Homemade Christmas Ornaments!

In Loving Memory of Xay Camacho-Hendrickson, 1997-2011

I’ve been thinking a lot about family and gifts for Christmas the past month or so. Then November 18th, my mother’s friend tragically lost her 14 year-old son, and right before the busy holiday season. My heart broke, and after attending the memorial, I quickly realized that the holidays are a time for family and the most important thing about gift giving is why you give rather than what you give.

On another note, I’ve never liked the effect “Black Friday” has on people or the fact that people get seriously, sometimes fatally, injured for the season’s hottest new toy or a new flat screen. This year, I’m focusing on what matters: family.

If you know me of have read any of my other blog posts, you know that I adore my nephew, Jaden. He’s my favorite little guy and he means the world to me, and we love making things together! We came up with a simple ornament that we could make to give to family and friends this year, and we had a blast making them. 2-D Felt stockings. It started when I saw the felt holiday stickers at Joann’s last year. I picked up some gingerbread people, penguins, Christmas lights and snowmen. These are so cute and ‘real’ looking that I can’t tell you how many people have tried to open them. Plus, they fit nicely into Christmas cards!

What you’ll need:

• Sheets of felt- about 4-10, each sheet makes about 6 stockings
• Holiday Felt Stickers
• Hot Glue & Glue Gun, or Elmer’s glue
• Glitter glue (optional)

We started by making a template of a stocking on paper, I tweaked it until I got just the right shape that I liked, then we traced and cut out a sock shape on the felt and we got about 6 stockings per sheet. We used the scraps from the felt to make the accents and loops.

Then I cut the top “fold”  (where a real sock/stocking would fold over) and loop out of a contrasting color of felt. If you’re using red as your sock shape, use white or green to contrast. The way I glued them together is top ‘fold’ on top of the sock shape and the loop simply glued to the back. You can sandwich the loop between the top ‘fold’ and the sock, but it may make the corner look lumpy.

After you have those glued into place, you can put the stickers and glitter accents on. If you like, you can even glue on felt pieces to make a contrasting toe and heel on the sock.

When we were done, Jaden picked out a special one for each family memeber, his mom, dad, sister, each grandparent and himself. He was so excited to show everybody what we had made!