Making Batting Ornaments

The spirit of Christmas past is on me this year. I have been making these beautiful batting ornaments for my tree.There are people who collect old pressed or spun cotton ornaments, such ornaments are rare and hard to find because in the mid-1870  children were given the ornaments to play with and because of this few survive. I prefer to make my own ornaments and decorate them to my taste.

I made this angel tree topper using two cds that I didn't like and a cardboard tube. I glued  the top of each cd (this is the side that has the lable) to the cardboard tube on opposite sides of the tube. Then I glued a pair of paper wings to each cd so there is an angel on both sides, and I embellished it with glitter and an angel scrap or chromolithographs silhouette as shown below.

I made this old style sheep, It is made of sculpey III modeling compound, wooden matchsticks(remove heads). Cotton batting, acrylic paint. For the sheep body, I worked sculpey and formed a roll, then I bent one end to form the neck and head. Then I inserted four matchsticks into the body for legs. Bake according to manufacturer's instructions. After baking I painted the head and eyes then covered the body and legs with batting, and glued with white glue.

I made this batting cotton mushroom ornament. I found the instruction here

Making  paper angel wings

To make the batting ornaments I started by cutting a cardboard body and glued two long pieces of chenille stems to the piece of cardboard. I wrapped  batting around the stems and cardboard body, glueing while wrapping. Until you cover the entire body like you see in the photo. With this body you can start making an ornament, a santa, doll or an angel.

For the santa ornament I used  a piece of red felt and wrapped it around the body.I made a cuff by rolling the end of the felt like you see in the photo.

Cut a cape like you see in the photo. I glued a piece of chenille stem around the cape edge.

I cut a square from a piece of felt and glued one end to make the hat.

Glue the cape and hat to body and glue a santa chromolithograph face. You can find this santa face at The ghaphics Fairy blog, and print it. 

I set this Christmas tree on my bedroom side table. I love it.

I want to thank you for all your wonderful comments. I really appreciate it. The winner of the nine paper feather is: Lynda @ Happenstance Home

Please email me  your address to send your feathers.

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I want to wish  you all a Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year full of bleassings from above. 

Folk Art Inspired Christmas Tree. Paper Wings And Give-away

This Year I'm inspired by the Country primitive folk art . I found these sweet dolls published by Country Living magazine 1995. They call it Homespun Archangels, made by James Cramer, he used architectural fragments to create the wings; I think they are adorable. It makes me think about a loving mother making a doll with fabric woven by herself, using the material that she found around the house, to make something special for her little girl for Christmas because she couldn't afford a porcelane doll. I really like the idea of dressing the dolls with vintage christening gowns. What a good idea for displaying a vintage dress collection.

I made the dolls but I didn't used the architectural fragments for the wings because I considered it too heavy for the Christmas tree. I really like their primitive folksy look.

I took this picture from the Country Living magazine; they are photographed by Keith Scott Morton.

To keep the vintage theme, I made this garland of vintage pocket books. I printed some vintage photos and glued them on hardboard paper to display them on my Christmas tree and mantel as well.

I was curious about how to make feathers. I found a great blog called: Todolwen.  She has a wonderful tutorial on how to make these feathers. Click here to visit her. After visiting her beautiful blog I decided to make this pair of paper wings . I really love how they turned out.

Last year I made this wreath made of book pages, click Here to see the tutorial. I decided to make angel wings with the same concept. It was dificult to find hymn books. I found one made on 1941 with yellowish pages. I was stretching those pages :) in order to finish the seven pair of wings for my tree. It's incredible how many pages are needed to make the cones for the wings, I had to use another hymn book that I kept for another project and I had to dye the pages with coffee to make it look old like the other 1941 hymn book.

This is my Angel wings Christmas tree in the family-room.

 I used some hollow eggs and I decorated them with vintage print. You can find all these free prints on The Graphics fairy blog.

Now the Give-away.

After making feathers I decided to give-away nine feathers in diferent colors. I found out that these feathers are actually sold at Etsy--three feathers for $10. I don't sell the feathers, I just wanted to show my appreciation for all your beautiful comments. You can use them as a embellishing for your Christmas presents, bookmarks, or use them as an ornament on those feather trees with other paper ornaments. etc.

Just leave a comment on this post. This Give-away ends December 18-2011. I will announce the winner the next day December 19-2011. "Only for U.S. Shipping addresses"

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THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED

From the deepest place in my heart I'm wishing you a Happy Christmas full of joy and that this New Year will bring you the most of :"...success of perseverance...pleasure of working...dignity of simplicity...worth of character...power of kindness...influence of example...obligation of duty...wisdom of economy...virtue of patience...improvement of talent...joy of originating." ~Bulletin~