Glitz & Glam Christmas Ornament

This year I signed up for a Christmas ornament exchange with a big group of bloggers. We had to fill out a form saying what we preferred in our Christmas decor. I was excited to be partnered up with Alexandra from Eye Love Knots, who is also a craft, crochet, & coffee lover! The colors she preferred where light/dark grey, cranberry, white, & silver. Once I found out she has a smaller tree, I set out to make a version of my spindle ornaments that would suit her color palette. I hope she likes it! Be sure to check out all the other wonderful ornaments in the link party!

Way back in August, I had a spectacular thrifty haul that included a bunch of wooden spindles in different sizes. I’m using the mid-sized spindles for this project. I picked out some beads, wire, paint, & glitter in the colors she chose.

My paint is leaning more towards the magenta/pink side, but I’ve got some tricks to try to go more cranberry colored.

Paint & Glitter

Since I wasn’t sure which technique would give me that color, I painted two spindles. I’m using DecoArt Extreme Sheen in silver for the base coat. I only used one coat & let the wood show through a little. It looks more antique-y that way to me.

I added an eye pin to one end for hanging. This time, I have some appropriately sized eye pins!

The first thing I did was try adding the pink Extreme Sheen paint, but it was really too pink.

Next, I grabbed some fine glitter in tourmaline & garnet. I thought mixing the two would give more of a cranberry tone. It’s pretty close!

I used Aileen’s tacky glue on the areas I wanted to add glitter to. This glue is really thick, so it does not run easily.

After coating an area with glue, I used a dry paint brush to brush on my glitter mix.

I definitely like the sparkly one better!

It still needs a little more glam…

Wire & Beads

I decided to wrap the spindle with some wire & beads! I’m using a 26 gauge silver craft wire & dark gray seed beads in two sizes.

I just wrapped the wire around the top several times then added the beads and wrapped it a couple more times. It needed some lighter silver too, so I grabbed these sterling silver beads in my stash. These are left over from my wedding dress I made, ooohhh, about 16 years ago! : )

I wrapped the wire around some more, adding two beads on each side of the center portion. Amazingly enough, I had cut the perfect amount of wire!

I did have to go in and touch up some of the glitter after wrapping it.

I could send this without a hook, but I decided to make one that’s just for this ornament!

Making a Hook

To make the hook, I’m combining more of the silver wire with some red & pink artists wire. I’m using a wire pin vise to do this.

You just stick the ends of the wire in the slotted end and tighten it down. Then you hold the other end of the wire & roll the pin vise to twist the wire.

After the wire was twisted, I used my Wig Jig to form an “S” shaped hook.

I bent part of the wire back on itself to keep from having sharp ends & hung the ornament on the curly end.

This ornament is ready to to go!

An ornament like this calls for special packaging!

Boxing It Up

This box was from my post about recycling my yarn club boxes into gift boxes. A little Christmas flare was all it needed…

I nestled the ornament into a bed of tissue paper to keep it from moving around too much during shipping.

I also taped my ornament card from Monday’s post into the top as an extra gift.

Everything got folded up, put into a bubble envelope, & shipped to my swap partner. I hope she likes it!

Don’t forget to check out all the other fabulous ornaments! : )

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