Our handmade Christmas - Part 3

Part 3 in the handmade Christmas is these silhouette ornaments. These are made by the kids, with very little supervision from me. Once I gave them the instructions, they whipped these out and had a blast making them. We made several of these ornaments to give as gifts.

Items needed for this:
- Wooden plaques (I found a 4 pack for $1 at the craft store and it already had a pre-drilled hole in the top. I wanted to get oval shaped ones but couldn't find the right size I wanted. These rectangle ones are about 2 1/2" wide and 4" long)
- paint for the sides of the plaque
- ribbon for hanging
- scrapbook paper
- your silhouette pictures

I probably did this the hard way, but here is what I did:

I took the kids pictures from the side. After I downloaded the pictures on the computer. I used the graphics editor and used the selection tool and cropped the edges of the profile. I deleted the background. Then I printed this and used scissors to cut it out. I made sure to cut the flyaways and the little fuzzy hairs so they show up (Spirit was cracking up at all the flyaways that Lefty had until I pointed out he had a few of his own!!) Anyway, then I traced it onto black paper and cut it out again.



I made some in a frame for my room (5x7 frames), but for these ornaments I used the small plaque. I looked at getting photo ornaments, but they were quite costly.

So, first I printed a version of The Christmas Story using a fancy font. I printed it out and we cut it the same size as the rectangle plaque I am using. I had the kids add a small amount of modge podge to the rectangle and place the verse on top. Then we added a little bit more modge podge over the whole thing.

When that was fully dried, we put a tiny bit of modge podge on the back of the silhouette and carefully placed it in the center of the rectangle on top of the Christmas story. Then carefully covered the whole thing with more modge podge.


After that is fully dried, we took some Christmas scrap book paper and cut it to fit the back side of the ornament You could use paint, but I had some scrapbook paper so I decided to use that on the back. Again, using modge podge to attach it.

After that had dried overnight, we attached a ribbon hanger and the kids wrote their names and the date on the back. I forgot to take a picture of the back. I thought I did, but I can't seem to find the picture and unfortunately all these that we made for people have been sent off, given away or already wrapped up. But the scrapbook paper on the back is red and says Merry Christmas all over it.

BELOW IS A PICTURE OF THE ONES HANGING IN MY ROOM. I WANT TO GET SOME RIBBON TO ACTUALLY HANG THESE FROM, BUT HERE IS THE WAY THEY ARE HANGING NOW.