Handmade Rosette Ornaments!!

Hey Everyone! Happy Tuesday!! Hope your day is off to a good start. I wanted to post yesterday but the day literally got away from me. As I mentioned in my last post,  my hubby decided to make this Christmas more about handmade rather than store bought. When it comes to the decor and the tree of course. So I have been crafting like crazy trying to come up with handmade ornaments for our tree. Now I understand why some people start this process months in advance. I'm already feeling the holiday rush so to speak and I'm hoping I can pull this off. So for today's post (which was meant for yesterday but I was pooped), I made rosettes in varying shades of green and red to adorn our tree. My hubby fell in love with the ones I made for our "Thankful" banner. So I made some over the weekend and I think they turned out nice. But I'll let you be the judge. ;) Here's the pics for your perusal:

 

Not bad, huh?!

I wanted to keep the design simple so that I could mass produce them.

I also set daily goals for myself so that I knew exactly what parts I wanted to complete and give myself a day to just assemble them.

I wish I could say this made things go smoothly but if you've heard of Murphy's Law "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong", you'll understand.

Here's a quick rundown of what I did:

 

Day One began by cutting 1 3/4" strips of patterned and regular cardstock in greens, reds and white. I used my Fiskars Threading Water punch to add a decorative edge. For regular rosettes, you have to score every 1/4" but with the threading water punch I only score between the scallops. I find this helps the scoring process, which can be tedious when you're making a whole bunch, go that much faster. So once you've scored all your strips, proceed to fold along the score lines using mountain valley folds. I used a little Scotch Quick Dry adhesive to attach the ends together. To help the folds at the ends line up nicely, I usually trim it a little. This helps you to overlap the ends without having any overhang. And to finish the rosette, I just hotglued it onto a 1 1/2" circle I punched. Helpful Tip: Hot Glue is the only adhesive that will work for this!! I've tried other adhesives when I first started making these and trust me they don't hold up! So with that said, did I burn a few fingertips off in the process? The answer is a resounding YES!!

 

So by the end of Day One, I had all my rosettes assembled, my fingertips singed and papers everywhere. Day Two rolled around and I knew I needed some centers to finish these off. So I headed to my Cricut. I cut out 40 2" circles from my George and Basic Shapes Cartridge. I then pulled out my holiday cartridge and cut the sentiment "Joy", Santa's silhouette, reindeer silhouette, bells, doves, and snowflakes. I cut them all out of white cardstock so I could watercolor the images. And the sizes for these shapes vary from 1 1/2" - 2 1/2". Once I had all these cut out and watercolored I adhered them to the centers of the circles using ATG and pop dots. I also stamped a few of the circles with some holiday sentiments I had. To finish off the centers, I used some gel and glitter pens to add dots and dashes around the perimeters. All that was left to do, was to attach them to the rosettes with hot glue. And ta-da, ornaments complete!!

 

Here are a few more close up pics for you to enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 I hope you enjoyed this project for today. It was a challenge making these. All totaled. I made 40 rosettes, give or take the first 10 that tore cause I got a little heavy handed with the scoring. But I'm sure I'm not the only one this has happened to . If I had to do it over, I would make these with only the Santa, reindeer, and Joy die cuts. Those are my favorites so far. I  just hope the tree appreciates all the blood, sweat and tears that went into these. For next year, I'll start my holiday planning in January that way if I'm making ornamnets, I'll have a good headstart. I think this is a good stopping place for this post and I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day! Peace!! :)