Jewelry-Making Articles

DIY Christmas Ornaments

FC34 Design Idea Ornament
by Leslie McLane, 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.		 DIY Christmas Ornaments

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.

DIY Christmas Ornaments

DIY Christmas Ornaments

Glass Baubles

Easy to make and personalize, these glass ornaments are empty and ready to be filled or decorated as you please. Fill with beads, add coils of colorful wire or follow along with award-winning Lisa Pavelka in this video tutorial to create your own version of her ''Easy Peasy Holiday Ornament'' using Apoxie® Sculpt and shiny craft foils.		 DIY Christmas Ornaments

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

DIY Christmas Ornaments DIY Christmas Ornaments

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.

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