Homespun Holiday: Keepsake Ornaments

I'm very excited about today's post. Lizzie Jones, formerly a designer for Papertrey Ink, started her own company called Poshta Design and released a collection of stitching ornament dies. These were an investment, but I am glad I got them because they are SO fun! The collection is called Homespun Holiday: Keepsake Ornaments Kit. It includes dies to create four different ornament shapes, many different embellishment dies, felt, sequins, beads, needles, an inspiration guide, everything you need to start creating right out of the box!

I think my favorite way to embellish the ornaments was with this snowflake design. Isn't it gorgeous?! I used white thread and sparkly clear sequins and beads; it glistens beautifully in real life. 

When you purchase the kit, you pick a "color story" to go with it. This is a collection of felt in a certain color family with coordinating thread, sequins and beads. But for this ornament I actually used some MFT felt I already had because I wanted to make a pink ornament and the color story I chose didn't include pink felt. Any quality wool felt I think would work fine. Both the felt that came in the kit and the MFT felt cut beautifully. 

This ornament uses the "Frost" color story, which is a collection of blues and creams. You can add the beads and sequins anywhere you like. Once all my felt was stitched, it was so fun to play around with the sequins and beads to figure out which colors and placement looked best. 

You can see how different each of these three round ornaments look, just by changing which embellishment dies I used! This one uses the tiny snowflake three times across the band. In addition to the color story that comes with your kit, you can purchase felt rolls individually, which is what I did here so that I would also have some green felt to work with. It was easy to find DMC thread to match. 

My favorite ornaments tended to be the ones like this, that had a very simple color palette. I thought a single sequin and bead at the center was all this tear drop ornament needed. 

This is the last one I made. I was going for a more traditional color palette and used the thread as an accent color rather than matching it to the felt. All of my ornaments I sewed flat, instead of stuffing with fiber fill. But you can do either, and both my boys have requested I make them "puffy" ornaments next. 

I made these ornaments as gifts for close family and special teachers. I hope they bring happy memories as they put them on their Christmas tree each year!