Christmas Crafting

Admit it. You know that you're dying to know how to make a homemade ornament 11 months ahead of time for Christmas. No? Oh, ok. Well, I thought I'd be Super-Mom and make some fun DIY ornaments for Norah's grandparents and deliver them at Christmas. Instead, it was all I could do to order virtually every gift off Amazon (have you ever tried shopping with an 11-month-old? Crazytown) and plan for our 36-hour roundtrip holiday bonanza visiting both families.

Although it was way late, I went ahead and finished my Christmas ornament crafts for the family. My friend Lauren showed me this cute idea via Pinterest, and I made a couple of very minor changes to make my own. Here's what you'll need: white paper for making baby's handprint, a non-toxic ink pad (any color) for the handprint, very small piece of cardboard (I used a shoebox lid), scissors, this dough (unless you make salt dough), a drinking straw, ribbon, a small paintbrush for detailed painting, paint in the following colors: flesh, white, red, black, and pink.

1. Because Norah is SUPER wiggly, I knew there was no way I could get an actual tracing of her hand. Instead, I smudged some non-toxic baby ink on her hand and stamped it on a piece of paper. (It took a couple of tries to get a good print.)

2. Next, I cut a rough square around the hand tracing and glued it to a piece of cardboard. Then, I cut the hand out so that I had a sturdier template.

3. I tried to make salt dough like the original post prescribed, but mine looked pretty bad. I don't know what exactly I did wrong, but it just looked messy. Luckily, I found this great dough at Michael's and it worked like a charm. I just rolled it out with a rolling pin, placed my cardboard hand on top, and then cut it out with a knife. I pushed a straw through the top of the ornament (or the bottom of the hand) so I could thread ribbon through it. Then I waited 3 whole days for the forms to dry completely.

4. Once the ornaments were dry, I painted the hands. I started with the flesh colored paint since it was essentially the "bottom layer," then painted Santa's red hat, black eyes, white beard, mustache, and hat trim, and finally his cheeks and mouth.

5. I bought dollar-store boxes and glued the sweet poem that I saw on the original post.

I think they turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself :)