2010 Christmas Ornament #1

Here's my first Christmas project for the year: a glass bulb with a knit wreath inside!

It was simple to make, using the spool loom and carefully inserting it inside the bulb. Then I glued some fancy ribbon I bought from Michael's around the top. I already gave it to someone as a gift.

I bought a few miniature bulb ornaments from one of my favorite places to order from, http://www.factorydirectcraft.com/ . I can sit and stare at their catalog, drooling at the thought of all the wonderful projects I could make! The miniature bulbs are hanging inside from the top of the wreath.

It's always fun to see people's reactions when they see the ornaments. They wonder, "How did you get that inside there?" Practice, practice, practice!

Christmas bulb ornaments!

For years I have had some clear glass bulb ornaments lying around, buried in a box, in hopes that one year I would get creative and make something out of them. Well I finally did it. I used the Knifty Knitter spool loom to create some wreaths, decorated them, and carefully inserted them inside the bulbs! For each one, I used Lion Brand Holiday Homespun green and red, and some wire ribbon I had at home.

For the first one, I inserted the wreath inside the bulb and then knit the ends together once it was inside.

But this was a little bit too tricky to repeat over and over, so for the next ones I just knit them together first, decorated them, and then inserted them inside the bulbs. I don't have a picture of the very first one because these bulbs are hard to photograph, and the picture I took really didn't come out that well.

This one has a small rose on it that I had lying around from some Valentine's project. I didn't make it.

Some of my coworkers saw me knitting and creating these bulbs, and even though they saw how I got them in there, they still marveled at them when they were completed. The people who received them as gifts were amazed and excited by them as well.

But below is my favorite one: the Christmas tree!

I made a poinsettia a while back, so I just used the same technique that I had learned to make the poinsettia leaves to make the Christmas tree. I already had some miniature Christmas presents among the Christmas decorations at home, so I just used them and glued them and the tree inside the bulb. The tree only took about an hour to make, including decorating both sides. I tied the red ribbons myself! No small feat. But voila! What results! I would still have it if someone hadn’t bought it! Not that I’m mad about THAT! And they loved it. The person's wife said it was too good to hang on the tree, that it was heirloom quality. What a compliment!

You're an angel!

Here's my little angel that I made based on the pattern I got from loomlady.blogspot.com (her 11/6/09 post)




Here's the back of it:



It didn't take long to make at all! Just about 2-3 hours (once you make an assemble all the parts). I take my time knitting anyway. I used Bernat Baby Coordinates Natural White for the yarn. I didn't have any gold rings for the halo, so I just used a sparkly gold pipe cleaner instead. I think that sets it off nicely.

For the arms: I didn't like the way it looked with just one I-cord for the arms. To me it was just too thin-looking. So I sewed the one I-cord together side by side to make one arm, and did the same for the second arm. This made the arms more like arms in clothing to me.

Then once I assembled it with the wings, I felt it just needed a little SOMETHING. So I made a rose using lion brand homespun holly red. I knitted an I cord and curled it around until it looked rose-like to me, and then carefully sewed it together in that position. For the stem I simply took lion brang homespun holiday green and made a tight braid out of three strands of it. It came out nice, don't you think?

What's even nicer is that someone bought it, and asked me to make another one just like it! Here it is below:

As you can see I used a different green yarn for the stem on this rose, because I ran out of the holiday green that I had used for the first one.