Broken Christmas Ornaments
Christmas ornaments look great when they are hung on a Christmas tree, but they become totally useless once they fall onto the ground. If you have kids helping out with decorating the Christmas tree, chances are that you will end up with a few pieces of broken ornaments in your hand, if not plenty. Even grown ups drop a few Christmas ornaments accidentally once in a while. Here is how you can recycle those broken ornaments to decorate your jewellery. You should wear thick rubber gloves or even gardening gloves while working on this to avoid cutting yourself. Also, it would be advisable to work outside the house and away from children as the broken up ornament pieces might accidentally fly out and cut someone.
- First, place the ornament in between two pieces of thick cardboard. Lightly tap the top piece of cardboard with a hammer with just enough force to break the ornament into smaller pieces. Do not attempt to break the ornament in between two sheets of normal paper, or even in a plastic bag. This is because paper and plastic are too thin and therefore will tear easily when you start breaking the ornament into little bits. Not only that, it will also be harder to scrape of the broken pieces of ornaments later on.
- Keep hammering the cardboard-ornament-cardboard sandwich until your ornament is broken into tiny pieces of less than 5 mm x 5 mm in size. The smaller the pieces, the better it will look on your jewellery later.
- Next, cut out a piece of felt measuring 2 inches wide. The length of the felt will depend on the size of your risk. It should be able to wrap around your risk loosely. Also, the colour of your felt should compliment the colour of your broken ornament.
- You will also need a piece of elastic band. Sew the elastic band onto one end of the felt piece\’s width, approximately half an inch away from the edge of the felt piece. Do the same with the other width, with the same piece of elastic band. Make sure that the two widths of the felt piece meet each other so that the completed piece forms a loop.
- After that, spray clear glue onto the entire surface of the felt piece.
- Press the felt piece down onto the pieces of broken ornaments that you have crushed earlier on.
- Shake of the excess and leave to dry. You can also spray on another layer of clear glue to help hold the broken pieces of ornaments better.
- You now have a fancy bracelet. However, it is not recommended that you give this to a child to wear as the broken pieces of ornaments might still have sharp ends.
Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dist0rtedwave/330608121/
