Christmas Tree Decorating with a Pottery Barn Ornament Hack

Even though it feels like summer here, Christmas is right around the corner and I’ve been super busy decorating to try and get us in the holiday spirit, despite the warm weather! Every year I usually do 1 craft project at Christmas time to add to my decorations. This year I decided to do a Pottery Barn Ornament Hack! I got this small catalogue in the mail from Pottery Barn at the beginning of November and LOVED the chalkboard ornaments on the front cover!!!!

not a good picture but here is the cover of the PB catalogue

I didn’t however, like the red border around the Pottery Barn chalkboard ornaments because they wouldn’t match the gold and silver theme of my holiday decorations. I also wanted each ornament to say something different besides just “Merry Christmas”. So, I created some myself that would match better and they only cost me $1.10 each!!!!! First I went to Dollar Tree and found these silver trays for $1 each, in 3 different sizes.  (rectangle, circle, and oval)  Then I created what I wanted the inside of each ornament to say in a Word document. (I used different bible verses relating to the birth of Christ)  I did like that the Pottery Barn ornaments looked like chalk boards so I kept that detail the same.  In Word, I used cute fonts that I downloaded from Pinterest and all I had to do was highlight the words in white and make the background black to make it look like a chalkboard. Each silver tray was a different size and I don’t know much about resizing things for printing so I let the experts at the copy and print center at Office Depot help me! I first saved each document as a PDF file so that the fonts would translate after emailing. Then, I measured the inside of each tray, and sent the dimensions to Office Depot in an email with the PDF documents.  The friendly people at Office Depot printed them out for me in the exact sizes that I needed and they only cost 10 cents a piece!

Then, I traced the inside of each tray with a piece of white computer paper, cut it out, and made a master pattern for each different shaped tray. From this, I was able to place the white pattern onto the chalkboard-looking printout from Office Depot and trace around it so that the print would fit perfectly inside each tray….

I found it much easier to do this accurately on a glass surface with a light underneath. I don’t have a glass table so I just used the glass shelves in our china cabinet and a flashlight.

I spy a hand painted ornament by S. Bynum Art! More to come in the next post!

A few years ago I saw this idea to use black and white photographs as ornaments on one of my favorite blogs, Dear Lillie. I will be back later with a post about these handmade photo ornaments.

SOURCE LIST:

• silver snowflakes- Dollar Tree
• all ornaments from Paul Michael Co.
• gold dipped pheasant feathers-Paul Michael Co.
• gold dipped pomegranates on top- Paul Michael Co.
• chalk board ornaments- DIY from Dollar Tree silver trays and custom prints
• hand painted crown on ball ornament- Sallie Bynum Art
• gold crowns- Hobby Lobby