Teresa's Designs: Start thinking of 2016 Christmas.....REALLY??

I hope everyone had a wonderful 2015 Christmas. Ours was very nice, spent with my parents, children, and grandchildren....can't get much better.

Every year for Christmas, one of the gifts I purchase is a Christmas ornament for each grandchild. This year, I looked and looked for the perfect ornament and nothing tickled my fancy until I was in Michaels looking at the wooden ornaments and I thought I should create their ornament instead of buying an already made one. So, in the basket went 6 wooden shaped ornaments.

Once home they sat on my craft table for weeks untouched. I would go in and look at them and play around with ideas but nothing. So I thought, well, maybe making the ornaments wasn't such a good idea.

I made one more trip to the department store to look at all the ornaments and still none of them made me think of any of grandkids. I walked away and decided I was done with the yearly Christmas ornament; no ornaments this year for the kids.

And then it hit me - I have all these fun photos of Christmas projects we have done this season and I want the ornaments to bring back fond childhood memories, so why not incorporate the special projects on the ornaments. Finally, I was ready to create!!!

I printed photos onto regular cardstock then cut them to fit the ornament and glued them into place. Once they dried, I sanded the edges of the ornaments and the photo so all was smooth and no paper edges were hanging off.

I painted the edges and the little bit of wood showing on the top of the ornament with acrylic paint. Once, they dried, I sanded again to give a distressed look. After sanding the second time, I inked over the top with Tim Holtz's, Distress Ink vintage photo. The last step for painting, I coated the photo and wood with Mod Podge to seal and protect the photo.

After everything was good and dried, I glued garland around the edge of the ornament, added twine and a bow to complete the project.

I forgot to take a final photo of the ornaments, so had to call in the help of my kids and have them send me a photo of the completed project. One ornament, we are hoping is hidden in a granddaughters room.