{Our} Home for the Holidays: Lorie's Photo Ornaments

Hello!  I'm Lorie from Reading Confetti and I'm so excited to be here sharing one of our family traditions with you!  My blog is all about making reading fun by combining children's literature with simple activities and crafts, so it is nice to do an adult (not that kind of adult) tutorial for a change. One of my favorite traditions is when my sister (Mom of 4) and I get together and create personalized photo ornaments for the children in our family.  She's a great photographer and the crafty one in the family, so she always comes up with something good to make.  It's so fun to pull these ornaments out every year and see how our kids have changed. {sniff} Here is what we've created in past years.  I linked to Amazon so you could see the product but almost all of the supplies can be found at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, or Joann's.  (Don't forget to use your coupons!)

2010: May be Crooked, We Couldn't Let All That Vodka Go to Waste
We followed this tutorial from Photo Jo Jo.

2009: Punches, Worth Their Weight in Gold
We bought a bucket of Wilton party favor boxes (can't find them on-line, but we got them at Michaels) and a scalloped circle punch set to punch out colored cardstock. We taped 2 circles back to back with a line of ribbon sandwiched in the middle. We used the crop-a-dile to punch a hole.

2008: Buy Extra: Acrylic Cracks
We bought  acrylic frames (similar to these,) added embellishments and tags and then used a crop-a-dile again to punch a hole in the top. We never did figure out the trick to making holes and a couple cracked.

2007: Glass Balls: More Fragile Than You Think
We printed photos on fabric sheets made for ink jet printers and decorated with rub-ons.

2006: The Ornament That Started It All.
We bought unfinished chipboard ornaments and covered them with scrapbook paper and added a tag.

Here is this year's final product... 2011: The Year We Cursed Ourselves For Picking Long Names For Our Kids

These are plain wooden cubes decorated any way you like. We chose paint, scrapbook paper and glitter.

 After all sides were decorated, we glued the pictures down and then coated the whole thing with Mod Podge (don't worry, it dries clear.)

We took washers and stamped the names and year and then hot glued them to one side.

Finally, we added mini eyelets (found in the wood section of Michaels) and added ric rac. Thanks so much for letting me share this tradition with you!  I hope you'll stop by Reading Confetti and see what other things we've been up to!  Merry Christmas!