I had big plans this year for the really cute pincushion ornaments I was going to make my son's teachers for Christmas. I started planning them months ago. The thing is, I should have started SEWING them months ago. As it was, I barely finished them in time for the last day of school before Christmas break.
These ornaments were for his art, music and Spanish teachers. They are made with bottlecaps that were about 2 inches in diameter.
For his art teacher, I did a color mixing theme - blue plus yellow equals green. The side of the ornament has a red heart and the word "ART" embroideried. I also used blue and yellow buttons on the back to hide the ribbon.
My son had a book about mice mixing paint when he was little that he just LOVED and that's where I got the idea. Plus his art teacher is really cool and I thought she'd get a kick out of it.
For his music teacher, I did a big musical note - sorry the first pic is so blurry. I thought I had gotten good pics of these. The side has hearts sewn on and music notes embroideried.
For his Spanish teacher, I did poinsettia's inspired by the Mexican Christmas story "The Legend of the Poinsettia". I cut out the 'petals' and sewed them on with seed beads in the middle. I was pretty excited about this one because I thought it was clever. I embroideried the word "hola" on the side.
For his regular teachers, I made each of them an ornament similar to these in this post here. Plus, we gave them gift cards to the bookstore. Here is one of the ones I made:
How about that? It matches the box :)
I had intended to make each of them 2-3 ornaments but ran out of time.
They all seemed to like them - or at least I hope they did. His teachers are all really good and I know they work really hard.
I've shown off my bottlecap pincushions before but it was this post HERE when I attempted to make Christmas ornaments for our local fair's arts and crafts contest and they didn't come out so good. I tried to sew the hanging ribbon into the ornament when I blanket stitched the top and it made them all crinkled.
That was when my efriend Nancy suggested that I sew the ribbon on the outside of the pincushion and use pretty buttons to cover up the tales.
Well, Nancy is a genius!!!
You're a genius Nancy!
This time, they came out perfectly. I sent these to my Christmas ornament swap partners.
Here is the back of one where you can see how I sewed the button over the ribbon. Sorry it's very blurry.
I love making these but they are very time consuming. Very cheap to make - probably less than a quarter's worth of materials. But they take me soooo long to make. Possibly because I consider myself a novice embroiderer. I'm sure lots of people would be able to whip them out. But they sure are fun!
Remember the bottle cap pincushions that I made here way back in September? Well, at that time, my son asked me to make him a mushroom pincushion, like the mushrooms in the Mario game. He gave me a little metal mushroom, that he had gotten with candy inside, to use as a guide.
So this is what I came up with:
I worked on it most of yesterday. They're little but it takes a long time to cut out all those little pieces and then sew them on.
I think it came out pretty cute and I got a thumb's up from my Ben, so it must have been good.
(I've been trying to make this post for a week but couldn't upload my pics. Suddenly, I was able to. Go figure.)
