Series 3 - SITUATION CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT-ATION #5

Mary asked Santa: "What's that in the sky?"

Santa replied: "It's rain, Dear."

What do elves learn at Elf school?

The Elfabet.

(A few funnies from The Boy's Advent Calendar)

Welcome to the 5th and FINAL installment of Series 3 - SITUATION CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT-ATION!!!

To see what kind of mischief I've been up to in past installments, scroll down to the bottom of my Series Page here!

In the meantime, if today's ornaments seem familiar it's because they are! Indeed they are the remnants of, and were 100% inspired by, our Advent Clock Calendar.

They are super-simple to make, and are highly handy as well. It's true. Not only are these little ornaments ornamental - that's why they call them that - but they also double as tiny gift boxes! I don't know about you, but I can think of a ton of gifts these little guys could potentially house. Let's see. We have big beautiful buttons. Many mints. Elegant earrings. A neat necklace. A wonderful watch. A merry missive. A radiant ring. Car keys. A mitt-full of mullah... I could go on but I think you get the picture. The girl can alliterate!

The tutorial is so simple, I didn't even bother taking pictures. No, I felt that would kinda be insulting to your superior brainy-ness. I did however do a short write-up for the newbie. You know who you are.

Here it is! Go nuts! (That's another thing you could put in there, by the way.)

Tutorial: Frozen Juice Container Gift Box Ornament (That's a mouthful, eh?)

You will need the following:

• Clean frozen concentrated fruit juice containers and their metal lids
• Small piece of cardboard slightly bigger than a juice lid
• White paper (I used some old white wrapping paper)
• Old magazine pages (I used some beautiful National Geographic pages from 1987)
• White ribbon and a large sewing needle
• Gesso
• Acrylic paint in your choice of colour (I used sage green and sage silver) and paintbrush
• White glue
• Hammer and 1 nail
• Exacto knife and scissors
• Pencil

1. Using this method to mark your juice container, cut off approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) or less from the bottoms of your container with an Exacto knife.

2. Paint the stubby little juice container with a few coats of gesso allowing it to dry between coats. Avoid painting the metal bottom if possible. No need to paint the inside.

3. Paint the juice container with a few coats of your colour choice. Avoid painting the metal bottom if possible (again). No need to paint the inside (again). Allow drying time between coats.

4. Using a juice lid as a rough guide, create a circle template from a small piece of cardboard. The cardboard circle template should fit inside the top of the juice lid.

5. Now using the circle template, draw and cut out 2 circles per ornament from your beautiful magazine pages.

6. Repeat step 5 but with white paper. Make snowflakes with these white circles. Here is a snowflake tutorial link just in case.

7. Glue your snowflakes onto your magazine page circles.

8. Create a hanger for your ornament. Poke a needle hole in the side of your stubby juice container and then use the needle to pass the ribbon through the hole.

9. Using a hammer and nail, poke 2 holes along the edge of your metal juice lid on opposite sides of the lid.

10. Using a large needle, poke 2 holes on opposite sides of the painted juice container that match the holes in your lid.

11. Attach the lid to the juice container with a piece of ribbon. To do this, thread your ribbon onto a large needle and pull one end of the ribbon through both holes in the container, and out the other side. Remove the needle. Thread the other end of the ribbon onto the needle. Pull the ribbon through the top of the lid, and then through the bottom of the lid to the other side so that both ends of the ribbon come out from one side of the container. Tie a bow.

12. Finally, glue one magazine-snowflake-circle to the lid, and one to the bottom of your ornament.

And there you have it! A pretty recycled frozen juice container gift box ornament... Really though. I must find a new name for this one. Seriously. Any ideas?

Note: Here's my link to some more Juicy Little Gift Boxes you can make using exactly the same techniques!

Thanks for dropping by, and have yourself a lovely evening!