Baby Jesus Ornaments from Crafty Sisters

Seasons Greetings from Crafty Sisters!
We are so glad to be back with Wood You Like To Craft and
December's theme of Baby Jesus Ornaments! Krystal, Wendy, Melinda, Candace and I thought it would be so fun to do an Ornament Exchange with a common theme.

We are so excited to share our little ornament with you!
Each year I make a new Baby Jesus ornament to give to my Primary kids I teach at church.  Sometimes it gets a little challenging because there's only so many ways to do a cute little pink face and a brown manger right?

This year I wanted to do a lighter theme and use some spray glitter!
Here's the little pattern I came up with.

The finished size is about 3 1/2" tall by 2 1/2" wide.

I cut both pieces out of 1/4" MDF.  This thickness is just right for ornaments and gives you enough thickness to be able to screw in a tiny "i" hook to attach either ribbon or ornament hooks.  Make sure you pre drill your holes because MDF can split easily when you put in those hooks.

Once cut and sanded I painted them a really light buttermilk for the swaddling cloth and a a light tan for the manger.  Again~make sure you paint the back~it makes the perfect place to either write in a Christmas greeting or to date the year you created the ornament.

Remember our great tip for painting all those little baby heads?  Stick them onto some masking tape that you can stick to your counter.  It makes it so easy to paint all those heads but even easier to dot all those little eyes with out them rolling off under your oven to find next year!  The perfect size head is a wooden 1" plug found at your local craft store or home improvement store.

After everything is painted and dried I always sand of a bit of the edges to create a highlighted look.  I glued everything together with hot glue, running a strip of glue along the bottom of the swaddling edge to stick a bit of excelsior onto.  Then if you are in a glitter mode do a light spray of glitter followed with a bit of clear craft spray to seal everything in.  

There ya go~a perfect little Baby Jesus ornament.....now I only have about 80 more to make......

We are so excited to see what Krystal, Melinda and Wendy come up with and I'm even more excited to get one in the mail to hang on my tree!  Make sure to come back each day this week to see what they create!  

Merry Christmas!

Nativity-Craft Goodies

So guess who thought the 13th was really the 12th and missed her post day?

 Oh yes, that would be me!

Wendy here, a day late, but here--and after the crazy week that it's been, that is pretty darn good.

 

I'm really excited to share my take on Melinda's nativity set with you. This has actually been why my week has been so crazy, but all for the most wonderful of reasons. So first, here is what I did...

 

 Are you thinking, wow, that looks an awful lot like Melinda's? That's because for the most part, it is. In the past, I have helped Melinda to cut out a large amount of these sets, I have had my own set that she gave me for years--and I love it. My kids love it. So "re-doing" it wasn't going to happen. I needed another purpose, and as it turned out, I happened to have one.

I work with the young women in our church and while trying to come up with a service project for December, this nativity set and a sweet little book that I used while teaching pre-school came to mind. Together, they made up the perfect base for our 12 Days of Christmas service project.

 

The book that I based our project on is called "This Is The Stable", written by Cynthia Cotton.
 

It's a sweet, rhyming story, that introduces all the key players in the nativity in a pattern similar to "This is the house that Jack built" in that it always comes back to the "quiet stable, dusty and brown."

As the stable is the root of the story, I tweaked Melinda's a bit to make it really stand out.

 

 

 I made it taller, used bead board for the backing, gave it a cross beam, and added a base piece/platform to the front. Everything is cut from 1/2 inch MDF.

 

Then I had to add a few pieces from the story that were missing from the original set...

 

 

I needed a cow and the three gifts from the wise men...

 

 

...which meant I had to tweak the wise men to remove the gifts from their bodies, and last had to separate the manger from baby Jesus.

(Again, everything is cut from 1/2 inch MDF)

 

I love the simplicity of the story, and how each piece compliments it's part in the story.

We'll start our project tonight with a plate goodies and an introduction letter. Then each night after that we will deliver one part of the set along with it's part in the story and a coordinating gift until the set is complete!

Here's a little sample:

 

"This is the stable, dusty and brown, in a quiet corner of Bethlehem town."

(We will deliver the STABLE along with a gingerbread house kit for our family to build together)

 

"This is the star whose light shone down on the quiet stable, dusty and brown."

( we'll deliver the STAR piece along with a candle)

 

"This is the manger, filled with hay to feed the animals sheltered away from the chilly night when the star shone down on the quiet stable, dusty and brown."

( We'll deliver the MANGER along with a Hickory Farms set)

 

I love that the last night we are also including a copy of the book so the family can always remember this Christmas. We separated and wrapped all the gifts last night--my young women are so excited to get busy with this activity. Can you think of a better way to get them into the holiday spirit? I'm so beyond thrilled with how it all came together.

 

 

 I owe a huge chunk of it to Melinda and her nativity set--it made the whole thing come together! So thank you dear friend, for another great idea and fun month here at WYLTC...

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Crafting to you all! 

 

Wendy

 

**I will attempt to get the patterns for the additional pieces on here over the weekend just in case you want them...**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Tree Stand and A Stocking Holder...

Hi everyone! Happy December and Merry Christmas to you all.

It's Wendy from Craft Goodies here today to share a few quick and easy Christmas projects.

First, I have to give a big thanks to Melinda for her tree stand. Didn't know I'd be needing one until I pulled out the little trees and found one was completely missing all of the pieces to its stand!

I wanted something kind of "crate-ish", and country looking so I went with a few strips of cedar fencing.

I cut them down and made two boxes, then glued and nailed them together. I added slats across the bottom and then drilled a few holes through the base pieces and bolted the tree into it's new home.

 I can't wait for the wood to age a bit and take on that "gray" color.

{I still might add a fun, roughed up holiday image to the sides...still thinking!}

All in all super easy, and really fast. Had this done in about half an hour.

New problem this year-I decorated my mantle a bit different and thus my stockings needed a new way to hang. I'm completely into anything personalized these days so pictures were a must.

I used a few chunks of 2 x 6, wood drawer pulls, and a small wallet sized picture frame.

The wood got a fun and fast spray paint job, roughed up with the sander, and then a layer of stain before being glued together.

The hardest part was figuring out the tape on the stripes!

And last, I removed the backing on the frame, glued the glass into the frame and added my pictures. I want to be able to change them out over the years so I used velcro dots on each corner to mount the frame onto the base.

And TA-DAH! Our stockings are now hung by the chimney with care...

Thanks for another fun month ladies!

And for helping me get my house a bit more festive.

Merry Christmas to you all!!!

Happy crafting.

Christmas Tree Quote Sign

Hello!  Krystal from Sassy Sanctuary here.  Isn't Melinda's Christmas tree stand adorable?!  What a fun alternative to a tree skirt.  Unfortunately, just like last month, I am in the process of moving and don't have access to any of my power tools.  I don't have a tree yet either, so a tree stand was out for me.  Bummer, cause its SO cute!

(Before you feel too bad for me though, we are moving TODAY so things are finally going to start to settle down!  Hooray!)

So instead of a tree stand I just thought about Christmas Trees in general. (that works right!?) I went to the craft store and found a frame that had a 12x12 opening and decided to make one of those cute signs that uses a quote as the shape of the tree.... you know.... like this!

 

Now, I have to confess that this was one of those projects were everything went wrong!  First I painted the frame and the board inside the frame the same grey color, used vinyl to make a stencil for the text and antiqued the heck out of it.  It was cute but the colors I used were so similar that it was hard to tell what it was from a distance.  I hated it.

So I redid the inside of the frame only (the outside stayed) in a cream color and used a bolder color pallet to paint on the text.  This time though, for some reason when I pulled up the vinyl stencil it took half the paint with it.  It was a disaster!

Then miracle of miracles, I got a fun package in the mail from Oh My Crafts later that very day.  They sent me some vinyl to review  (more on that later!) and they had a ton of colors.  So I decided to give this poor sign one more shot.  This time I painted the inside of the frame a light grey color, I added some "birchwood" texture inspired by my friend Sarah (although mine turned out more like a snow storm) and then just cut the text from the vinyl.  

I worked like a dream! (the OMC vinyl is amazing!)

I love how it turned out and I LOVE the bible verse to remind me what Christmas is really all about.  And it looks great with the rest of my mantle decor!

The outside of the frame turned out super cute too with the little stencil I put on the corners.  I'm thinking once Christmas is over I will reuse the frame with something else.

Anyway... I thought it would be fun to share the file I used to make the tree.  So if any of you are silhouette users, you can click HERE and download the file to cut a bible verse tree of your very own. 

Personal Use Only Please!

(let me know if that link works since I've never shared files that way before.)

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!