2012 - Family Christmas Ornament

 Now that all the boxes have reached their destinations and my family have all opened them, I can finally share a couple of projects with you.  This was the ornament I made for each home of our family overseas. Sorry, but I had the darnest time trying to get a good picture due to the reflection, but I think you will get the gist of this. So here is the front of the ornament. I won't even bother to tell you how many tries it took for all of us to fit nicely into this frame. I guess my guys were ready to have a conniption, but I wanted it to be perfect and I think I achieved that with the placing of everyone :)

 

 

I ended up making two different backs for the ornament and then couldn't choose between them because I liked them both, so I made two of each and called good. Here is the one  - for this one I used Spellbinders Scalloped Circles and the Cut, Fold and Tuck Floral Burst. I think it came out beautiful and everyone in my family loved it.

 

Here is the other version of the back of the ornament. For this one I also used the Spellbinders Scalloped Circles but used the Exquisite Circles which are part of their Majestic Elements collection.  Again, I think it turned out beautiful and the family that got this one loved it too :)

 

Now to give a little insight as to how I put these together ...

 

This was the original item I purchased from Michaels.

 

After I removed all the packaging, I pulled the ornament completely apart and used their original center piece as a stencil to cut my photo and my backs as you can see below.

 

Since both my photo and backs were round, I glued them to the original center piece and with a sharpie I blackened the very top of the ornament shape.  You can't see this once the ornament is put back together which is what I did once it was all complete.  I  used the original packaging for shipping and voila, pretty photo ornaments for the family.  I forgot to mention that the papers I used are mirror red and glitter silver cardstocks from my LSS. The center was computer generated and cut with a circle punch.

A little something to share - when I first began scrapbooking many years ago, I bought all the stencils from Creative Memories.  Since getting my Cricut about 3 years ago and then my Spellbinders dies, there have been many times when I thought of selling the Creative Memories goodies since I don't use them and they are just taking up space.  Well, I'm glad I kept them, because believe or not, it was the only thing that cut the correct size of the circles so that it fit completely over the stencil that came with the ornament.  None of the Spellbinder circles were the correct size and I could not get the right measurement on the Cricut either.  I'm sure if I kept at it I would eventually come up with it, but this was just so much faster.  So there is a lesson to be learnt here ... It's not so bad to be a hoarder :)

 

How are all your Christmas preparations going? You all having fun shopping? You getting everything on your list?  I love everything about Christmas including the hustle and bustle, so I feel like a kid again ... until bedtime when all the aches and pains come out to play and remind me of my age :)

 

I also wanted to mention that our hearts join with everyone else's in prayer for every one who was affected by the tragedy of Newtown, Connecticut.  We received an email from the Superintendent of our school district with assurances of safety in our schools as much as humanly possible, but you just never know, so Brian has definitely been getting more hugs :)  To borrow a line from our Superintendent's email ...

 

"As Tiny Tim would say: God Bless us Everyone"

 

Have a wonderful day and thanks for visiting.

Hugs,

Lena