Holiday Dotted Pin Hole Art Templates

My kids like to create art, but they get bored with all the same methods, so every Christmas we do pin hole pictures by taking a pushpin and some construction paper and start poking holes.

But today, when I went looking online for new templates, I couldn't find anything super cute.  It's all the same old stuff (I think they're the same templates I used in second grade).  So I came up with some of my own!

You can get this one for free:

Just click THIS LINK to download.  After you've downloaded, print it on colored paper, and use a pushpin to make holes where ever there is a dot.  Then just flip your paper over to see your masterpiece!

Christmas Craft Stick Puzzles Printable

So school's out for the holidays, and I still need my kids to stay busily out of my hair while I finish up some last minute Christmas presents.  So I'm hoping to entertain them with some new Christmas craft stick puzzles.....at least they'll be busy for about 2.7 minutes.

Just click the image to download these free craft stick puzzle printables, or you can click here.

If you're not sure how craft stick puzzles work, you can check out the tutorial we posted here.

Santa's Workshop Playset Free Printable and Tutorial

Are your kids out of school yet?  Today is the last day for my kids until January, so we need THINGS TO DO.

I made this little playset with the intention of the kids helping me put them together.  Except then I got all crazy obsessive about it and did it all myself so that they would look better.  (But I'm not really that crazy, because my kids are super lazy cutters, and when I say, "cut on the lines" they hand me hacked up pieces and are like, "I'm done!" and I'm like, "uuuuh, it's missing half of it's head," and then they just shrug like it's no big deal.)

ANYWAYS, here's how to make your very own Santa's Workshop Playset Characters.

First you need to download and print the parts:

And then you need to sort-of-ish cut them out, but not really. Like this:

And then you need to cover everything with clear contact paper.  Or you can laminate them, but it's cheaper to use clear contact paper.  (And make sure you cover the fronts and the backs.)

Now you're going to cut them out for realsies.  Except keep the different parts in organized piles, because what if you get confused and attach the wrong legs to the wrong bodies and you end up with elves that have reindeer legs?  That would be bad.

Next you need to attach the pieces with little mini-brads.  At first I just tried to shove the brads through with nothing but brute force.  And even though I have the strength of ten men, it was a huge pain in the butt to get those brads through without bending the paper and stuff.  So then I also used my intellect of twenty men and realized that if I shoved a fat needle through all the little x's first, then the brads would just go right through easy-peasy-like.

See those holes from my needle?  And see how my Christmas tree lights make that picture look all magical?  That's neat-o.

Attach all the limbs to the bodies.  The arms go on TOP of the bodies, but the legs go UNDER.  And when you're doing the reindeer, put one leg on top and one leg on bottom and get the brad through all 3 layers.

Once you have all your limbs attached you are FINISHED.  And you can let your kids play with these like crazy because the clear contact paper will protect them from harm, just like magic elf dust would.

And, if anyone is interested in cutting out even more little limbs, there is a matching Nativity Playset at Green Jello with Carrots.

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Peonies and Poppyseeds Printables are for personal printed use only. Absolutely no commercial use or redistribution allowed.  Please contact us if you have any other questions about their use. Thanks so much!
~Caroline & Melissa

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Ornament Tutorial part 3: Piecing things Together

Pretty much no tutorial of mine is complete without somehow making a huge mess.  And while I could tell you about my experiences making ornaments with glitter swirls and even glitter-y dots, I don't think it's necessary to bore you with tales of finding glitter up my nose and in the cracks of the sofa for a solid 3 weeks.  Instead, let's talk about glue guns and mod podge.

Part 3: Getting Ornaments Together, Piece by Piece

This is yet another idea I mooched from pinterest, but there are few things that random pictures can't tell you.  Such as: these things are FREAKING HEAVY (as far as ornaments go), but they do look especially lovely in the tree light.

So, first of all you need to get out your glue gun, and buy some of those flat-ish, clear glass, pebble-y thingies.  (Also, I chose to use a sliver ornament because of it's reflective qualities.)  Starting at the top, glue the glass pebbles onto the ornament leaving as little space between them as possible.  Then add another row of pebbles, putting them next to each other as closely as you can get them.

Keep adding rows of pebbles until your ornament is covered.  The farther you get down the ornament the trickier it gets to fit them all sungly together, but whatever you do, DO NOT try to pry already glued pebbles off of a glass ornament.  Because it will break.  And then little tiny glass shards will fall on your carpet.  And probably your toes.  And that will not be fun.  Trust me.

And, like I mentioned previously, these things end up being mondo heavy-o.  So even though I put one of those wire hangy bobbers on it, I ended up just laying it on the tree branches.  But it's seriously gorgeous reflecting all the lights.

While that last ornament involved glue guns and glass shards, it's really this next one that made the biggest mess.  But I super love the results.

The first thing you need to do is take a piece of scrapbook paper and cut it into a gabillion tiny strips.  Make sure you're not doing this with thick paper, and don't get your strips too wide or too long because they will be harder to work with.

You'll want to have ALL your strips cut before beginning.  Because then you pull out some mod podge, and coat your entire ornament in it.  Then, one by one, you place the strips on the ornament and mod podge over them.  And then, once all your strips are securely podged, you need to put a thick coat of even more mod podge over the entire ornament.  (How anyone can make one of these without getting completely covered in mod podge is beyond me.  I was up to my elbows in the stuff.)

To let my mod podged ornaments dry, I hung them from a suspended piece of string between my cupboard doors so that they wouldn't be touching anything.  Then, once they had hung there for about a day, I tied ribbon and jingle bells to the tops and they were done.

Thanks for checking out all three parts of the ornament tutorials!  I now expect you all to have fabulous tree decorations that you can show off to your friends and family and maybe even the UPS guy when he comes to deliver all those presents you've ordered online.

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Ornament Tutorial part 2: Fun with Paint

The cool thing about borrowing ornament ideas from pinterest is that you don't have to actually come up with any ideas on your own.  (And this is where you think, "duh?")  So basically today's tutorials are my versions of some ideas that I totally mooched from someone else.

Part 2: Slap Some Paint on that Ornament

No tree would be complete without a mustache*, right?  I'm not sure how other people have made their 'stache ornaments, but this is how I made mine:

First, I drew half of a mustache on a piece of paper and cut it out.  Then I laid the paper on my ornament and lightly traced around the paper with a pencil.

Then, I flipped the paper over, and lined it up so that I could trace the other side of the mustache and it would be even and symmetrical on the ornament.

I also penciled in the words so that I could make sure they were centered-ish  (that's when I realized that I kind of stink at centering words on ornaments).

Then I filled in my mustache outline with black paint.  And once that was dry I took a black sharpie marker and traced over my penciled in words.  (I also attempted to paint the words on one of my mustache ornaments, but I found the sharpie to be SO much easier.)

Then I added a little bit of velvet-y ribbon to the top (which is totally optional, because you might want to keep your mustache ornament manly and naked), and moved on to my next ornament - the snowman.

Painting these were pretty similar to the mustache ornaments, except that these were much more fool proof.

First, I lightly drew the snowman face on the ornament (might I suggest beginning with the nose, then adding the eyes and mouth after - it helps get things centered and even and...stuff).

Then I just painted in the shapes with paint.  It was a piece of cake, really.  Because if the shapes are a little wonky it doesn't even matter, because coal and carrots just happen to be wonky shaped in real life.

Once the paint was dry, I added ribbon and jingle bells to the tops (I love ribbon and jingle bells).  The snowmen were probably the easiest ornaments I made that day.

Make sure to come back tomorrow for part 3 of the ornament tutorials!

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*Mustache Ornament original credit LennyMud 

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Ornament Tutorial part 1: Monograms

With all the awesome ornament ideas floating around on pinterest lately, I couldn't deny the urge to pull out my paint.  And glitter.  And ribbon.  And glue gun.  And mod podge.  So I'll be doing a 3 part tutorial on some of my favorites.

Part 1: Monogrammed Ornaments

This ornament is for my niece, who owns all things black/white/pink.

To make it, I started by painting a white circle on a silver ornament.  It works best if you start with a small circle and then just add to the edges to make it bigger and bigger until it's the size you want.  That way you can fix any circular wonkiness as you go along.

Then, once the paint dried, I painted the black zebra stripes on top of the circle.  I just did these freehand, because zebra stripes are pretty forgiving.

 

And once the stripes were dry, I painted a big pink A in the middle of the circle, and once the paint of the A was dry, I added a layer of pink glitter over it.  (For the glitter I used some glitter glue I got at the dollar store, and it worked really well, plus it wasn't as messy as regular glitter.)

Then, once all my glitter was dry, all I had to do was add the 50 ribbons to the top and it was done.

So then I made a letter B ornament.  Because my last name starts with B, so it's a good letter.

This ornament took longer, because first I covered the entire silver ornament in blue glitter glue and it took awhile to dry.  Especially because, after the glitter was dry, I coated the whole thing in a thick layer of mod podge. (I found that while dollar store glitter glue is easier to work with, it dries kind of flaky and I didn't want it all rubbing off, hence the mod podge.  However, I also found that if you just coat everything in massive fog of hair spray, it will also help the glitter to keep from rubbing off).

Once all the glitter and mod podge was dry I painted a red circle in the middle of the ornament, and I gave it a blue edge to match the blue glitter.

And once the paint was dry, I paint a white B in the middle of the circle.

Then I attached a gold jingle bell and a little red bow to the top with some white thread, and now it doesn't just look good, it jingles well too.

(side note: don't you love how when I take pictures for tutorials I don't even bother to make sure my fingernail polish is decent?)

Make sure to come back tomorrow for part 2 of the ornament tutorials!

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