Deck the halls!

After all the fun I had swapping ornaments with Alisa and Brittany last year, I was very excited to take part in this year's Freshly Blended ornament swap. The idea behind the swap is that you create a series of ornaments and send them among the group of 10 people that the blog gives you. A bunch of designers from the office wanted to participate as well this year, so we decided to each make an extra ornament to swap between ourselves in the studio too.

I was inspired by a lovely snowflake ornament I spotted on Etsy that used a vintage brooch at the center. I loved the glamourous antique look, but I wanted my pieces to have a bit more sparkle. I decided to add glitter and metal to the mix to jazz them up. For a month or so I scoured local antique stores for the components of my snowflakes. I bought up vintage earrings, buttons, sheet music and various doo-dads that I thought might work... even old bundt pans. I found plain chipboard snowflake ornaments at Michael's and used Martha Stewart "white gold" glitter to cover them, layering the paper and other elements to create these beauties!

It was so nice to work on a project that wasn't "work" related and just let me enjoy the process of creating just for the fun of it. This project reminded me that I do actually love crafting and creating something beautiful, especially when I can repurpose something old or overlooked and give it new life. I'd like to make more of these ornaments, so I'll keep my eyes peeled for lovely little things that can be used during the next 11 months or so. It will be great to find items at estate sales and such during the summer.

I was really pleased with the way they turned out and was a little sad to have to send my snowflakes on their merry way around the globe. I packaged them up and bid them adieu! I can only hope that their new owners love them as much as I do. Stay tuned to see what all the other designers in the studio created and what fun little treasures I received in return!