Teacher Gifts 2011- Part 1

This year I had a lot of fun making the Holiday Gifts for the kids teachers. We are truly blessed with an amazing school and wonderful teachers. I really can not say enough about them. We do gifts for the kids main teachers as well as the school nurse (my hero), the two ladies who run the front desk, Ashley's reading teacher and the principal.

About two weeks ago I taught myself how to knit and crochet so most of the gifts are done that way. I will link directions I found for them, however I am better at making things up on my own instead of actually following directions, so these patterns are not exactly what I made, just what I used to go by.

Here is the link for the Crochet Nurse mini doll. I did shorten the hair and make her body and dress a little bit longer. This one I followed pretty good since I am still just learning. I also attached a string to the top of her hat to hang her by and make her an ornament.

Keep checking back for the rest of the gifts!

Jingle Bells Ornament

Here is the ornament that I made using the little Jingle Bells from the Holiday Mini Catalog! I also used the pearl beads from the old retired Pretties Kit, but you can use any type of beads between the bells.

Here is how I made this:

I used a small paper clip and straightened it out. I put the bells and pearls on it and bent the ends with a pliers to keep them on. Clip off the excess paper clip.

I unbent another paper clip and put it through the hole in the middle of the center jingle bell, and put the beads on both sides. I did this with another one also, three total. So you have one going through the top hole on the bell, and the other two go through the center slits.


I put a glue dot over the center to keep them all in.


Then I used a hot glue gun to put the flat pearls on the top and keep it all together good. If you don't have the Pretties Kit (retired) flat pearls, you can use the Jewels pearls in the main catalog and the Large Pearl Basic Jewels (upcoming Occasions Mini Catalog) for the center. Do this on both sides to keep everything together really well. Add your string and you are all finished!

Lattice Fold Wreath Ornament

I had so much fun with my Lattice Fold Ornament, I just had to make one into a wreath! There are a few more directions below to change the Lattice Fold Ornament into the wreath, but check out the other post for the full directions.

You are going to fold the Lattice Die cut just like you did for the other ornament, then you are going to cut out the middle. I have shown below where you cut with the red lines. Do this after you have folded and glued the loops together to make it easier to assemble.


Once they are cut, you can put them together. The wreath only uses three lattice shapes so it pops up a little bit when they are all together. (The other one used four.)


Once they are together, fold back the outside ovals so the center bumps up, but the wreath lays flat. make a second one and glue it to the back to make them stronger and to be more 3-D.

You can color your Rhinestones with a permanent red marker right on the sheet and then put them on the wreath. Put your bow and string on. and you are ready to decorate the tree!

Lattice Fold Ornament

I saw the Fleur de Lis ornament tutorial on Splitcoast by Becca Feeken and just had to change it around to work with the Lattice Die. I will show you a few steps below to make it work with the Lattice shape, but the rest you can get from the original tutorial for more help. This one took a little while to finish with all the scoring on the Simply Scored, but was really simple to do.
It is stunning in person!

Here is how to make one:

Using the Lattice Die on the Big Shot, you will need to cut out four shapes. Each one will be scored and folded the same way. Score like shown below. Cut to the center on the bottom side. Fold them up like shown on the right. The red lines are folded to the top.












Using the Two-way glue pen, stick together the center ovals like shown on the left. Then just stick your next one right to the edge oval and keep going with all four. I used the 2-1/2" Circle punch for the red circle in the back. This helps add some stability to it.












I used the Lace Ribbon and Striped Grosgrain for the back, and then just used Sticky Strip to add another circle to the back of that so you don't see it all glued together. Add a string and your ornament in finished!

I love this one! Hope you guys have the Lattice Die, because I have some more too! Check back soon.

Double Lattice Ornament

After I did my other Lattice Die ornament, I looked through Splitcoast for more ornament ideas. I not only found that someone else had already done the same thing I did, but I saw a great new way to layer the lattice shapes on the Sunshine, Smiles & Stamps blog. This made me think how nice it would look to combine these two ideas, and this ornament was the result!

I love it! The pictures really do not do this justice, it is gorgeous in person, especially when it spins.

Here is how you can make it:

Using the Big Shot, cut out your Lattice in two different colors. You are going to use the Two-Way glue pen and stick them on top of each other like shown. Then using the Simply Scored, you are going to score right down the middle in one direction and fold it in half.

Then you are going to glue them back to back just like you did for my Lattice Die ornament. I made eight of these total for the entire ornament.

Here it is with a red background so you can see the white better.

Mini Honeycomb Ornaments

I usually try to only do one post per day, so I don't run out of things to post... but with Christmas in less then a month, I think I have more project ideas then days!

So keep checking back often, I am on an ornament kick right now, so there might be multiple posts per day!

I have to send a thank you out to Ellen Williams for this great idea. After seeing the large Honeycomb Ornament that I posted this morning, she emailed me and suggested doing it with the ornament punch. I thought it would be too small, but I tried it and they came out so cute! You do have to put less glue dots on them, so you can see what I did below.

Tips for making these:

1. You can cut your 12" paper into 3-3/8" x 12" strips and punch both sides to get the most punched ornaments out of your DSP.
2. You can stack two punched shapes on top of each other and score them on the Simply Scored at the same time!
3. You want to make these out of DSP, not card stock. Card stock would be too thick I think, and you need the paper to bend.

4. Get a very sharp ended tweezers to put the glue dots on. It picks them up so easily and puts them down without sticking to the tweezers. You can get these in the beauty isle near makeup stuff. It is worth the investment in a good sharp pair instead of the dull $2 version.
5. Use Dotto removable adhesive to put your first folded shape down on your scrap paper, this makes them stay still and easier to stack.

And here is how I made these:

(Check my Honeycomb Ornament post for the rest of the directions for the larger size.)

For the first picture above, here is how I did the glue dots. I made this one simple and only did two spots. This was really easy and quick to do. I would suggest doing it this way if you are doing lots of them, or doing this with a group.
Once you put the one glue dot down, fold over the ornament and put the dot in the other spot and put the next one on top. I labeled my diagram with the colors of my DSP paper sides so I would not get confused. I did 13 of these shapes for this one.

Here is how I did the second one. One side has the two at either end, and the next side has it in the middle. Once you get this one together, you really have to manually bend the papers to get them to open up and it kind of folds them instead of just bending. Kind of a pain, so I would suggest the first way unless you have a lot more patience then me! I did 10 of these shapes for this one.

Hope you have fun with these, they are perfect for little trees!
They also fit perfectly in my 6 Pack Ornament Holder and make a great gift!

Honeycomb Ornament - FREE Template!

I saw the tutorial to make this ornament on Splitcoast and I just had to try it. I do not have the die they used, so I made a template for a similar shape.

You can get the FREE template and see the directions below!

I have listed the things I did that were different from the tutorial on Splitcoast, but you will need to check out the original tutorial for the full directions because I do not have pictures of each step. It is the Honeycomb Ornament Tutorial.

Each one of these shapes can be cut out of a 4" square of paper, so you get 9 out of one 12" sheet, and you need 18 cut shapes to make one ornament. So two pieces of DSP.

Once you have all of your shapes cut out, fold them all in half. Mark up the template like shown below for where you want to put your glue dots. I used hot glue to keep mine together, instead of a ton of glue dots and it worked pretty good.

This was a lot of work to do, but this ornament is gorgeous! When it spins and moves it really looks beautiful. I used the 1/8" Real Red ribbon going down the center and the old Pretties Kit beads for the bottom.

Click on the template image below to download the FREE template!

Lattice Die Tree Ornament

Here is my Christmas Ornament that I made using the Lattice Die with the Big Shot. This came out so gorgeous, the pictures really do not do it justice.
You can see how I made it below!

Cut out six Lattice shapes using Whisper White card stock and the Big Shot. You can cut out more, and I bet that would look even better. Fold each lattice shape in half like shown.

Once they are all folded in half, glue each half to the next one so you have a stack of lattice shapes, folded in half, stacked up. Then just take the two ends and glue them together.
I did use Cherry Cobbler seam binding ribbon down the center to make the hanging part, but that was the most difficult part of getting it together. I would suggest just attaching the hanging string at the top or using really thin ribbon to go down the center. Once you have that in, then you glue the last sides together. I used the Two-way glue pen for this and it worked great. I also used the retired Pretties Kit for the beads that I hung at the bottom, but you could use any beads.