I love making my own Christmas ornaments, each year adding more and more unique designs to my collection and to my Christmas tree – of course, my friends and family receive some too!
Today I’m going to share how to create mini-yarn-hat ornaments and gonks by using an old jumper and some toilet rolls!
What you need
- Yarn – as many colors as you want – I had leftovers acrylic yarn from other projects, but you can carefully unravel old jumpers back into yarns; with a jumper, and with a few hours of unraveling and you’ll have enough yarn to begin!
- Toilet paper rolls – free little cardboard tubes
- Scissors
- Hot glue gun & glue
- Wooden beads or mini pompoms (for the gnome nose)
- Cotton balls
- Mini jingle bells – optional
Mini yarn hats ornaments
Cut the toilet paper roll into five smaller rings (approx. 0.5 inches each)
Cut yarn into threads– you will need around 50 pieces of around 10 inches length (you might need more or less, depends on how thick the yarn is). The length depends on the width of your paper roll too – so you’ll have to find the perfect length for yourself. Start by cutting 1 thread and trying it out.
Fold the yarn thread in half and push the loop side through the paper roll, take the other end and fold it over the paper roll and into the loop, pull to get a knot.
Do this again and again, until you have all the paper roll covered with yarn. You can do a pattern or use the same colour for the entire hat, it’s up to you.
After the entire ring is covered, you will need to push the yarn through the paper roll.
Now, the next thing to do is to tie a knot around the threads to get a hat shape and trim the pompom to get a round shape. To display these mini yarn hats ornament as Christmas tree ornaments, tie some yarn under the pompom and make a loop.
That’s it! your first mini yarn hats ornament.
If you want, at this stage you can tie around the pompom a mini jingle bell, but this is entirely up to you!
Here are a few hats I’ve made:
Yarn gnome
You already have the hats, next we move to the gnome’s beard.
We need about 50 threads of yarn which are about 4-5 inches long (I used a combination of white, cream and light brown). The easiest way to do is to get a piece of carboard that is 4-5 inches long and start wrapping the yarn around it (approximative 25 times), then remove it carefully from the cardboard and tie it in the middle.
Cut the ends, like you would do for a pompom and fold it in half, from the middle, where the threads are tied; unfortunately I forgot to take photos of this step but I hope my explanations are enough. This will be the gnome’s beard.
Now is time to put together your gnome.
Take a cotton ball and stuff it in the hat (this will give the hat a nice, fuller shape); put some glue around the inside edges of the hat and fix the beard – remember, this needs to be folded in half – you can see it in the first image; glue the wooden bead or mini pompom in the beard to make the nose. Trim the beard to look nice and tidy.
I hope you have fun making these Upcycled Christmas decorations!
Here are some of the gnomes I’ve made
Anda Griveteanu, VS Head of Finance and Administration