All that glitters...

Over the last few years, one of my favorite holiday traditions has become creating ornaments for the annual Freshly Blended Holiday Ornament Swap. Although the "official" swap wasn't happening this year, my group of fabulously creative designer friends kept the tradition alive. Many thanks to Alisa from Sibling for coordinating the whole thing! It's such a rare treat to get actual mail anymore but I honestly enjoy the act of planning, creating and packaging my ornaments even more. It really IS better to give than to receive!

For this swap, I decided to create layered snowflakes from found/repurposed items. I used old tart tins, court documents, poker chips, checkers, pearl buttons and lots of vintage rhinestone jewelry. I had the snowflake shapes laser cut from chipboard and I covered them with GLITTER. The whole process was very similar to the ornaments I made two years ago, so I will spare you all the details. In the end, I was absolutely in love with this set of ornaments. Since I ended up with enough material to make an extra ornament, I was able to snag this beauty for myself. SCORE!

In total I made 12 ornaments, so this is just a sampling of them all. Like real snowflakes, each one of these sparkly gems is one-of-a-kind! I always have my eyes peeled for pretty rhinestone broaches or earrings and sparkly buttons, so I'm sure to make more of these babies in the future. If only people would stop making broach bouquets! Those bitches are buying up all my supplies!