This was one of the very first ornaments I made for this tree, but it is also the fastest, so I could save it for any last minute decorators out there. I see these paintable porcelain ornaments at Michael’s every year, and every year I talk myself out of trying them. But not this time. I do NOT consider myself a painter (yet, anyway. I’m working on it.) so don’t be turned off if you’re not either. This is an extremely simple design and I’ll walk you through every step of it.

Using a medium sized brush, make two little swipes. A J, and a backwards J, to make the outside edges of the angels skirt.

Make one more swipe down the middle to fill it in, and add a little more paint to get a more solid color.

To make the angel’s arm, swipe your brush in a C shape, letting it trail off delicately.

Fill it in with a little more paint to get better coverage.

A few little dots of peach to make hands and feet, and a larger dot at the top for the head. Add a little bump for the nose.

A straight line connects the mouth and the hand for the neck of the horn, and then the mouth of the horn on the other side of the hand is just a sideways hershey kiss.

Since I’m not a regular porcelain painter, I wanted to buy as few colors of paint as possible. So to get the color for the hair I mixed the gold and the peach together, then made little swoops with my paint brush to make angel’s curls. Add a couple of layers of this for good coverage.

Make the wing by painting half a heart. If you brush the paint on with short strokes it will make it look more like feathers.

Then just a little embellishing. A gold ribbon around the hem, a golden halo, and a couple of little swoops to highlight the arm. And you did it. You’re a decorative painter.

Because I have the hardest time not glittering something, I spread a little white glue on the edge and sprinkled glitter all over it.

These porcelain ornaments come with a hanger already attached, but I wanted to make it look a little more ethereal, so I tied a great big bow out of a piece of tulle and attached it with a little hot glue, and then let the ends hang long down behind.

Maybe I’m projecting, maybe painting is just intimidating to me, but anything is achievable if it’s just broken down into enough steps. This little angel is so simple that anyone, even I, can paint it, but it still looks fancy enough to celebrate.

Just like yesterday’s ornament inspired a whole nativity, and the needlefelted animals inspired another nativity, this paper twist nativity was inspired by this little angel ornament. I knew that I needed to add some angels to this tree, and when my friend handed me that great big bag of paper twist, I knew how to do it. And then I liked it so much that I expanded it (again) to a whole nativity, and a special surprise still to come.

Each angel will call for:
Cream: 24 inches
Natural or flesh colored: 5 inches
White: 20 inches

Unroll all your paper twist, and brush a little gold paint onto the cream paper. I water mine down to keep it subtle. Let that paper dry while you work on the next couple of steps.

Since this ornament will be hung, you don’t have to worry about making it stand up. So all you need is a wooden bead for the head, and a small dowel that will fit through the hole. I actually used bamboo chopsticks from the dollar store because they were thin enough and easy to cut to the length I needed.

Thread a ribbon through the hole in the bead and tie a knot at the top to keep it place. Tie another knot in the ends for it to hang on the tree.

To make the halo, wrap a piece of wire around the bead and twist the ends. Use a tiny bit of glue to keep it in place.

Cut another piece of wire just shorter than the piece of natural colored paper twist. Place it on one end of the paper and fold the ends in to hold it in place.

Roll the paper up tightly to create the arms and glue the ends down to hold it together.

Cut a 4″ piece of the cream paper twist, and glue the edges together lengthwise to create a tube.

Thread the arms through the tube and pinch in the center. Use a little hot glue to keep that pinch in place.

Use a little more hot glue to stick the arms onto the body.

Cut three pieces of cream paper twist 4″ long and use hot glue to stick them around the waist.

Cut a piece of cream paper twist 12″ long, and then cut it again lengthwise. Wrap on piece over each shoulder, gluing under the armpit to hide the body.

Wrap a piece of wire around the waist a few times for a belt.

To make the wings, begin by cutting 4 pieces of white paper twist 5″ long. Cut them into a wing shape by cutting just as you would if you were cutting a heart out of a folded piece of paper. For a little more stability, glue a piece of wire into the top of that curve.

Then glue another piece of the wing over the top of it.

Glue two of those wings to the middle of the back, and your angel is ready to fly.

The wire in the arms allows you to position them however you like. You could have your angel bringing a present, or praying, or, like my angel here, spreading some good news to some shepherds.

When I started this project, I thought making a whole nativity themed tree would be plenty. And then I kept on going and made a whole bunch of full nativity sets. Each time it was because I enjoyed the ornament I made so much I just couldn’t stop the inspiration. This papercut tree came after I had cut out 12 of these ornaments, which were originally inspired by this great ornament by Patricia at A Little Hut. I thought her use of a cardboard ring from a roll of masking tape was just brilliant recycling, and it inspired me to use a cardboard ring as a frame for my own papercrafting idea.

I didn’t happen to have any empty masking tape rolls lying around, so I had to make my own cardboard tube. I got a 3″ mailing tube to do the job.

To measure a straight cutting line all the way around, I used a piece of ribbon and matched up the ends. This ribbon was an inch wide, so it worked perfectly to trace both ends and get the size I wanted.

After much trial and error, my favorite way of cutting off the rings was to slice through them with an exacto knife.

But no matter how neat I tried to be, the edges were still pretty ragged. Luckily cardboard sands clean really easily with just a few swipes of sandpaper.

Paint the inside and outside of each cardboard ring. I painted the inside a metallic brown color because I loved the slight sparkle and contrast it provided. It’s just a little touch of something.

Poke a hole through the ring with a needle and thread two ends of ribbon through. Tie them into a knot to make your hanger.

Download this lovely pattern I made for you, totally for free because it’s Christmas and I love my readers. Just click on that image to go to flickr and you can save it to your computer. When you print it, print it at 8 1/2 x 11 to get it sized for the 3″ wide tube.

Cut the image out with a sharp exacto knife. The only thing to know about this step is that you shouldn’t cut the ground part. That’s a little confusing in the pattern, but if you look at my ornament you’ll see that the sheep are cut out, and then the rest of the ground stays.

This is a pretty delicate pattern, so chances are you might accidentally cut through something you didn’t intend to. Never fear. Just flip the paper over to the back side, cover your accident with a piece of tape, and then cut back along the lines of your papercutting so the extra tape gets sliced off.

Fold those tabs over and use them to glue the papercutting inside the cardboard tube.

The papercutting is fragile, but the great thing about using the cardboard tube is a frame is that it not only shows it off, but it also protects it. If you install the papercutting towards the middle of the tube, it will even be protected when you pack it up, barring anything pointy coming near it.

I just couldn’t stop myself once I got needlefelting. I was enjoying the stabbing process so much, and I was so in love with the results of my animals, that I knew I needed to expand and do an entire nativity set. It was actually a whole lot easier than the animals.

Partly to keep it easy on myself, and partly to make sure that the figures could stand up on a table by themselves, I kept the bodies really simple by making them into a cone shape. Mine are just under a foot tall, but the only time size matters here is for consistency. I spent the majority of my time felting the bottom of each cone to get a sturdy, flat, bottom.

I wanted Mary to kneel, so I started by making a shorter cone, then I added some more wool on the bottom of one side to be her knees. The result is a bit of a squat L shape.

I had a lot of fun dressing all the different wise men in different ways, so when you make your sleeves you’ll want to have a plan. If you want it to be part of a tunic, then make them in the same color as the body. If you want your wise man to wear a jacket, then make your sleeves a different color. Either way, just roll up a bunch of wool roving and felt it to make a couple of tubes. Remember to leave some of the wool on one end unfelted to attach the sleeves to the body.

Felt the sleeves in place, just below the top of the cone to create a bit of a neck. You can felt your sleeves into a shoulder shape by felting more heavily in one area, creating a little bump.

To make any kind of loose flowing clothing, you just have to make a felted sheet, and then drape it or cut it as necessary. I felted a piece of wool just as wide as the body and long enough to wrap from the back to the front, then cut a slit in the front to create the two sides of the vest and to make room for the neck. Some light felting at the sides and shoulders sticks the vest in place.

The head is always the most intimidating part of making figures, but you can do it. For starters, just felt a flesh colored ball, leaving some loose wool at the bottom. I made this wise man have a prominent chin by making one end of the ball a little flatter than the other.

Use the unfelted wool as a handle as you make your face. All you have to do is push the needle in to the wool a few more times in order to give some shape to the face. Punching the needle in a skinny U-shape pushes enough of the wool up to make a nose, and felting some small white circles in place will naturally create ridges that would surround the eyes.

Add some dark pupils to the white eyes you made, and make a mouth by felting an indented line.

Add a couple of eyebrows.

Then you’re ready to attach the head to the top of the neck by felting that raw wool you’ve been using as a handle.

Add hands to the end of the sleeves by making a couple of flattened disks. The wrists are made when you attach the hands to the sleeves by felting a little more wool roving on the end.

I gave this wise man a head scarf by making another felted sheet and draping it over his head. A few punches of the needle through the top of the head makes it stick in place.

I had so much fun giving each of these different figures a little different look. One of the wise man has a turban and a cape, another has gray hair and an embellished tunic, Joseph has a scarf and Mary has a shawl, and baby Jesus has a manger made by felting a couple of rectangles on top of each other. Once you realize that each piece is just a simple shape – a sphere, a cone, a rectangle, an oval – you can make any shape you want. And work out a whole lot of frustration while you do it.

Sometimes having your friends and neighbors know you as a crafter is a bit taxing. People ask for favors that are way more time consuming than they realize, they offer to pay you pennies for something that took you months to make, they think they’re being supportive by volunteering you for things you have no time to do. And yet, sometimes it really pays off. Such as when a friend decides to clean out their craft cabinet and give you all their supplies. I’ve been given tubs of paint from former tole painters, fabric from failed sewers, and this time, yards of paper twist from someone who couldn’t remember why she bought it in the first place.

My mother-in-law Sally is a nativity collector like me, and she has a gorgeous nativity made out of paper twist. She made it even more fabulous by styling it in a beautiful basket, so I figured I’d use my gifted paper twist to make something like the nativity set I’d been admiring for so many years.

To make the foundation for your figure, go to the unfinished wood aisle of your craft store and pick up a 12″ dowel, a 2″ wheel, and a 1 1/2″ ball topper. Make sure that all of the holes are the same size so that the dowel can fit inside the holes of the wheel and the ball. Attach them together with a little wood glue.

Paint a man face and a lady face on the balls. I’m not by any stretch a great painter, but part of the charm of this is a primitive look, so don’t be afraid to try. Check youtube for some simple illustration tutorials if you want a little more hand holding.

For a Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, here’s what paper twist you’ll need:
Natural or flesh colored: 4′
Peach: 9 1/2′
Rose: 9 1/2′
Baby blue: 27″
Dk Green: 27″
White: 24″

Unwrap all of the paper twist. To give it a fancier look, lightly glaze with watered down gold acrylic paint and let it dry.

Cut two 12″ pieces of the natural colored paper twist in half. Cut a piece of wire just under 12″ and roll the paper twist tightly around it. Glue the ends down.

Cut a 10″ piece of the peach and the rose to make a set of sleeves for Mary and for Joseph. Glue the edges of the long sides together to create an open tube.

Thread the arms through the sleeve, pinch it in the middle, and use hot glue to fix it the the dowel to create the arms.

Cut eight 10″ pieces out of the peach for Joseph and of the rose for Mary. Wrap each piece, one at a time, around the dowel at waist level, hot gluing as you go.

Glue one end of a 12″ piece of natural colored twist to the back of the arms and wrap it in a figure 8 shape around the neck and the waist. Build it up to make a chest in proportion to the head and skirt, and glue the other end down.

Cut a 24″ piece of peach for Joseph and rose for Mary, then cut each piece down the middle lengthwise. Lay each piece over one of the shoulders to make the bodice. Glue under the armpits to hide the chest, and wrap a piece of gold wire around the middle to make a belt.

For Mary’s scarf, cut an eighteen inch piece and a nine inch piece of baby blue paper twist. Cut the same measurements out of dark green for Joseph. Glue one end of the shorter piece to the back of Mary’s head.

Glue the middle of the longer piece to Mary’s forehead.

Then bring the rest of the paper to the back, fold to make it look like it’s draping, and use hot glue to keep it in place.

Baby Jesus’s head is a small wooden bead with a couple of little closed eyes painted on, then wrapped and wrapped and wrapped in the white paper twist. Use hot glue to secure the head in place and to stick the end of the paper to the back.

That wire we put inside the arms allows us to bend Mary’s arms forward to hold Baby Jesus. Hot glue baby to Mary’s chest, and then use more glue to keep her arms in position.

I finished my set off by displaying them in a basket, but the wooden wheel on the bottom allows these little figures to stand up on their own. I had enough paper twist to make two sets of this little family, so I thought it would make a great Christmas gift for one of my readers! Leave a comment and I’ll draw a winner on Christmas Eve, and this little family could be part of your celebration next year.

This tree has me busting out all the tried and true techniques, and this papercasting technique is one I learned over a decade ago in my years of watching Carol Duvall. I love all kinds of papercrafts, but I don’t love making my own paper. The process is messy and the results are uneven. But this technique allows you to make a papercasting of any image you can stamp out of just toilet paper, with no blender required.

You’ll need a mold to cast your paper into, so roll out a sheet of polymer clay, and press a stamp into it. Once you bake it as instructed on the packaging, you’ll have a mold you can use again and again. If you’re great at drawing, you could even carve your own mold right into the clay. Since I knew what I wanted to do with the casting, I made my mold exactly to the star shape I needed to fit inside the little wood ornament I bought. To do that, I just pressed the wood ornament into the clay first, cut away the excess, then positioned the nativity stamp inside.

The paper you’ll use to make the casting is just toilet paper. The cheaper the better. The quilted kind can sometimes leave a remnant of that pattern in the final image. Use a stiff stencil brush and plain water to pounce the toilet paper firmly into all the nooks and crannies of your image. The firmer you pack the paper into that image, the better it will look in the end.

Continue adding the toilet paper, one piece at a time, pouncing firmly to get the layers to stick together. If your shape is bigger than a piece of toilet paper, like mine, alternate the position of the layers to cover the whole piece.

Keep adding layers after layer until you get a good thick coverage. For this ornament project I used 8 pieces of double ply toilet paper. Let it dry at least overnight, but it might take longer depending on the number of layers and how much water you used.

These wooden star ornaments with the inset area came from JoAnn’s. I painted the backs and borders gold, and then treated them with a little gold leaf to really up the amount of bling.

Cut the papercasting to size, and glue it inside your ornament. Attach a pretty ribbon as a hanger.

I’ve used this technique tons of times over the years, for scrapbook pages, cards, and package decorations, and it never fails to amaze. People think that you’ve performed some kind of laborious magic. Nobody needs to know it’s really just toilet paper.

I don’t know that there is anything so iconic, literally and figuratively, as a stained glass window of the holy family. Unfortunately, working with stained glass is still on my “To Learn” list, and even if I could, they would have to be pretty small ornaments to not weigh the branches down to the ground.

Instead I reached back into my vault of craft experience and pulled out Gallery Glass. It’s a product that I had to work with years ago for a client, and I found it incredibly easy to use, and the finished product is so very lightweight that it’s perfect for a tree ornament.

Download this pattern I made for you. Click on the image to get to flickr, download it, and print it at the size of a full page.

Lay the pattern underneath a sheet of the gallery glass plastic and adhere with double sided tape.

Trace all the black lines with the gallery glass leading. I used the small sticky strips and cut them to size with an exacto knife, but you can also use the liquid leading.

Remove the pattern from the back to make sure the image looks the way you want it to. If you use the sticky strips, press down on everything thoroughly to make sure the liquid can’t seep underneath, and make sure your seams meet.

Then it’s just a matter of coloring in the lines. I found the colors to mix really easily, so you can get a variety of shades from just a couple of bottles of the gallery glass paint. How thick you apply the paint will effect how translucent the finished product is, so keep that in mind, and pop any air bubbles as you go because those will dry that way if you don’t.

I left my ornament to dry thoroughly overnight, then I used my exacto to cut the plastic to just slightly larger than the design. I used a hole punch in each corner to make room for a hanger, and a little gold ribbon threaded through to hang from.

This would be a great project to get your kids involved in. Once you finish all the leading, it’s just like those sun-catcher crafts you make at summer camp, only you can make it look like a lot more than rainbows and unicorns.

Last year I was seeing these flattened glass ornaments all over the place. Pottery Barn had a bunch of these and the ones I loved most were themed around the 12 days of Christmas. When I saw the flattened ornaments at Michael’s this year, I knew I could make something that highlighted a beautiful vintage picture of the nativity.

You’ll first need an image to decoupage. If you find some really great printed tissue paper or napkins, you can use those. Otherwise, you can find a royalty free image online and print it onto tissue paper. But of course tissue paper won’t go through your printer on its own, so start by ironing a piece of freezer paper to the tissue paper, gently.

Then cut the paper to the size that will fit through your printer, probably 8 1/2 x 11, and print as many images as you need.

Trim your image to the finished size – it’s way way easier to cut while it’s attached to the freezer paper – and then delicately peel the tissue paper from the freezer paper. It’s a good idea to print a few extras, because the tissue tears soooo easily.

Use your favorite decoupage medium – mod podge, artist sealer, whatever – and brush it over the image, right side down onto the glass ornament.

Allow that layer to dry, then paint a solid color over it. If you don’t want the color to show through your image, paint a couple of layers of white first, then follow up with a couple of layers of gold or silver or whatever color you want the back of your ornament to be.

I made my image much smaller than the back of the ornament, because I wanted to create a frame for it. You can stop painting wherever you like, but I brought the gold around to the front, right up to where you could see the ends of the image.

I ran a thin bead of glue around the edge of my frame and covered it with glitter for a more finished look. The glitter likes to stick to the paint, so make sure you let it dry thoroughly before you glitter, then just brush the excess glitter off with a dry paintbrush.

I made a bunch more of these for my 12 days of Christmas tree and they are charming. I had a dickens of a time trying to photograph through the glass, but in person these ornaments are really special. They look vintage and antiqued, so any kind of a victorian Christmas image would look amazing this way.

Animals had to make an appearance in my personal version of the nativity story I’m telling with this tree. I am an animal lover after all, and I love recognizing those animals that were a part of the story, bringing Mary to Bethlehem, guiding the Wise Men across the desert, and following the shepherds. Plus the softness of the animals is a great contrast to the wood and fiber tree I’ve got going.

I was originally going to knit the animals, but I am already so far behind in my knitting projects I knew that would take me For. EV. Er. Then my friend Jessica got me hooked on needlefelting and it was a total EUREKA! moment.

Needlefelting is great fun, and I just fell in love with the results I was getting. Especially their cute little faces. And the ears. I was so inspired I kept right on going and made myself a whole needlefelted nativity, which I’ll show you how to make this weekend.

All you need to needlefelt is a block of foam, some wool roving, and a felting needle. The needle has barbs along the shaft so that the wool fibers get caught in the needle and drawn up through the layers of wool to become a tangled, solid piece. If you’re going to be making a bunch of these ornaments it’s worth it to invest in some good tools, but they’re still pretty cheap as far as crafting goes. I got a handle that held four needles for $18, and that made my work go by way faster.

With your tools assembled, you just pull off a chunk of wool roving, and get to stabbing.

To make the donkey body, I rolled up a bit of roving into an oval, and then punched the needle up and down through the wool until it became a thick solid piece. Of course, your body can be any size you’d like it to be, but I made my body about 4 inches long and 2 inches wide.

Believe it or not, this is the donkey’s neck. The way you attach one piece to another is by leaving some of the roving loose. With a bit of roving loose on each end to attach the head to the neck, and the neck to the body, the actual felted part is probably about 2 inches long.

The head started by just felting a ball about an inch and a half in diameter, and then I stretched it out by felting more thoroughly on one end. That turns it from a ball shape into more of a horse face as the fibers are pushed together on one end.

Position the neck piece on one end of the body, and felt them together by pushing your needle through the loose roving on one end or the neck until it felts to the body.

Connect the head to the top of the neck in the same way.

To make the tail, pinch off a small bit of roving and roll it like a playdough snake through your fingers. Follow with the felting needle to get it really thin and secure. Add a little more roving at the bottom to create the hairs. From one end to the other my tail measures about 2 inches. Remember to leave some roving unfelted on the end.

Felt it to the rear end of the body just as before, using the loose roving on the end of the tail to felt to the body.

Donkeys have long pointy ears, so felt a couple of ears about 1 inch long, with some loose roving on the end.

Felt to the top of the head.

The best picture I had for this part of the process was for the sheep ornament. Felt four legs in the size you want. They’ll look best if they’re all the same thickness, but the length depends on the look you want. Since this will be hanging instead of standing itself up, you can make the legs as long and thin or short and squat as you want. Mine are about 2 1/2 inches long. Felt the bottom of each leg flat, and leave the top unfelted.

To connect to the body, spread the wool roving out so that it extends beyond each side of the piece you want to attach. Hold it in place, then felt to the body until it’s super secure.

If you make each leg the same length, it should stand up fairly easily, and the legs will be flexible enough to stand up even if it’s not perfect. This part doesn’t matter if you’re making an ornament, but it’s important for our full nativity set coming this weekend.

The face is made by taking small pieces of embroidery floss, one strand at a time, and using the needlefelting needle to draw the wool around it to hold it in place. To make the eyes and nostrils, I just rolled a piece of embroidery floss into a ball, then stabbed down into the wool until it was stuck there.

To make this suitable for hanging, use a long needle and thread a piece of fishing line up from the bottom then back down through the top. Tie a knot in the two pieces of line on the underside of the ornament, making sure to leave plenty of thread on the top for hanging.

The sheep and camel ornaments are made in nearly the exact same way. The only changes for the sheep was that it didn’t need a neck and the ears were rounder instead of pointy. To make the sheep extra fuzzy I also added one last layer of wool roving and gave it the lightest possible felting so it would stay put and still look all woolen.

The camel just needs a couple of humps on top of the oval of the body, and then the neck is much longer and attached underneath the body instead of on top.

The camel’s ears are done just like the sheep’s. A little bit round, pointed down, and a little low on the head.

I brought this project with me to a get together of friends from church and everyone was fascinated by the process. I just sat there at my table, working out my aggression and stabbing away while they cooed over the cute little faces. A few of them have followed up with me since asking to learn how to do it. I think we all have a little extra aggression to work out during the holidays.

This was one of the last ornaments I made, and I did it because with all the ornaments I had been making, I hadn’t gotten around to a creche. I also wanted some more wood on the tree. It’s such an important material in the nativity story, and one I had been neglecting. I had some leftover wood veneer sheets from these two projects, so this was as simple as cutting out shapes and gluing them together.

The wood veneer is pretty delicate, so to make the foundation of the ornament I cut out two pieces of the creche shape and glued them together with wood glue.

I chose a different color wood for the pieces that make up the manger,

and a third color for the star. Since the veneer is fragile and loves to split on the grain, cut carefully with a pair of scissors but never snip them closed. If you do cut any little pieces off, you can always glue them back together when you assemble them on the main creche piece.

After you cut out all the pieces and glue them together, let them dry under something heavy. The wood veneer likes to curl up with moisture, so let the ornaments get really good and dry before you take them out from under your heavy objects. Use a hole punch to make room for a ribbon to hang the ornament.