Handmade holiday

I signed up for Jett Superior's fantastic internet ornament exchange this year, and I'm so glad I did. My ornament arrived yesterday courtesy of @angi33 and I love it:


The ornament is from Designs by Wesley and the technique was inspired by an old Japanese decorative process called Mokume Gane. (I'm suddenly kind of nervous about the way-less-fancy ornament that I sent out in the exchange!)

The only downside to my ornament is that I can't put it on our tree this year. With an almost-toddler in the house and an actual toddler visiting us the week after Christmas, I decided to decorate our tree only with non-breakable ornaments this year. I was worried it would look skimpy or lame, but once I got my decorations out I realized I actually have dozens of really nice non-glass things.


My favorites are the ornaments that were handmade by someone, so I thought it would be nice to show off some of the best ones. The first one is a beaded spiral that my sister made. I can't quite articulate exactly what it is that makes me love this ornament -- maybe the beads, which we used to make bracelets as children -- but it's one of my favorites of our entire selection.


She also made this one, a cute owl picture decoupaged onto a CD. It's a bit big, but worth the space on the tree.


A friend brought this ornament from Nepal, where it was handmade from what appears to be gum wrappers in a sustainable co-op set up to allow women to earn a living wage from selling their work. I think it's really beautiful.


My mom made bundles of these beaded icicles when I was a kid and used to sell them at craft fairs. I have four or five on my tree that I inherited from my grandmother.


The bibliophile made the next two from plain papier mache ornament balls. She used yellow as the base because it's my favorite color. I like them both, but the second one, with the little bits of tissue paper, is my favorite of the two.



Norahs1213 made paper cranes for our annual Thanksmas ornament exchange one year. It's such a simple but lovely idea.


Teacher Incognito painted snowman faces on plastic ornaments for another year's exchange.


Evilducky knitted "stockings" from a baby bootie pattern one year, though my favorite ornament-like items she's made have to be this year's adorable owlies.



Just for kicks, I'll include some that I made. These all came from the sets I made for the ornament exchange, except for the reindeer. The first one was based on a Chinese paper lantern pattern that I got from a girl at work. I had MB replicate the pattern in AutoCAD and shrink it down to miniature, then printed the patterns on Christmas-appropriate scrapbooking paper, cut out oodles and oodles of tiny pieces, and glued them together. It was a lot of work, but these are probably my favorite of all the ornaments I've ever made.


I think I made these the first year we did an ornament exchange at Thanksmas. They're from a kit, but I really liked the results.


This little spool / pipe cleaner reindeer was from a kit my mom bought when I was in middle school. I vaguely remember wrapping the thread around the spool, and I'm sure it was a bit tedious, but the end result is pretty darn cute.


I made this type of ornament for Thanksmas this year. Another kit, but it's exactly what I wanted. I love these not because I have a thing for sequins, but because my mom made a set of these for her tree when she and my dad first got married and they couldn't afford fancy store-bought ornaments, and they were always among my favorites of all the things on our family Christmas tree.


Do you have a favorite ornament, handmade or otherwise?