tiny hat ornaments

This year has been a big ornament making year for us! This one has to be one of the cutest we've tried. I found an excellent step by step tutorial over at Arian Armstrong's blog. If you've made play tutus, it is basically the same procedure on a much smaller scale. Lots of knots but straightforward, I hope you find these as adorable and addictive as I do!

What you need:

• Yarn
• Scissors
• A cardboard ring (cut from a toilet paper or paper towel roll)

These would be so cute with name tags for gifts!

Trim the pompoms as much as you'd like. I like mine poofy. =)

Un petit chapeau!

easy beaded ornaments

We are on a crafting kick this holiday season! Usually my boys' interest isn't held by crafts, but maybe they have just finally reached the right developmental period to work on them. They have been requesting to make more and more ornaments so I thought I'd share another easy-peasy and very inexpensive ornament craft. Make and Takes shows several other shapes we didn't do; we just focused on wreaths and candy canes.

What you need (all hopefully should be found at your local dollar store!):

• chenille stems
• beads (I got some clear heart beads as well - they look *great* near Christmas lights!)

The wreaths.

I also got these trays at our local dollar store - great for crafting or building LEGOs on!

I added a chenille stem for a hook, but regular ornament hooks work fine, too.

So easy and satisfying! Hopefully I will be able to share a few more Christmas crafts we've been doing.

 

felt scrap wreaths

I saw a cute felted wool wreath craft for kids on pinterest (seen here; scroll down a few crafts) so I thought we would try it with felt scraps.

What you need:

• chenille stems 
• felt scraps, cut into shapes or strips about 1.5" wide (You will want to cut squares for very young children, but kids 3.5-6 were all able to weave the strips with ease.)
• scissors
• string or ornament hook to hang your wreath

Colorful wreaths!

I marked 0.5" from the left side, then every 1.5"after, snipping a hole where I marked.

I found this weaving made the wreath making go a lot faster than squares.

Working hard.

Halfway done.

He liked this so much, he made two!

 
When you are finished adding felt, just twist the ends together to make a circle. Attach a string or hook for hanging. Done!

This is definitely a craft I would do again. There is a bit of prep time, as you will probably want at least 10 strips of felt per wreath, but it is at least fairly mindless prep! These would look lovely hanging in windows as well as on a tree.