Felty Garland, Ornaments & Transparency Envelopes

Lately I've been enamored with Pinterest. I'm sure you are as well. Its a wonderful place to store pictures of ideas you want to attempt one day. It's kind of like when I first got married I would pull every idea I liked out of a magazine and file it into a 3 ring binder for future reference. 

Recently I've been working on a few ideas I 'stole' from there, Christmas ideas. Tired of the normal tree, we've redecorated ours with only handmade and special ornaments as well as birds. I love birds, owls and such. The 'vibe' was different so it called for white lights and new garland. I found a link to this post on Pinterest. Twisted Felt Garland. I made ours easily in a couple hours just chatting with friends.

I used a couple shades of pinks and aquas. Each strand was about 1-2 yard and I sewed all of them together at the ends to put on the tree. You can see it on the tree  below (before I put on ornaments.)

Speaking of ornaments, that leads me to my next 'stolen' Pinterest idea. I get together with homeschool/crafty friends every month for dinner. December, however, is special. We bring ornaments to share with each other. Just little gifties as a culmination of the year as friends. This year I took this Christmas tree idea and ran away with it.

I went with the same colors I used for the garland, some of my favorite color combos lately. 

I cut random elongated tear drop shapes. I just freehanded these, no pattern. They're about 5" long.

I cut out tree shapes. Basically wiggly wobbly thin triangles. Again, no pattern. I also cut a strip of green and just cut of rectangles for tree trunks.

Because there are two layers, I did all the work on the top layer so my knots and such would be inside the ornament. 

I used a wool thick thread for stitching. It's similar to an embroidery floss so either will work. Just make sure to have a needle on hand that accommodates the thickness of the thread. I had to hunt far and wide through my things! A tapestry needle would work as well. I used I guess a straightened up whip stitch, very simple.

Next I free hand cut a paper star. Nothing fancy.  Just make it small enough to fit on the ornament top which is thinner.I sewed it on with a larger bead.

My favorite part has arrived! The gilding! I sewed beads on the tree for ornaments. Too bad they can't light up. I'm sure there's a product out there what would! hehe

Here's the finished ornaments. 

I sewed stamped tags onto the back (courtesy of Stampin' Up) with beads and then I stitched the front piece to the back piece. I included a 7-8" ribbon, folded in half at the top for the hanger. 

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And seeing as these are a gift, I had to have a gift bag. Last night I found myself muttering to... myself, "Couldn't go with normal gift bag, stick em' in and be done. NO! You have to sew through TRANSPARENCIES!" This was the complaining after I had misplaced my NEW leather thimble which helps with pushing needles through transparencies! See below.

I had these blue transparencies from... probably some garage sale. . I found some stamped 'NOEL' words, some round pics from an image sheet, I think from Altered Pages and 2 vintage paper coasters. I also used ledger paper and more of that wool thread/embroidery floss.

I folded a transparency in half and stitched with a needle and the wool thread. If you only have clear transparencies, throw some india ink or fluid acrylics on one side and add color that way!

I cut the ledger paper to fit the opening. On some I glued a paper coaster, on others I cut a larger circle of cardstock and added my round images. Noel went below, some pen scratching and then my sentiment! easy peasy.

The ornaments slip easily inside the ledger 'card' and the whole thing was slipped inside the 'envelope'.

Finally, I poked holes on the top edge and finished off the threads. I had initially sewed top right down, left and up to top left, leaving a tail on the right and another on the left. So after they were full I stitched them closed.  Why be ordinary (with your envelope) when you can be extraordinary?! (I think I heard that on Food Network! lol) Fun to make!