ornament swap!

i was so inspired creating my postcard for the stitched postcard swap, that i decided to use that same technique for louise's ornament swap!

i have a huge appreciation for stitching. it's something i've always admired, but never had the patience for (at least with clothing). and so, stitching on paper seems to be my thing.

but that's not to say these little ornaments didn't give me any trouble. i ended up with four (one for my tree too). and each one its own original collage!

i started with high quality prints of my mixed media painting fresh from the ocean. then i had fun with the embellishments. each ornament got its own colored triangles (made from vintage wallpaper) and green glitter for the grass. 

then i readied my sewing machine with red thread and stitched each one to a sheet of gold origami paper. for some, i stitched around the edges, for others i used a zig zag to emphasize certain parts.

the problem that came up here was that i completely forgot to add some sort of cut-out at the top for hanging. so i cut out the square around the stitching, leaving a bit of the gold paper shining around the sides (this actually turned into a happy find, because the shiny edge looked quite nice). you know how it is, when you completely forget something so obvious! and it didn't happen just that once. nope. i went ahead and forgot to add the cut out three times!

then i folded a new piece of gold paper in half and made a hole punch at the top, cut it to a width that worked for the size of the ornament, and sewed around the outside edge again with a new sheet of paper as my backing, careful to slip the hole punched piece between the two pages before closing up my stitching at the top.

i added a few more embellishments to each one (a bit of ink outline and a happy holidays sign at the center).

then i got out my beeswax pellets and iron and made each ornament into its own encaustic collage! the beeswax gave each piece a matte finish and really added to the aged look and feel of the original painting. 

to finish off the ornaments, i tied on a bit of gold ribbon! 

to me, all of the handiwork that went into these creations makes me appreciate them even more. and my hope is that the people i am sending them to for the ornament swap will admire them in their homes too!

i hope you all had a lovely thanksgiving holiday!