Sunday 4 September 2011

Christmas Ornament Tutorial


As promised here is my tutorial for the Christmas Ornament. For this you will need a piece of ribbon approximately 6”-8” long, 2 coordinating dsp’s. One of these you will see both sides with the cones that you are about to make so make sure that you like both sides.  Once you have selected your papers, put aside the one you are going to use for your top layer as that will be your last step.

With the 1st dsp you’re going to cut out squares, depending on what size ornament you want as a finished product will determine what size squares to cut, 6”, 4” or 3” (finished size). You will want to cut your squares at 2”, 1 ½” or 1”. The 1” squares are a little harder to work with due to their size but makes a very cute finished ornament. For this ornament pictured I used 1 ½” squares.

Once you’ve got all your squares cut you’ll want to curl your paper, this will make it easier to make it into cone shapes. You’ll want to curl it from the middle diagonally to the outside edge. It should look like this.
Now that you’ve got all your squares curled, you’ll want to make them into cones, they should look like this.
It’s time to make sure that these cones keep their shape, to do that we need to use some adhesive. The first few I made I used Tombow Liquid Glue. This worked great as it doesn’t dry immediately and allows you to reposition if you need to. However your fingers do tend to get a bit messy by the end. For my last one that I made, the one pictured in this tutorial I tried 1/8” sticky strip which I found to work quite well and it wasn’t as messy. If you choose to use this you will need to be more careful as it is not repositionable. If you are making the 2” squares you will need 15, if not you will only need 14 cones.  Your cones should look like this.


Punch out a 1 ¾” circle, you will use this to glue your cones onto. I used Tombow glue for this as it allows you to keep moving the cones around until you have them just the way you want them.

Next you’re going to want to make the middle section. I’ve heard these being called many different things and am still not sure what they’re supposed to be called. But they are very simple to make. Again depending on the size ornament you chose to make will depend on the size of dsp strip to cut. For the large one I used a two  1 ½” x12” strip, for the , medium one I used a 1”x12” strip and for the smallest I used a ¾” x12” strip. For the larger one I scored at every half inch. Once both strips were done I attached them, you’ll want to attach them so that they form a circle. The other two were scored at ¼” intervals. Punch out a 1 ¾” circle again and use to hold the shape. I used sticky strip to attach it. Heather Summers also has a wonderful way of getting them to hold their shape. Embellish the center how you wish. I used a hot glue gun to adhere the accordion flower to the bottom part of the ornament.
Once you’ve this all attached you’ll need to punch a hole at the top of the ornament in one of the cones. I used my crop o dile for this. And this is my finished ornament.

Hope my tutorial was helpful. Please feel free to ask any questions that you might have. I've love to see what you come up with if you'd like to share.

2 comments:

  1. Very helpful! That's a lot of cones! I hear Crystal Effects is a terrific glue and should be faster than the sticky strip. I wish I had a crop a dile!

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  2. Thank you so much for sharing this - wonderfully clear instructions and I'm delighted with how my effort has turned out!

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