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FREE diy ornament {egg carton and cookie cutter required}

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I just made what I think are the cutest ornaments in the shape of dog bones.

What do you think? I am in love with them. And they were free!

Any guesses what I made them out of?

Now who doesn’t have an egg carton in the house? If you don’t, you probably need groceries…or have your own chickens I guess. 🙂

I had read a post about making ornaments out of construction paper, mixed with water, blended together and pressed into a cookie cutter. But, I can’t find it again, if it was you or know who it was, please let me know, I’d love to give you full credit for the idea!

Now I don’t keep construction paper on hand, but egg cartons are basically the same, right?

I ripped it up, put it in the blender, added water and blended away.
I tried to wash the blender thoroughly after, but the spinach smoothly I made next tasted a little cardboardy. My husband was quick to point out that they always taste cardboardy. 😉  (That’s all just a joke, except for the part about Joel thinking the spinach smoothies always taste like cardboard. The blender is squeaky clean, however.)

I think I had to add a lot of extra water to get it to mix properly because my blender sucks the egg carton is thicker than construction paper. So I had to press A LOT of excess water out of the mixture and was left with a few fist sized globs of wet egg carton mush.
At that point my plan was to just press my soggy carton mixture into the shapes I wanted, I was thinking hearts and stars. You know, just nice and easy like. But that just didn’t work out. There was still a lot of water to be pushed out and without any sort of a mold my shapes left a lot to be desired. As it turns out though, the only cookie cutter shape I have is a dog bone. A regular baker I am not. But, this little happy accident worked out perfectly. The girls needed some tree representation.

After I pressed and pressed and pressed (so much excess water) them into the cookie cutter I punctured 2 holes to string the hanger with the tip of a pair of scissors. I had to do it while it was still in the cookie cutter to not ruin the bone shape and I decided to only do this on the first one because I was worried that the puncturing process was messing with the bone’s structural integrity.
What is it with me and ornament structure integrity? I complained of my beaded snowflake’s lack of it here.

I figured I’d just get creative with tying a ribbon hanger around the second one and skipped making the holes. I then brushed a light coat of glue on just the top side of each bone for added integrity security. I figured the bottom side would be OK since it was perfectly flat and undisturbed.

Then I baked them for a bit in our toaster oven to make sure they were totally dried out and hardened. Maybe 30 minutes on 200, or maybe it was 2 hours on 250??? I don’t remember exactly but I would say start with option 1 and cross your fingers go from there. 🙂

The tree’s color scheme seems to be red, white and silver (more specifically silver glitter) so painting candy cane stripes on the bone ornaments was something I thought I could manage with my limited skilz without screwing up AND I already had red and white paint on hand so these were falling into the totally FREE category. Nice!

I don’t think I’ve done a budget rundown for all my homemade ornaments for the Mega Crafty Christmas Tree challenge. The only items I have had to buy are white paint, glitter and salt for a whopping $5.91 spent. Cha Ching!! Everything else I have used I either already had on hand, were scraps from previous projects or natural items that haven’t cost me cent. I’ll take A Decorated Christmas Tree for $6 please Alex. 🙂

And now, back to the bones. After they had cooled, I painted them completely white and then added the red stripes and used a black permanent marker to add our girls names and little paw print. I actually used what had been the bottom as the front part of the ornament, that side did turn out perfectly flat. Hello late night, bright flashy picture.
 Down right dog gone cute I say. 🙂 I hope you like ’em as much as I do.

free diy ornament tutorial

I only ended up using probably less than a quarter of the amount of mush that I made. But I only had the one cookie cutter and we only have the 2 dogs. But imagine the possibilities, I’m sure a lot of you have some pretty cool cookie cutters that would make neat ornament shapes. If anyone tries it out I’d love to see what you come up with!

Comments

  5. What a fun idea! I would have never thought of it! Merry Christmas!

  7. Holy Crumb! These are adorable!

    So glad to have you at our Pin’Inspiration Party this week.

    Happy reader, would love if you popped over and grabbed a button (I’ve got the kinks worked out now :-))

  10. Very cool idea and so green! Heading off now to dig through the trash for that egg carton I threw out today…
    Thanks for sharing!

  11. Such a cute idea. I will have to make my doggies a few. Maybe I should do a small tree for the doggies . Can not keep one out of the big tree. .They would be cute on one of my rustic trees.

    Karan

  18. You are my kind of Christmas crafting genius. 🙂

    So glad I found your project via Centsational Girl.

    I would love for you to visit DTA as I am in the midst of a “Gifts You Can Make” series.

    Be merry and bright!

  19. This is such an amazing idea – I love it! Thank you so much for sharing at Taking A Timeout Thursday – you are soo creative! Hope to see you again this week.

  20. So Cute!!
    Found you on Pinterest.
    I am making these for my Aunt’s Dog’s this year for Christmas.
    For the past few years, she always adds in a treat for each of my 3 dogs, so I’ll send these for her tree AND a note
    “Do NOT let the pooches eat!!” …..LOL
    FREE is BEST!!
    Thank you!

    • So glad you came by, April! This is really a great project … and you can make them in any shape you have a cookie cutter. Not sure what it says about me that the only shaped cookie cutter I had was a dog bone. LOL I think this is the perfect gift for dog lovers. And free is ALWAYS the best price. If you do make your own I’d love to see them!! Thank you so much for commenting.

  21. What’s the salt for? I have read and re-read but don’t see it any of the steps except as something you bought??

      • Wow- cardboard clay! What a great idea. I’m always looking for new ideas to reuse items, and ornaments for our fur buddies is perfect 🙂 I can’t wait to try making a few…

  22. Great idea, but you said you had to buy salt and I don’t see it in your instructions. What did I miss?

  23. Hi I loved your dog bone ornament; I was just wondering what type of glue did you use and what type of paint? Thank you; Tammy

    • Hi Tammy! I’m so glad you like them. I used regular white glue, like Elmer’s, and just any craft or latex paint will work. 🙂

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