Leaping for Joy

We have a small(ish), slim Christmas tree in the foyer all decked out in mostly red & white. I call it the Grandma Tree. I've been planning it for years - ever since I opened a box of Christmas decor we inherited from Steve's grandma and I noticed that the items were mostly red & white. I immediately thought about the ornaments my grandmother had made and given to me through the years, and I realized they were also mostly red & white. The idea for a mostly red & white Grandma Tree was born.

I'll share more about the Grandma Tree in upcoming posts, but I want to tell you about some mostly red & white ornaments I made to add to the Grandma Tree. You may have noticed a deer ornament on yesterday's photo - although with the red lights illuminated on the tree, the ornament looked sort of pink. Here's how it actually looks.

I had purchased an inexpensive box of 12 metal lids & rings for canning jars. Since I wasn't going to use them for canning, the Walmart Mainstays brand was sufficient - less than $3 for the box. I needed the canning rings for some wreath ornaments I made for our large tree in the great room. (I'll tell you all about those soon, but I will say that it's my favorite Christmas craft project & super simple, too.) It was more cost effective to purchase the box with the rings & lids, as I knew I could use the lids for another project - more bang for my buck that way. And. . .  I decided to combine the image of a buck (as in deer) with the song title, "Joy to the World." I made it round and the size of the recessed center of the canning lid.

12 fit on one 8.5x11 sheet of cardstock.

OK, that would do for the top of the canning lid, but I also needed something for the bottom side - the side with the unattractive reddish-orange seal. After all, the ornaments should look halfway decent from both sides. I could have enlarged the design a bit and used it again on the bottom, but I chose to use this snowflake pattern background paper (via mel stampz) to cover the entire bottom instead.

Since I don't own any fancy schmancy cutting tools, I just printed that snowflake design page on a sheet of 8.5x11 cardstock and traced around a canning lid multiple times to fill the sheet. Then, I did some cutting with a good old-fashioned scissors.

I purchased some ribbon to use for the hangers - throwing a touch of green into the mix.

I gathered my supplies. . . 

and asked Steve if he could easily make some holes in the canning lids. Yep, his drill press came in real handy - punched through all 12 at once - plus 4 used lids I saved after we finished jars of Thimbleberry jam. (As long as he was using the drill press, right?)

I used an ordinary paper punch to make corresponding holes in the paper circles and glued the circles onto the canning lids - deer on the front & snowflakes on the back. Then, it was just a matter of cutting the ribbon and threading it through the holes. The ribbon was pretty stiff - not easily knotted - so I glued the 2 ends together to form a loop for hanging. 

I call these my "Leaping for Joy" ornaments - another fast & frugal craft project - and a mostly red & white addition to the mostly red & white Grandma Tree.

All is well in the Keweenaw.