Hello!!!
It's the holiday season once again and tis the time for holiday decorating. I dragged the tree out of the closet (yes we have an artificial one), found the decorations, lights, and garland and headed off the my living room. I wanted to put the tree together before my fiance came home, so I spent a good 20 minutes separating the pieces, connecting everything and and fluffing the branches. I was lucky to finish just as he was walking in the door. We spent the next hour running lights, then the garland and finally placing the bows, ornaments, and candy canes on the tree. As I stepped back to view the greatness we had created, I started looking to make sure the sentimental decorations were there. I found our "First Christmas" decoration my fiance had purchased last year for the tree, my first Christmas ornaments, and the ornaments for the pets....Wait we don't have any pet ornaments? I was so sad. When I was younger my Mother made ornaments for each of our pets, and we hung them on the tree until 2 years ago when I moved out. It was a way for us to include the pets in the spirit of the tree.
I decided that we needed some ornaments. We have a pretty full house of pets with 2 birds (Angel and Tiberius), 2 dogs ( Jackie and Holly) and a cat (Aiken). I looked on line to price out how much it would cost for me to purchase decorations for them. I was taken a back by what I saw. $14 for one ornament??!! That was way to much to pay for 5 animals. I thought "I wonder what I could make if I made my own decorations", and here is what I came up with.
Michaels Craft Store had these plastic ornaments ( a must have when you have cats that love hanging out in, on, or near the tree) for $1.99 and I got them for .79 . I will always try to shop sales so I will let you know the sales I get. Michaels also has a large scrapbooking section so I went there and grabbed paw print stickers and glittery letter stickers. I did pay full price for each of those but sometimes you can't always get a sale. On a side note Michaels is really great with including 40%-50% off of a single full priced item coupons, so if you are looking to get into crafting look in the Sunday papers. Here is what I found at Michaels:
I found that it was harder then it looked to put the stickers on straight so you might want to draw a line in pencil first. The letters were a little difficult to peel off the backing but once I did all was well. Here is Jackie's ornament:
The great thing about these ornaments is that you can put small keepsakes inside the ornaments. Here is what I put into Aiken's ornament:
Once you are all done decorating your ornament however you would like, simply put a hook or string on it and hang it from the tree (and yes I have a white Christmas tree)!
I hope this was helpful to all of you that don't want to spend large amounts of money on Christmas ornaments you can do yourself!
Until next time: Keep Crafting and using your imagination!
~AC~
