First Exchange for 2015

With a New Year starts a new rotation of individual quarterly exchanges: February-April; May-July and August-October.  For this quarter’s exchange, I decided to use some of the ornaments left over from 2014 Christmas.  Many of the ornaments I made used wooden spools, painted with finger nail lacquer and I used scrap-booking paper (along with paper I designed).  I decided to add another element to the left over ornaments, to create a new design.  Several years ago, I purchased a gross of various Christmas jewelry which had lots of Christmas themed charms.

The tools I used to make the new ornaments.

Here’s a shot of the elements used in the ornaments.  Inside the spindle hole I used 6mm faux pearls to help stabilize the ornament, preventing it from sliding back and forth on the 20 gauge wire.  Went though and replace the head-pin with an eye-pin which allowed the dangle to be attached.  Had four different charms, with four different colored spools.

 All four finished re-purposed ornaments.

The ornaments will be mailed to Nova Scotia later this week.

Finally got the rest of the ornament photographs processed.  Here are the rest of the 2014 ornaments I gave for Christmas this past year.  These two beaded chandeliers went to a co-worker's daughters.  Each year they have received a Pink or Purple ornament.
 

Was getting tired of the pearl teardrops so I changed to fluted metal teardrops and switched to 3mm pearls in lieu of the metal beads.

Additional spools that I gave.  Large snowflake:

 

Small snowflake:

 

Additional 2 Mickey Mouse ornaments:

Small ornaments which were given as a set:

 

New Ornament Style - Wooden Spools

I have lots of variations on the decorating the wooden thread spools over the past year, so I thought I would do some for Christmas 2014.  I used finger nail lacquer to paint the spools, usually it took three coats, so it isn’t an ornament to make in an evening, but you can ‘assembly line’ the process by having several spools being made at a time.  I used both the medium and large wooden spools available through many craft stores.

I was also able to customize the spools using both scrap-booking paper and searching images on the internet.  I few I had to use my Graphic Design background by taking a couple of elements, such as the houndstooth background and over laying the Alabama “A”.  Still have a few to go, but here are the ones which have been photographed and edited.

The Alabama ornaments will be going to several friends who are fans.

The Mickey Mouse ornaments will be going to my latest god-child who just turned 2.  Have four (4) but need to re-take the red spool as well as the white spool.

 The Minions will be going to another friend who loves them.

The red spool with the musical notes on pine colored paper were sent out to one of the ornament exchange groups I am a member of.  Original was going to send the holographic gold large spools, but I forgot them at the office so I substituted the red spools.  I also have green spool with crimson paper.

The Ren & Stimpy ornaments are going to the mother of my god-child while his father will be one set of the Alabama spools.

The Doctor Who spools are for a friend who enjoys the Matt Smith years.

Still to go are some snowflake spools, both large and small.  These will be done on spools painted white and light blue.  The metal connectors will be silver-toned and I have some small snowflakes which will dangle from the bottom.

Exchange ornaments

This year I had three (3) different handmade ornament exchanges from two different Yahoo groups.  I have been involved in ornament exchanges for almost 20 years.

I had two exchanges which were from the Yearly Ornament Exchange group.  Those that are signed-up are assigned to groups of (usually) four others and everyone makes an ornament for each person.  And if everything works out, you will receive four handmade ornaments.  No style or medium is set so you can (and usually) get four different ornaments.  In past years, I have received ornaments made from beads, polymer clay, wire, cross-stitch, plastic canvas, paper, cloth, wood, and puzzle pieces.  These have been both religious and secular in nature.  I will do the same ornament for each exchange partner unless they are duplicated in both groups, then I will make another ornament, usually same designed but a different color or different focal element.

The third exchange group is from the Christmas All Year group.  This group you sign-up and the co-ordinator instructions have many ornaments you need to make.  One rule is that the ornaments which you make all have to be the same. So that when the ornaments are re-packaged, everyone in the exchange will receive the same ornament from you.  This the magic number was eight (8).  Trying a new ornament design for this group and hope everyone likes it.

Will be posting photos of both ornaments I send out after Thanksgiving, along with instructional photos of the new design and variations on the theme.

On the personal gift/ornaments front,   I usually joke with people that I have several lists I make at Christmas, an “A” list, a “B” list and a “C” list.  The C-list gets a card, the B-list I will buy something for and the “A”-list will get an ornament or a set of ornaments. 

The lists are not set in stone as this year I found a ceramic Krampus head I bought for a friend, and my soon-to-be step daughter and husband, I have Egyptian glass ornaments which will go with the set I gave them last year.  They married last year and I gave them a group of four blown ornaments as a way to start their own ornaments.  They had a baby in February of this year so I will be making her a little commemorative ornament with her name and birthday date on it.  I am planning on making 2 of these, one for the tree and the other sealed to be given to her when she moves out on her own, so she will have her own set of personal Christmas ornaments.

I have many ornaments in various stages of creation.  Many people will be receiving personal ornaments this year.  I have one person who loves the Minion characters from the “Despicable Me” movies, another enjoys “Doctor Who”, several who pull for Alabama, UNC or NC State, and another who loves Mickey Mouse (okay he is only 2 years old).  I have either found pre-printed fabric and scrap-booking paper in these themes, but I always have had to create copy to use.  Luckily, I have a very nice commercial laser printer available to me through work, as well as the programmes (Adobe Creative Suite Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) and knowledge to make my own compositions.  Sometime my job does come n handy outside of work.  So Deb will get four Minion theme ornaments, Matt will get two Doctor Who theme ornaments.  Chuck and Little Jimmy will received four Alabama ornaments each, Ayden - two (maybe four) Mickey Mouse.  Robert a new set of UNC ornaments, Roger and (another little) Jimmy will receive NC State ornaments.  Others like a specific color, I’ve got an Orange person, a Pink person, a Purple person, and a Dark Blue person, another person likes the color combination of White, Black and Gold.

Fun with Wood

One of the themes in the exchange group one month was “wood”, had to produce an ornament which was wooden or used wood.  I took a couple of the wooden turned eggs which you can find at craft stores and used finger nail polish to create my ornament.  The polish produced a shiny enamel coating.  Using pieces of painter’s tape I created resist strips and applied several coating of the polish. 

I also used additional wood turnings to create wooden drops, again using nail polish as the coloring medium.

Have thought about doing more with the polish, but have not gotten around to it yet.