Tinsel Ornaments *<} :o } >>>

Have yourself a vintage little Christmas
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 These really are easier than they look, they are just dressed up ornaments from the dollar store. The instructions for the styles I have done are below but you really could just let your imagination run wild. Each ornament has the same image on the backside but I used my mirrored images available at my little etsy store.. it so that it would look the same no matter what side you were looking at. I will also be recommending some products that I have used but I am in no way connected with these companies, I just like there products.

First decide what images you are going to use and cut them out. I love to do intricate cutting by if your not great with cutting things out you can just leave a quarter inch margin around the edge. If you do this however it will look better if you take a gold paint pen and run it around the edges.

 

The simplest ones were the last three you see on the bottom. To make these just crisscross a couple of shiny pipe cleaners and give them a couple of twists in the center as you see in picture 1. Then weave some tinsel back and forth around them as you see in picture 2. Curl the ends of the pipe cleaners and glue your images on. One on the front and the other on the back. If you want something a little more durable you can buy the flat wire ornaments. I found the star I used on the last one also at the dollar store.

For the birdcage I used five silver pipe cleaners and then twisted them together with a gold one. Then I wrapped one end of the gold pipe cleaner to form a ring as you see in the picture 3 and left the other half long. Once that was done I attached the other half of the gold pipe cleaner to the hanger on a Christmas bulb leaving only about two thirds the length of the silver ones. This will keep the “cage wires” from pulling straight when hung. Then glue another pipe cleaner around the circumference of the bulb and attach the silver pipe cleaners to that and curl the ends up. Wrap some tinsel around the center gold pipe cleaner and embellish to your hearts content.

 

I have recently discovered a glue called Zip Dry paper glue and I use it for just about everything. It sets quickly so your not holding things forever while they dry. It is the type of glue you find on the backside of a sticker so if you glue something where you don’t want it you can use another product called Un-Du scrappers solution to remove it and place it in the right spot without ruining the image or item you removed. As you can imagine, doing this kind of project your going to get glue all over your hands and enviably on the project where you don’t want it. However you can use the Un-Du to clean up your project too.                          

For the hot air balloon I used string tinsel. It may look like pipe cleaners but it is not. Cut a length of it long enough to go around the top section of the bulb and attach four lengths to it evenly spaced as you see in picture 6.Glue that around the top section of the bulb as in picture 7. Wrap a wooden block in foil paper and attach the tinsel strands to the sides of the block and embellish as you like. 

The others are just old fashion glass ornaments and a tree topper that I glued embellishments onto. I used Tinsel garlands, foil pipe cleaners, bead trim, fabric trims and I love Dresden foil. It is hard to find so if you don’t happen to have any Dresden foils try going to your party store and picking up some gold foil doilies from the wedding section. The edges of these can be cut off to form paper lace and sometimes you can find lacy medallions in the center that can be cut away and used too.