Monday, November 29, 2010

vintage letter ornaments







Last week I saw a great post on making newspaper ornaments from Holly at Life In the Fun Lane. She wanted some ornaments she saw in Anthropologie...and knew she could make some for next to nothing.


I decided that this would be a great holiday craft for me and the girls. I happened to have a stack of vintage letters that I picked up at an antique store (I am using the vintage postmarks for a future craft.) The letters are correspondence between someone in Sweden to various people in Minnesota and Washington State. They are old (postmark looks like 1918) and are written in Swedish. The paper is beautifully yellowed, and the swirly handwriting, ink, and ink blots are so perfectly imperfect.

Holly used some pages from an old book, which turned out great too. You could even use pages from a new book and tea stain them to look aged.


We cut all the letters into strips and then glued the strips with mod podge onto clear plastic ornaments that we got at JoAnn Fabrics.


I got a pretty branch from outside and spray painted it an antique ivory color. Once the ornaments were dry, I tied them to the branches with some jute. I have to say that I really love how the ornaments turned out. Thanks to Holly for such a great idea! What would I do without all of you creative bloggers?

7 comments:

  1. Love this idea! Fresh out of vintage letters, though. Will have to come up with another plan.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Those turned out soooo pretty!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. didn't those turn out darling, ashlyn. such a clever idea, thank you for sharing it.

    have a lovely day.
    xo
    ~molly

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is really special and pretty, love it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a brillant idea...love these! I am soooo needing to update some of my ornaments...may borrow this idea. oxoxxo hugs. xxo

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yours turned out very nice. Such pretty handwriting on the letters!

    ReplyDelete
  7. i love this! definitely going to make some of these!!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.