I have been wanting to make these DIY Photo Ornaments for a really long time. Like several years…! The only time I think about making them is during the rush of the Christmas Holidays…so of course I never get around to it.
This was the year I made it happen! The crazy thing is they literally took less than an hour to make. Haha! And I absolutely love them. I want to make some more and cover the whole tree with them. I think one of the things I love most is that my kids are growing so fast, it helps me remember when they were my chunky babies and not all adult like!
Photo Ornaments are so easy to make! Simply gather up the photos you want to use. Mine are all digital, so I simply cropped them all square to fit my wood blocks. I found my wood blocks at Michaels. You can find them at your local craft store too or simply cut some strips of thin wood into squares.
Mine were painted with a thin white wash of paint and then the edges of the wood were roughed up with some sand paper. My blocks were 3 inches square so I cropped my photos to 2.75 inches square and uploaded them into a word document. Then I printed them out in black and white onto some vellum paper. (You can do regular card stock, but I like the transparency of the vellum and the overall look it gives to the finished photo).
Cut out the photos and then glue them onto the wood squares. I chose not to use Mod Podge because it really wrinkles the vellum paper and the photos do not look great after it dries. I simply used a glue stick to glue the images to the wood. The images stick really well and lay on the wood nice and smoothly. My favorite glue stick is the purple Elmer’s ones in the orange container.
Then take some small eye hooks (which can be found at most craft stores) and screw one into the top of the square. This will allow you to be able to attach a ribbon to the ornaments so you can hang them on the tree.
I just love how they turned out! These would be a great gift idea for your friends and family too! Or create some with your grandkids on them so that you can show them off to your friends and family!
A fun and personal gift idea that is totally unique and very inexpensive! They don’t take a lot of very long to make, so you still have time to whip some of these up for yourself or for a fun Christmas Gift this year!
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Rebecca says
Hi-
I love this idea and got all the supplies… just trying to figure out how to crop the pics to 2.75″ square. Any tips?
Thank you!!
Shanda Lee says
You did a great job with this. I would love to start adding photos into our ornament collection; we get so many wallet sized photos on school picture day we could eevn send those out as Christmas gift ornaments! Good job!
The Idea Room Assistant says
Thank you.