Felt Fox Ornament

I am still doing some last minute Christmas prep and decided I wanted to make ornaments for some of my coworkers. I came up with this little felt fox pattern and decided to share it with you all. While I used needle and thread to put mine together, you can also use hot glue or fabric glue if you want to whip up multiples of these for gifts yourself and save time :)

To make your own fox ornaments at home you will need:

Fox ornament pattern (free pdf download here)
Two colors of felt (I used red and cream, you can change up your foxes to be any color you like)
scissors
pen
needle and thread
buttons in various sizes
polyfil or other soft stuffing
ribbon, thread or cord for hanging the ornament

Start by downloading and printing the fox ornament pattern. It comes in two sizes, so you can make a whole family of foxes if you like (or use the pattern that fits your tree best). Trace the patterns onto your felt and cut out the pieces (you will need two of the larger head piece and one face piece for each ornament).

Arrange the face piece onto the head, move around until you are satisfied. Felt tends to stick to itself a bit, but feel free to pin your face pieces in place before sewing together (or just use fabric or hot glue to put these together).

Select buttons in a color and size you like. Place them onto the face piece and glue them down or sew them on. Once you have this piece completed, you can layer together the two head pieces and begin sewing or gluing those together (make sure to leave a hole for adding stuffing). Before sewing up the top of the head, I add in a ribbon or some metallic cord to use to hang my ornaments from the Christmas tree. I used a blanket stitch to sew my pieces together, but you can use any stitch you are comfortable with (or again, glue is great and makes this super fast and easy--the kids can even help!).

Hang your finished product on the tree or give these as gifts (they are super cute on packages instead of bows!). Stay tuned, Friday I will have a roundup of some of my favorite DIY ornaments from 2013 :)

Hand Painted Glassware

These glasses were hand painted by me as a housewarming gift for a friend. I had never painted on glass before (I didn't realize special paint for just such a process was even made). However, I had a friend here in Portland make me a mug with a mustache painted on it and had to go looking for this amazing paint to try it myself. I decided to put those years of art school to good use and do some woodland creatures on my glasses.

The paint I found came in a little set of 8 colors from the company Folk Art(they make mostly acrylic paints). I was pleasantly surprised that the whole set was only about 4 dollars, so this is a project that anyone can try without having to invest a lot of money. Also, any glass will do. You could go to a yard sale or thrift store and pick up super cheap glasses, vases, old jars, etc. The important thing is that you clean the surface thoroughly with alcohol and allow it to dry before painting. If you are not sure where you can find the paint in your area, I found some online with a huge assortment of colors, including chalkboard paint, here.