Personalized Ornaments or Gift Tags

on the tree, next to my sister's ornament

Every year as we put our tree up it is fun to see the ornaments we have collected throughout the years. This year as I unpacked the ornaments, I surprised to find those that my sister Misha had made me. They were simple, but thoughtful, and I had not really given them much thought in the past. Except now she is gone, and they are a beautiful memory of her. To know that she took time to make something by hand for my family and ship it off to us is very special.  It was bittersweet. I can just see her, sitting in her living room with the supplies gathered around; curling ribbons and writing with paint markers in her pretty handwriting. Growing up we did a lot of homemade ornaments and she was carrying on that tradition.

So after reading a post at Rosemary and Thyme today, I realized I had everything I needed to make a few special ornaments for my friends and family! Hopefully they will think of us each year as they decorate their trees! This is a very simple project, I used our Clay Polymer that is pliable until baked for 15 minutes and rolled it out with a jar. After some thought and searching through all our cookie cutters, we decided to use a small jar lid to cut the circles and a straw to cut the twine hole. We had to do a custom shape for those with much longer names :) I recently bought a kit to imprint letters onto cookies and we used it to print each family's name. On the back I used a toothpick to hand draw a heart with the year '14.

finished product

the "fancy" version

a little personal touch on the back

the tools, before baking

Supplies:
Clay Polymer
Letters
Twine or ribbon
Roller - I used a small jar
Cookie Cutter/lid/sharp knife - to cut shapes
Straw - the perfect size to cut out the twine hole
Glitter and glue (optional)





Follow the directions for your clay on baking time and let them cool before tying on some pretty twine or ribbon. I decided to dress up a few, that I won't be sending via mail, with glitter around the edges.

I think they turned out so sweet, yet simple enough to go with any decorations. I will use them to wrap up a few gifts too. It was a good project to involve my boys too, and they made one for each of their teachers to include with a gift card.

Everything you need for your project: