On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:
A
Partridge
in a
Pear Tree.
1. Grab some 2 cm felt balls from CraftyWoolFelt. 2. Then collect some acorns from the base of a local oak tree. Or, look outside, see a blanket of snow on the ground and realize it's far too late for that. Then go ahead and buy some from VerreMer, or another Etsy shop of your choosing.
3. Drill a small hole in the acorn cap. Feed two ends of a craft ribbon through and tie, forming a loop.
4. Using a glue gun, squirt some glue inside the cap and quickly press a felt ball into the cap. Note: With bigger felt balls, I worked each ball between my fingers until they were more oblong in shape. But I left the smaller balls as is.
5. That's it. Felt acorns.
The best blank notecards I've found so far are these:
They are sold at Walmart and Homesense, and come in lots of different tones. You need to size you photos to 2000 px by 2588 px. Print off your favourite photos. Cut, and paste!
Six Canadian animals for the tree:HOW TO: Canadian Critters Salted Dough Ornaments1. Prepare a batch of Salt Dough.
2. Cut out your animals using cookie cutters and insert small eye-hooks at the of each animal. I found mine at Home Depot, but you can always make hooks using wire.
3. Bake for 4 hours at 200 degrees. Yes, I know it takes forever, but it's worth it.
4. Once cooled, they will be good and hard. Trace your animals onto pretty paper. I used green scrapbook paper. Cut out their outlines, and Mod Podge them onto the backs of the cookies. I did this to hide the brown spots on the side of the cookie that was face-down on the tray. But it also means your ornament looks pretty on the tree even if it gets trued around.
5. Once dry, draw details onto the non-paper side of each animal.
6. It is important to spray varnish the first coat or the ink will bleed. It may still bleed a little. The next coat can be brush-on varnish.
7. Next, I snipped all but 1 cm off the ends of red-tipped sewing needles. Use whatever colour you like, I just found the red to be very festive. These pins can now be pushed into the dough as embellishments. If they don't go in easily, pre-punch a hole using a thumbtack and then apply a dot of crazy glue to the hole before putting in the pin.
8. Last, feed ribbon or twine through the loop and tie.