.

Finished. The tree topper on the little pink bottle brush tree is a spacer bead.

The ball for this ornament is three and a half inches wide. The bigger ornaments give more wiggle room for placing embellishments.

This diorama is in a two inch wide ornament ball.

The scene with the large white deer is in a three inch ornament ball. The outside of this ball has white snowflakes on a dark blue background and a frosty beaded finish. It looks very nice with the white interior.

This ornament has a snowflake on a short chain, dangling from the bottom.

I painted the bunny white and, while still wet, doused him in fine white glitter. When the paint dried, I added the black eyes and pink nose with fine tip Sharpie felt pens.

I spent some time online looking for items I can use in new ornaments. I ordered some mini deer, snowmen, and bunnies. Also some greenery and more pipe cleaners in new colors.

If you’re interested, I have a Pinterest board that contains a few links to places I’ve found that carry items I can use when making Putz houses or other crafts that use miniature figures or Christmas craft supplies. Follow this link:

Putz / Supplies

A piece of advice for those who want to collect embellishments for art/craft projects. Keep track of where you bought each item. I wish I had kept track of where my embellishments came from. It would make it easier to replenish the supply when I run out of a particular item. It’s a little frustrating to run out of a favorite embellishment and not know where to find it again. I have started a file in Evernote for just that purpose. I take a picture of the item, make notes about where it was purchased and how much it cost and the date I bought it. In Evernote, I can add tags and/or write a description in my notes of the item. That makes it is easy to do a search on my Evernote files to find what I need.

I hope you enjoyed the new ornaments. I’ll post again as I work on others.

My Putz Christmas card shadow boxes and diorama ornaments are featured in my Etsy shop. ChristmasNotebook

~~Rhonda

Yesterday, I posted a tutorial for making Christmas diorama ornaments. I’ve made a few more and thought I’d post again with some tips that may be helpful if you want to make some of these ornaments for yourself. For complete instructions on making these ornaments, see the tutorial. Christmas Diorama Ornaments

This time I used a smaller ornament ball than I’ve tried before. This one is 1 3/4″ wide.

I chose a one-inch bottle brush tree and a tiny Santa figure that came in a stash of craft bits and bobs that I brought home from my mom’s house after she passed away.

Needle-point tweezers are one of my favorite craft tools. If you don’t have any, I encourage you to get some. I know you will find them so handy, you will wonder how you got along without them! Here, I used them to apply beads as ornaments to the tiny bottle brush tree. I dipped one side of the bead in white glue and added it to the tree. I used two sizes of red beads for this tree.

After adding a few embellishments, I decided to hang a dangle from the ornament. To do that, I needed to make a hole through the bottom. I used an awl to “drill” the hole, pressing gently and rotating the awl until it pierced the plastic shell. If you have a Dremel handy, you could use a small drill bit to do this. When finished, brush away the loose crumbs. I thought about filing the edge of the hole, but I didn’t because I thought I might scratch the ornament finish.

This awl came from my mother’s stash of craft supplies and tools. I often find it useful.

I put a bell and a red bead on gold cord and threaded the cord through the hole.

Inside the ornament, I pulled the ends of the cord aside and added a drop of hot glue over the hole to hold the cord in place.

I trimmed the ends of the cord.

At this point, I had already placed some floral bits in the background. I decided to camouflage the base of those bits by covering them with hot glue. Then I painted the glue white and covered it with glitter. It’s a lot easier to do this sort of thing now rather than get to the end of your project and find you can see unfinished spots that you can no longer get to.

I decided I didn’t like the white showing around the little hole at the bottom of the ornament.

I used a green Sharpie marker to color over the white. An easy fix.

I also used a green Sharpie to cover the white edge of the larger hole. I thought the white might show through the trim. Here, it’s half done. You can see the difference it will make.

To trim the ornament, I twisted red and green pipe cleaners together.

I used hot glue to attach the trim. To make it easier to follow the circular edge without dislodging the trim, I glued a small portion at a time, clipped it down and waited a few moments to let it dry before gluing the next section.

To finish the floor of the ornament, I added a puddle of hot glue, allowed it to dry, painted it white, then glittered it. Looks like Santa just came through the Great Blizzard of 2016!

I poured off the extra glitter and the ornament was done.

If you make some diorama ornaments of your own, I would love to see pictures!

Similar diorama ornaments I have made are featured in my Etsy shop. ChristmasNotebook

~~Rhonda