Star Elf Ornament

Posted by Paulette

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is making handmade ornaments. I usually have one design that I make. I whip up a few dozen and use them for package toppers or quickie gifts. This year I was invited to two ornament exchanges. 
The second one required that they be mailed, so I needed something quick, light, and non-fragile. 
I whipped these up in a couple of hours while waiting for a couple of laundry loads to finish. 

I started with a pattern:

   Cut out the star and trace with a pencil onto doubled fabric, right sides together.

 Then sew, leaving open where marked.

 Cut around star, leaving a 1/8th inch seam allowance. Carefully clip inside curves. Turn right sides out.

 Trace face onto freezer paper. You'll need one for each elf you make. Cut out the face. You'll be using this as a stencil. Iron, shiny side down onto the star, with an iron on medium high setting.

Next comes the tricky part. You'll need to paint several layers of the face color on, making sure that the paint dries between each layer. The paint will need to be sort of dry brushed on, so that it doesn't bleed through to the next layer of fabric. I brushed on 6 layers of paint before adding the features. When paint dried, I stuffed each star and sewed the hole closed with a ladder stitch.

 Then comes the fun part,  the face! I used the back of the paint brush to make white, then blue, then black and finally white, for the eyes. The nose is a simple red dot with a smaller white on on top. The cheeks are dry brushed, and the mouth and eyebrows are carefully painted on using a script liner. It could be done with a sharpie. 

Did I say that was the fun part? I was wrong. This really is the fun part. Embellishment!
Don't forget to add a hanger.

This is where a hot glue gun and lots of ribbons and trims come in handy.

You could even paint on little ears and give them beards. It's all up to you!