Never Too Early For Christmas Ornaments! (DIY)

It is Saturday morning, and I have a million things to do...but as usual I am spending the few free minutes of my day while Trent naps doing something that was never on my to-do list to begin with. To be fair..I was trying to get "clean the house" checked off of my list, but I just got totally sidetracked when a DIY project came to mind.

For a couple of weeks now, this Mother's Day balloon has been half-floating in our kitchen, and I was cutting a hole in it today to flatten it and throw it away, but it made me a little sad. It was my first Mother's Day, for crying out loud!

I also had this balloon in our bedroom that was still floating, over a year later, from Valentine's/IVF egg retrieval in February of 2012. That balloon would have stayed fully floating forever, I think, and we always credit it with being our good luck charm throughout the IVF process and pregnancy. Every time we would get ready to throw it away, we just couldn't bring ourselves to get rid of it!

So I decided I needed to find a way to keep them around without scotch taping them to the wall like I did with every balloon I got in middle school. I got this box of clear ornaments at Hobby Lobby for $6 when they were on 50% off with the plan of putting Trent's hospital bracelets, etc in them. They are perfect for this project, though! 

Here's what I did:

1. Cut a slit in the balloon and let all the air/helium out. Lay out flat.

2. Cut the back from the front to have a single layer to work with. Then cut the balloon into about 1/2" or 3/4" strips. I used less than half of the front of the balloon for each ornament. They don't have to be perfect by any means.

3. The Valentine's balloon curled itself into awesome little ribbon curls as I was cutting, but the Mother's Day one didn't do so well. I lightly ran the scissors along the strips (just like curling ribbon for a present) to give them more of a spiral shape.

4. Take the ornament topper off, and feed the curls, one at a time, into the ornament.

5. Cut the string/ribbon from the balloon to use as a hanger for your ornament. 

6. Tie on a small tag with the date, memory, phrase, etc to remind you of the occasion. I used a paper puncher to punch out a heart shape for the IVF/Valentine's balloon and a circle for Mother's Day.

7. Tie the top in a bow or knot, and curl the ends.

There you have it! A cute, easy and cheap way to save your balloons (especially all of the ones you get in the hospital)! The colorful front and the silver back of the balloon strips make it look super festive on your tree. This would also work great for all of those wedding, baby shower or bridal shower cards you have been hanging on to forever! You can punch pieces out of them with different shaped punchers (or even just a regular hole punch), or you could just cut them by hand with scissors into small squares, etc. There are really endless ideas for filling these ornaments... a small amount of sand from your beach trips (just an inch or two up) or flower petals from your bouquet are just a few other ideas. Now if only Christmas would hurry up and get here!