Recycled Ornament{Ms Smartie Pants}

I am so glad to be here sharing a fun, crafty Christmas ornament, but first let me take a minute to introduce myself. My name is Laura and I have a little blog called Ms Smartie Pants. I have to tell you  my husband lovingly gave me that name about 20 years ago, and NO not because of my mouth, well maybe sometimes, but mostly because  on occasion I come up with a good idea! Today I am sharing a Smartie Pants idea for an ornament that I love and hope you will too!  O’ Christmas tree O’ Christmas Tree how lovely are your branches…enough of my singing you want to know how I made this? First I started out with some junk! Yep, that’s what I said, some trash. Stay with me and you too can have your very own Christmas Tree ornament! You are going to need to cut 4 coordinating papers 3, 21/2, 2, 11/2 inches to make your tree. Fold your papers just like this… 1st fold a triangle then undo and fold the other direction to make another triangle, unfold 2nd fold your square in half then undo and fold it in half the other direction 3rd your piece should be in half now, take your fingers and push the sides in and you should come up with a triangle 4th, take the outside tip of the triangle and fold it toward the center, repeat on other side, Make sure you crease all your edges well. If you are using a card stock, it’s a little bit more difficult but don’t worry your inking and glitter will cover most of the edges. Repeat the same process with each square. You should have something that looks a lot like this. Next, I inked all of my edges with a stamp pad, added a touch of glue just inside the top of each tree section to glue the next section on and added a button as a star to the top and a tree trunk to the bottom. Are you following me? Set your tree aside and lets move onto the box. So, this part I think is pretty explanatory.  I traced a circle onto sheet music and aged it with a stamp pad, and glued it into the inside of the box. I also covered the inside of edge of the box (but didn’t take a photo of that). Then I traced the lid and found another circle that was about a half an inch smaller, traced it and cut out a circle in the middle of my circle so I would have a frame. I traced the frame on coordinating paper and glued it onto the lid of the box. Then I glued the tree inside the bottom of the box, on top of the sheet music.    I cut strips about an inch wide out of glitter paper and inked the edges. This is for the outside edge of the whole box once you have put the lid on. The edge is about 14 inches long so if your paper is 12 inches like mine you will need 2 strips. Glue the strips onto the outside of the box. Now comes the really fun part!  Embellish your tree and frame however you would like. I put glitter on the edges of the tree and the edges of the frame. I added some ribbon and flowers made out of an old wool coat (another thing I couldn’t throw away) and added a ribbon at the top to hang it with. Of course, while making this my mind began to wonder with all kinds of other ideas. Adding pictures to the tree is really in this year! I simply put a photo on the inside and the tree on the outside. Check out that little present, it’s a button!  And that adorable baby is my niece, this was her first Christmas and if I remember correctly those tears are in her eyes because she has just sat in Santa’s lap! Here is a side view. Don’t forget to embellish it too! These are really fun, they remind me of the diorama’s we used to do in school. I hope you have fun making your own ornaments! Oh, and you can make your tree as big as you want it with as many tiers as you want depending on the project. Just keep increasing each section by 1/2 inch.  Check out the larger frame I made.

This is made with the backside of two 8×10 paint canvases. Thanks for having me here on the CSI blog, I am elated to be among such talented people!

Laura @ Ms Smartie Pants http://ms-smartie-pants.blogspot.com

 

~ Thank you Laura, this is so fun!

I think the people at Laughing Cow Cheese company would love to see this project. You did a great job and the canvas idea is brilliant.

I can’t wait to try that!!!

Thank you for spending your day with us here at The CSI Project!!!!

Always love having you!