DIY photo gifts: ornament

This year I’ve been devoting one week a month to a themed blog series with daily blog posts.  I’ve talked all about project life, shared some ‘wish someone told me sooner’ parenting advice, written about ways to preserve your memories/photos, revealed our favorite things in West Seattle, taught a few easy photo editing tips, celebrated my third birthday, shared ideas for documenting childhood, revealed my favorite apps, given ideas for fun ways to use your photos, dished about my family’s favorite recipes, and this month I’m sharing fun DIY photo gift ideas!


My grandmother and my mother are both Christmas ornament fanatics.  In fact, they both have so many ornaments they don’t ALL fit on the tree and I may have heard stories from both households about an over-burdened tree toppling over mid season.  So, yeah, it’s only natural that I’d think of make your own photo ornaments on my list of DIY photo gifts.

make your own photo ornament

Here’s an ornament I made the Christmas after Jill was born.  I made copies of our Christmas card photo (I’m obsessed with that Christmas jimmies photo!) and crafted gifts for the grandmas + a great grandma.  It turned out so cute that I had to keep one for myself too.

Since it was a few years ago, I don’t have photos of the supplies or process, but it was SUPER easy.  Maybe even a project you could do with your kids. What you’ll need:

  1. A photo
  2. A mason/canning jar lid
  3. Yarn
  4. Ribbon
  5. Hot glue

ornament2I took the canning jar lid ring and wrapped yarn tightly around it, securing it with a dot of hot glue at the bottom.  Then I used the flat piece of the canning jar lid to trace a circle onto the photo.  I cut it out and adhered the photo directly onto the lid with hot glue.  Then I tied a little bow with ribbon and hot glued that onto the bottom as well.  Threaded a small string through the yarn on the top to make it an ornament and voila!  So easy and it was a hit with the grandparents.

And, just for fun… here’s a photo ornament that’s been on Miss Freddy’s Christmas tree since she was just a little girl!  Everyone always says Colin is a mini-John, but I see a pretty strong resemblance here!

ornament1

You can obviously buy ready-made photo ornaments at a craft store too, if you’re wanting an even easier DIY photo gift!

 


More fun DIY photo gift ideas are coming all week long!  If you’d like to receive a summary in your email inbox at the end of the week, enter your email address here!

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