A gingerbread romance...

There once was a little gingerbread woman with a big heart who was sooo lonely for she had no one to keep her company until one day she met the sweetest, charmingest gingerbread man with bright blue eyes and two snowflake buttons.....

Err....

What I actually meant to say is that I've been having fun crafting some super cute felt ornaments! I did sew them but they are sooo simple to make and it only involves a needle and thread, no sewing machine required! Plus, I think any mistakes or crookedness just makes them that much more charming!

 

All that is required for these is your choice of felt, a needle and some thread, maybe a few buttons, cotton balls, and a wee bit of creativity.

For a template I just found some images online (try googling gingerbread template, heart template, etc) and actually placed a piece of paper over my computer screen and traced it old school style. You could even just draw some hearts or stars or whatever shapes you desire!

I then cut out my templates and lined it up on my felt.

Make sure you have your felt doubled up because you will need 2 shapes for each ornament (a front and a back). I found it was easier/quicker to cut the felt doubled up to ensure both sides were closer to looking the same than if it was done individually. You could choose to pin your template to the felt but I just free-handed it and held the template in place as I snipped.

Once I had all my shapes cut out I got to sewing them! I just took a needle and some thread and hand stitched the design on the "top" piece using one continuous length of thread. The back of your front piece will look crazy with threads leading everywhere but it'll be covered by the back piece so I didn't care. You could also sew a design on both pieces! This is what the back of the front (confused yet??) of my gingerbread man looked like once his design was sewed on. Sorry for the horrible pic, it was taken with my cellphone because my camera batteries had died!

Crazy eh? After this I placed my two pieces over top of each other and either used a running stitch or an overcast stitch (hah I just had to google those terms, shows what I know about sewing lol) to sew them together based upon the look I was going for. Just before it was fully stitched together I stuffed them with cotton balls and voila! A super cute, cheap ornament! You could also use these as gift toppers or whatever your mind conjures up.

These do take a fair bit of time to make, I was probably averaging about 15-20 minutes an ornament minus cutting out my felt but I just sat in front of a movie and stitched away! I would love to see what other variations you all come up with! I am still debating making an owl or two, I'll let you know if I do!

Here is what my inspiration looked like that I originally found from pinterest....

Image found here.

 And here is a picture of how mine turned out again!

I hope this inspires you to try making your own ornaments! I'd love to see them if you do!

I'll be linking up to Creative Me Monday at The Southern Institute as well as the Holiday Home Craft Party tomorrow at Centsational Girl! It's my first set of link parties! :D