FREE Handcrafted Monogrammed Holiday Ornaments

Monogrammed Holiday Ornament

Each year my kids get a new ornament for the Christmas tree. The last several years, they've been handmade ornaments and this year will be no different.

This year it's Letter Ornaments and I thought I'd share with you how to create these simple yet beautiful ornaments.

This is also a "green" craft project. All the material used have been upcycled from things already lying around the house. This is a FREE personalize ornament costing only a little time and effort but looks beautiful!

 

Items Needed
Old clothing or other clean fabric
Notions, buttons, rick rack, etc
Computer
Printer
Cardboard (shipping, pizza, soda cases, etc)
Scissors

Create a Template from Cardboard

How to make it

Wrap the Fabric around the Template

1. First, make a template for the letter. I used Power Point but a Word document or Photoshop will work well too. Pick a font that you like, keeping in mind your going to wrap fabric strips around a cardboard cutout. A thin letter with lots of curly's and fancy fonts can be hard to wrap with thicker fabrics. 
2. After you've settled on the letter and font, enlarge the size to about 300 (which translates to about a 2 1/2"x 4" letter) and print.
3. Cut out your printed letter, trace it onto the cardboard and cut out. Thicker cardboard offers better overall stability with the ornament but a thin font is harder to cut loops and fancy curly-q's. A Cricut machine makes this part of the process MUCH easier.
4. Gather up some old CLEAN clothing or fabric remnants and cut into strips (about 1" wide but it doesn't have to be exact, just cut and rip to speed up the process). 
5. Start at one end of the letter and start wrapping the fabric snugly around the cardboard slowly working your way around the entire surface. You will probably need more than one strip of fabric. You can either tie the next piece together or tuck it under and keep wrapping. 



Finished Fancy Letter Ornament

• At this point you can use different colors and patterned fabric to give it a unique and whimsical look. 
• Solid colored cotton tshirts or fleece lend a more primitive feel. 
• Try twisting the fabric on itself once or twice to keep the fabric taught at the points in letters (like M, W, N, etc). 
6.  Finish by tucking the tail of the fabric under a wrapped row and snip off any excess.

Add even more personality by adding bows, buttons, rick rack, or anything in your sewing kit. Use a loop of fishing line for an invisible hanger or a loop of fabric.

Jenn's Tips: Easily convert this to a wall sized letter hanging by enlarging the stencil.