christmas crafts: cheap homemade ornaments

So last week I stocked up on some cute Christmas tree ornaments at Michael's since they were all 50% off.  That meant most of them ran me around 2 or 3 bucks each.  Not bad!  I wanted to get some that weren't breakable in case they fell off the tree or my toddler disobeyed a direct order and touched the tree...that and after being married for four Christmases, my husband and I still don't really have any ornaments to call our own.  I'm thinking I care more about this than he does.  :o)

Anyway, I really liked all of the ornaments I got but there were some gaps in our tree and I didn't know if I could get back there any time soon to get more ornaments, so I made some of my own instead.

All of the store-bought ornaments I found are vintage-ish looking, with burlap or bronze looking accents.  So I wanted to make some that coordinated with that.  I noticed my leftover cinnamon sticks from this project fit the bill, so I tied three of them together with Christmas ribbon I had one hand and then ran an ornament hook through the back.  I liked it so much I got another bag of cinnamon sticks from Hobby Lobby to make more.  While I was there I saw some painted jingle bells that also looked cute, so I got three packages of six and tied them together with twine.

The packages of cinnamon sticks and jingle bells were $1 each on sale at Hobby Lobby, so I ended up getting eight cinnamon stick ornaments for $1 and six jingle bell ornaments for $3.  Love it.  I also made an inexpensive tree topper out of a cardboard ornament; I painted it with acrylic paint I already had on hand so this one cost less than a dollar.  I'm not a fan of big, gaudy angels or other stuff on top of trees, so this looked better to me.

Here's our Christmas tree!  I really like all the ornaments on it and am looking forward to using them for years to come.  :o)