36 days... an ornament tutorial and a giveaway

It almost snowed at my house today. The raindrops were thick and slushy. The mountains around town are frosted with white. I stayed indoors and made stuff.

These ornaments are for a swap that I'm part of.

If you want to make one, you'll need:

• 5 squares of paper... mine are 2.5" square, and are from an old German book I picked up at a thrift store.
• 2 squares of decorative paper that are one quarter the size of your paper squares... mine are 1.25" square, and made from a piece of red scrapbook paper with a 1" square glued onto it.
• 9" of 1/8" ribbon
• a bead... I used a 6/0 Japanese glass bead
• a decorative charm and jump ring
• glue/paper cutter/scissors/pliers/needle and thread

To make:

Fold the larger paper squares in half lengthwise, then crosswise, then on one diagonal. Bring the diagonal folds toward each other, sandwiching them between the two square parts of the paper. Repeat for all pieces.

Glue the folded squares together: holding one folded piece, apply glue to the upper square. Lay another folded piece on top of it, making sure that the folded points are together. Repeat till all pieces are glued together in a stack. If you've done it correctly, the pieces should be able to fan out like in the photo. It's very important that the folded corners (i.e., the centers of the pieces of paper) are all together, otherwise it won't work.

Glue the ribbon to both sides of the stack of folded papers, having the cut ends of the ribbon toward the folded point, and looping over top of the open point. Make sure that the ribbon is not twisted. Then glue the decorative paper covers over the ribbons.

Put a bead onto the ribbon: Push the threaded needle through the bead, around the ribbon, and back through the bead. Then pull on the thread til the ribbon comes through the hole. Push the bead down toward the paper.  

Add the charm to the ribbon using the jump ring. It needs to go onto the ribbon loop above the bead, so that it acts as a block, preventing the bead from being pulled off of the ribbon.

 And there you are! You could (theoretically) hang up the ornament as is, all closed up like a little book; or you can pull the bead up to the top of the ribbon, fan open the pages, and put the covers back-to-back, and pull the bead back down to make a 5 pointed star.

This is, in fact, a little book. You could decorate the pages, or make it bigger and put photos into it, or whatever you like. I was thinking it might also be fun to make 24 of them and use them as an advent calendar... just open one a day.

There's one of these up for grabs... just leave me a comment and I'll pick a name in a couple of days.