O is for Ornament

I do like being able to do these Pinterest challenge posts with found items (or, at least, cheap items)! The marble maze was made from all found items. So was the paper hyacinth, the net (hah!) bag, and googly eyes project. Today's project was a combination of found items and cheap items:

http://onelittleproject.com/
peanut-christmas-ornaments/

It wasn't that hard to get in the mood to make Christmas ornaments, since our weather has been so FREAKING COLD that it was easy to believe we had skipped all the good weather and moved right on to December (in fact, today at preschool, I played Christmas music, gave them a Christmas tree page to color, and then let them watch a Christmas video, just because I could).

I bought a bag of peanuts at the Dollar Store (and if I had planned on making, like, a whole bag of peanuts worth of ornaments, I should have upgraded to better quality peanuts, as dollar store peanuts must come from the bottom of the peanut barrel), and used felt scraps, pipe cleaners, twine, and little pom poms that I already had. I did buy some new acrylic paint, but that was my only real expense, and they were only fifty cents apiece.

If I'd had my druthers, I wouldn't
have used salted peanuts, but
you get what you get when you
buy your peanuts at
the dollar store.

I painted the peanuts first, obviously, and let them dry. I had to paint the snowman in two sessions, since I couldn't hold it and paint it all at the same time, and the penguin as well: first, the while belly, second, the rest of the body.

Ho, ho, ho....

Penguin belly

While the paint was drying, I made Santa hats. Lots and lots of Santa hats (I painted three of each ornament and did this before I noticed that every single one of them other than the reindeer had a Santa hat). 

It was tedious work, I'm not going to lie. But AREN'T THEY CUTE?!

If you have a lot of time to devote to making tiny Christmas ornaments, and it doesn't bother you that you are sinking a lot of work into decorating a peanut which may or may not some day become infested with something or found by a mouse or accidentally smashed, then you should make these.

Even my husband declared this a Pinterest win!