Homemade ornaments

I love homemade ornaments. My mom has these plaster little ornaments she made when she was first married. Some have broken, so the collection is smaller than it once was. But they are still there, these little painted figurines. It adds this air of home. There are also many ornaments my sister and I have made over the years. Macaroni noodles have fallen off, clay has chipped, but they are still there.

So, since B and I are having our first CALM Christmas together this year, I wanted to make some ornaments. I say first "calm" because last year, if you recall, we had just moved after spending 10 days homeless in between rentals. We moved in on 12/10, and we barely had our feet under us by Christmas.

This year is substantially calmer.

I wanted the ornaments to be unique, personal, but not easily breakable. There's at least one move in our (hopefully) not-to-distant future, and really, with Christmas ornaments, they kind of have to move once a year, what with the packing and unpacking that they go through with each Christmas season.

Then I came up with the idea. A number of months back, I picked up these approx 2.25 diameter, round tiles at the recycling store (I actually have a tub full, but here are a few):

They are all nicely glazed on the front, but nothing on the back. So, I took the back side (the unfinished side) and painted holiday scenes. I mostly used my Martha Stewart paints that I mentioned yesterday.

Once dry, I mod podged the paintings to seal them:

Once that was dry, I put a thick layer of diamond glaze on the paintings.

And so far, here are the results!!! 2010 and the blue/white house scene have not yet been diamond glazed.

I plan on getting some ribbon and gluing it on the sides, creating a circle with a little loop at the top for hanging.

I'm very happy with how everything turned out. Time-consuming, but they will last a long time... I hope! I think I'm going to do at least one or two with photos in it, that way I can add to them each year.

And, they are durable. These can be someday hung on the lowest branches without risk of swallowing or dropping by little kidlets. Not sure how much sucking I want them to be doing on tile, but at least there's not the "DON'T DROP THAT!!!!" risk. :)