Thursday, December 19, 2013

Our Funky Homemade Ornaments

Addison and I have been spending a lot of time doing crafty things this holiday season. It was something I always loved doing with my mom so I want Addie to have those same experiences! I plan on blogging about a few of the them so I hope you don't mind reading about it! :) 

I always love unique Christmas tree ornaments so when I saw this blog post a couple of years ago, I've been wanting to try it! 

The directions are actually in Danish and I did things a little bit differently so I will tell you how we made them! 
First of all, you will need metal or silicone (make sure they are oven safe) cookie cutters. You will also need some Perler beads (you can usually find them in the craft section of most stores), cooking spray or vegetable oil, parchment paper, a cookie sheet, and a bowl of lukewarm water.
To get started, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Lay parchment paper on a cookie sheet and oil down the inside of your cookie cutter. There are two different ways to do this. You can either spray the inside of the cookie cutter with cooking spray, or you can rub vegetable oil all along the inside. 
**A side note: The cooking spray actually seems to work better but it does discolor the outer beads a tad. We ended up using olive oil but it took a little bit more force to get the beads out of the cookie cutter after they were cooled. 
Next, create a single layer of beads inside the cookie cutters. Make sure to get them into the nooks and crannies or your ornament will look a little wonky. 
Place the cookie sheet in the oven and wait about 10 minutes. You will want to check them around 7 minutes or so to see how they look. The longer you leave them in, the more they will melt so it depends a lot what you want the final ornaments to look like! 

We liked the bumpy look with lots of holes so we chose not to leave them in too long. It's all a matter of preference though! :)

Once they are done melting, take them out of the oven and let them cool for a minute or so. Then, using kitchen tongs, carefully peel them off of the parchment paper and drop them into a bowl of lukewarm water. This part is very important if you plan on removing the beads easily! 

After a few seconds of them sitting in the water you may remove them and pop them right out of the cookie cutters. Easy peasy! :)
String some bakers twine through one of the holes and you have yourself an ornament! :)

You can also turn these into sun catchers...
Or even fridge magnets!

We also made some Christmas gift toppers that I will try to show later!





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