DIY Christmas Ornaments
by Leslie McLane, Content Development Group, Exclusively for Fire Mountain Gems and Beads®
Christmas is coming! Use your jewelry-making talents to create ornaments from beads, polymer clay and other favorite materials. These handmade ornaments are great for trimming your own tree as well as for gift-giving and expanding retail offerings around the holidays. Here are five ornament styles with varying degrees of difficulty so everyone can join in:
Frame it Up
These convenient frames come in snowflake, tree, star and spiral shapes. Slide beads directly onto the pre-formed wire and add a dab of glue to the last bead to hold everything in place. Of course, you can get as complex as you want by stringing beads between the wire, adding Apoxie® Sculpt, altering the color with Gilders Paste® and more. |
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Custom Wiring
Make your own bases with your favorite jewelry-making wire. Use different colors of wire such as enamel-coated Zebra Wire™ to create spirals, add beads and customize as much as you want. These can be simple shapes such as an angel with halo and present with a bow, or they can be elaborate without a recognizable Christmas shape such as Bead Dream's finalist Janice Berkebile did with her
It's a Mystery ornament set.
Beaded Around
Some existing ornaments are a little bland. Dress up ball ornaments with hand-beaded flair. Glue flat back rhinestones in a festive design or string beads all the way around. Make a slip for ornaments with beaded dangles like contest finalist Susan Hacker did with her
Fandango design for texture and movement. Of course, you don't have to start with a pre-existing ornament base. Just look at Bead Dreams contest finalist June Huber's seed bead
Kirigami Star for inspiration
Play with Clay
| Speaking of creating without a pre-existing ornament base, polymer clay gives you the opportunity to create ornaments from scratch. Pick your favorite yuletide image, such as a wreath, snowman or angel. Mix and blend until you get the perfect-colored clay. Form your ornament and bake as directed. Leave a hole somewhere for stringing and attaching a hook or make a loop to slide onto tree branches from the clay itself.
Have fun this Christmas season creating ornaments with jewelry supplies. Make a holiday party out of it! Make one, two or decorate a whole tree and then some. The more the merrier, after all.
Design with ...
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