I made my Christmas ornaments from cupcake liners

I have a tiny tree, about 2 feet high and it is made of wires. Not quite like the live trees in IKEA but for my small apartment, an unconventional tree works much better. I was getting rather bored with the gold ISIG ornaments I bought a few years ago and was contemplating getting some new ones. IKEA’s Christmas range this year is very tempting (which is fast running out, a little bird told me) but I wanted to do something different.

Then while searching for inspiration, I came across this gorgeous wedding pom-pom garland made from cupcake liners. I thought, surely the idea will work for ornaments too. So the experiment began.    

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
– Cupcake liners: I used the JULKUL from IKEA (RM9.90 for 200 pieces in 2 different sizes. They have it in grey too) You will need about 12 – 16 liners per pom-pom, depending on how dense you want it to be.
– Ribbons or other embellishments
– Craft glue
– Nylon string (I used a thin fishing line)
– Needle
– Scissors

THE STEPS:
Flatten each cupcake liner and fold it in half, with the wrong side facing out. You should end up with fan like thingies. Then apply glue on one half of the liner and paste a second liner on top of it. Do try to get the frilly edges to match up but if they don’t, it’s not a big deal. It won’t be too noticeable when you fluff it out.

For my pom-pom, I used the small JULKUL liner in alternating colours – a white liner followed by a red liner. Mono colours are good too. I ended up with ornament about 2.75″ in diameter. 

Keep pasting the liners together and you should end up with an accordion like ball. Regularly fan out the accordion folds to check on the density. When you are satisfied with how dense or sparse the folds are, glue the last segment with the first half to form to a ball. Set it aside to dry. (I went out for lunch).

Next is to give the ornament a little more zing. There are many ways to achieve this and you probably have ideas of your own. (hollies, twigs, twine, tinsel, etc) I wanted to keep it simple and thought ribbons would be a nice finish.

Thread the nylon string (fishing line) and push it through a ribbon. Secure one end with a knot. Sew the ribbon on to the top of the pom-pom. Knot the ends of the string together, so that you can hang the ornament.  

Fluff up the folds to create a ball and hang it on your tree!

Going natural instead of the wire tree. What do you think?

I must say I do love it with my wire tree. I may make a few more ornaments and also hang up some of the old ISIG baubles to give it a more complete look.

And here with a pop-up Christmas card all the way from Vietnam. (Thanks, Teppy!) The paper cut is amazing.

What do you think? I welcome any suggestions to improve on it.

If you rather not make your ornaments, check out IKEA’s Christmas range. Use this link to check if the ones you like are still in stock. (IKEA Malaysia only).