Simple Gift Idea - Personalized Ornaments

This is the second post in my “Simple Gift Ideas” Series that will lead up to Christmas. The first post can be found here.

When I was growing up, my mom would get or make everyone in our family a personalized Christmas tree ornament. Sometimes mine would be an ornament with my name on it (usually a homemade one since nothing ever comes with Eva on it). Other times the ornament would be of something I enjoyed at the time (like when I thought cows were super cute). I think an ornament can be an excellent way to commemorate a memory. It’s so fun to look at all of the ornaments now and see how they changed as I changed.

A few months ago, I made the ornament pictured above. Since I didn’t have a blog at the time, I don’t have a before picture—just the after picture. Inside the ornament is our wedding invitation. I cut the invitation into strips, highlighting each row of text. I then curled the strips one by one and filled the empty, glass ornament that I bought at Michaels.

I made this ornament for our Christmas tree, but this past fall, I made a similar one for a friend, using her wedding invitation to fill it. It turned out even better than mine since she used elegant paper for her invitations.

These ornaments are not limited to wedding invitations. My goal is to make one for each trip my husband and I go on, so we can display personal memories on our Christmas tree, and we can reminisce about them every year as we set up and take down our decorations. I plan to fill the ornaments with pictures and mementos of things we did on our journeys. I also have plans to personalize a few more ornaments this month to give as gifts, but I can’t share those ideas yet as the gift recipients may be reading ;)

The sky’s the limit when it comes to deciding what to put inside. You can put concert tickets, pictures of you with a friend, invitations, keepsakes, and more. Anything you can fit through the opening of the ornament is fair game. Hopefully, this has given you some ideas of how you can personalize ornaments for your family and friends this year.

Notes:

• The standard sphere ornament holds more than you would think. When I cut up my wedding invitation, it only filled the ornament about half way. I had to cut up a matching thank-you card to make it look full. Purchasing smaller ornaments should allow an average wedding invitation to fill it.
• I used a paper cutter to speed up cutting the strips, and I used little kid’s scissors to curl the paper like you would ribbon.
• At Michael’s, a 4-pack of ornaments was $4.99. Michael’s often has 40% off coupons available on their website. If one is available, print it out and bring it with you to Michael’s. A coupon like this will save you a couple of dollars.

My mom gave us this ornament for our first Christmas as married folk! On the back she wrote, "BENDER 2012". I just thought it was super cute and wanted to share :)