Recycled Greeting Card Ornaments

I have long wondered if I could use greeting cards to make the type of ornaments I think of as "ornaments with fins." For my first attempts I thought that I would enhance the standard ball shaped ornament with a more Victorian shaped base. (Click here for my pdf pattern for these ornaments.) I was a bit sceptical about whether the fins could be done with something as stiff as greeting cards so for the first ornament I compromised a little bit. For the base I used two rectangular pieces cut from the back of a greeting card. I glued them together and when they were dry I cut out my ornament shape. For the "fins" I used 1 and 3/4 inch circles cut from some wallpaper scraps. I used 5 on each side.



Surprisingly I discovered that the fins were inclined to flatten against the base so I improvised and used a needle and thread to add some beads to act as spacers.



After that the ball had a nice round shape and I was delighted to discover that the blue ball appears to be centred in a circle cut from the white base.



After that successful experiment I was ready to try again using only a greeting card. I was drawn to a contemporary card with a strong colour palette. The printed area on this card was only about 4 x 6 inches so I had to plan ahead to fit the two base shapes and two circle shapes on the front of the card. I cut four circles from the back of the card and scored the centreline of each circle. (I had already glued the two base shapes together before I took this photo.)



I glued two white circles to the back of each of the two printed circles. I was pleased that, unlike the wallpaper circles, these card stock circles didn't want to flatten out.



I had planned to place the axis of the ball on the vertical centre of the ornament but something, perhaps the boldness of the colour scheme, "compelled" me to place it on a rakish 45 degree angle instead.



In order to get the "ball spinning in the centre effect" I had to make sure that the two sets of circles shared the same axis. This meant that when I placed the circles on the second side I had to place their axis at the opposite angle as the ones on the first side.





So this is what the ornament looked like when I had garnished it with ribbon.



I was very pleased with how the card stock "fins" held their position so next I made a completely Victorian shaped ornament from recycled greeting cards.

I didn't have a single card large enough to allow me to cut 6 ornament shapes from the front. I did have a nine inch long card which would allow me to cut 3 shapes from the front and 2 from the back. Because of the printing on the back I decided that I wouldn't cut the third shape from the back of this card, I cut the third shape from the back of another card. I cut the cards into rectangle that were each three inches wide.



On my first card ornament I had cut my ornament shape through two layers at once. On the second one I had to glue the two shapes together and then finely trim them to match. The former method was easier and neater. I decided to see if I could make this whole ornament by cutting the shapes through two layers at once. I scored each rectangle down the centre and then creased them.



I glued (with liberal use of a glue stick) two white rectangles to the back of a green one and two green rectangles to the back of a white one. Then I flattened the centre rectangles and placed the two sections under a book until the glue was dry.



After the glue was dry I traced my ornament shape onto the centre rectangles.



Then, cutting just inside the line and through only two layers, I cut out one of the ornament shapes. (At the top and the bottom I did cut away a tiny bit of the third layers, just to make it easier to cut away the centre sections.) Then I cut out the other other ornament shape.



I flipped one of the sections over and taped the hanging ribbon to the back. (I made sure that I taped each end separately.)



Then I glued the two sections together, making sure that the top and bottom of one ornament section aligned exactly with the top and bottom of the other. (I ignored the top and bottom of the rectangles.) I placed them under a book until they were dry.



After the glue was dry I used one of ornament shapes that I had already cut out to trace the pattern onto the remaining rectangles.



Then I cut just inside my lines, taking care to keep the ribbon out of the way. When I was done I needed to trim the base of the ornament so it was a bit tidier. And, probably because I had been moving the ribbon around, the top of the ornament was not firmly glued. I used a toothpick to add some glue to the inside and pressed it back together. And then the ornament was complete.





Hmmm. When I look at it from this angle it looks something like a pear ...




Pinwheel 2010

Double ball ornaments

I've been itching to see if the double ball ornaments, demonstrated in the following two videos,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sIjt8ulWHc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfXF6k2SvBY

could be done using recyled Christmas cards. I didn't have any hatpins (and few other interesting trimmings) and for my first attempt I picked a somewhat bland card. I alternated strips from the front of the card with strips from the back of the card. In lieu of a hat pin I used a pearl bead that had a long wire stem. I began with the bottom ball and when I finished threading on all the strips and beads I bent the end down into the bead to make a loop for the hanger. This is the result.





I discovered that the stiffness of the card stock means that the strips, especially on the smaller ball, tend to want to fold instead of roll. I think that I can precondition them so that they will roll but before I tried this on some more colourful cards I thought that I would experiment using some ribbon instead.

I don't have a lot of wide ribbon but I did find some vinyl velvet ribbon that was very easy to cut into 1/2 inch strips. For this ornament I used a double thickness of thread, instead of a hat pin, to make the axis of the ornament. Using a needle and thread was a lot faster than threading card stock strips on the wire, and I didn't need to punch any holes in advance.



The one thing that I didn't like about this ornament is that, because of the order that the strips are added, there is a beginning and end point where the 12 layers of ribbon hold the top and bottom ribbons far apart. This is especially noticeable because the velvet ribbon is so thick.



So I decide to do another experiment using ribbon, but altering the order that the ribbon is added. In the two above ornaments I alternated the two colours of paper/ ribbon. This time I put all of one colour of ribbons on first and then added the strips of the other colour. I arranged the ball with the strips that were put on first on the outside of the ball. I discovered that when one does this it is desirable to make the inside loops a little longer than the outside loops so that they keep the loops from shifting position. I'll know better next time but in the meantime I liked the look of this little ornament.



And now I think that I'll take the two ribbon balls apart and make the first one the second way and the second one the first way. After all the ribbon of the second ball is so thin that even 12 ribbons won't stack up very thick...

The next day

Well I took them apart and redid them. The yellow one worked well. As I suspected the stack of ends is negligible. For the velvet one I discovered that I needed to make the ribbons of the inside loops narrower so they could fit between the outside loops. The inside ribbon is now only 1/4" wide.



Though there are just as many ends as before they are now inside the ornament, not stacked between the two balls. This makes for a much smaller gap between the two balls. And now it occures to me that for this style of ornament I can use loops of ribbons twice as long (four inch and six inch) and there would be even fewer ends. Hmmm...

Later that week ...

I dug deep into my craft supplies and found some more appropriate embellishments so I decided to experiment a little more. For both these ornament I started with the beads and bead caps that make up the base of each ornament, added the smaller ball, the larger ball and finally the bead caps and beads that make the top of each ornament. I made the yellow and white one with the short pieces of ribbon (2 inch and 3 inch) and assembled it as shown in the you tube videos. (So each ribbon appears to swirl from under the adjacent ribbon.)



For the blue one I found some 1/4 inch white ribbon to alternate with the blue velvet. I cut all the ribbons twice as long (4 inch and 6 inch) and trimmed about an 1/8 of an inch from the blue ones. (Because they were all going to be on the outside.) Then I made a loop of each ribbon, overlapped their ends by about 1/4 inch and glued them together. When I added the loops I did so in such a way that the very top and very bottom loops did not show this overlap. (For the bottom ball I poked the needle in the first loop through the centre of the loop and for the top ball I poked the needle in the first loop through the overlapped section.) I also alternated the placement of the ribbon so that half the overlaps are on the top of the ball and half are on the bottom of the ball.



For both of these ornaments I used a gold coloured thread. To make the ornaments a little stiffer, and to help maintain the distance between the top and bottom of each ball, I threaded several gold bugle beads onto the thread in the middle of each ball. (I wish that I had one very long bugle bead that I could cut to the required lengths!)

I found that the slippery ribbons of the yellow and white ball were reluctant to stay in place on the bigger ball so I applied a little glue to the underside of the organza flower and pressed it against the top of the ball.



When I finished these two ornaments I redid the burgundy and blue one using the metal bead caps and pearl beads.




Pinwheel 2010