Making Mini Dino Christmas Ornaments

When I was little my mom and I had a tradition of Christmas ornament hunting.  Every year we’d head over to the Hallmark store the day after Christmas (because they’d be 50% off!) and I’d get to pick out my own ornament for the year.  My ornament collection lived in a box in my closet until I got my own home.  It was so fun to pull out all the ornaments and see all my picks from throughout the years!  Pretty much none of them are what I’d pick out as an adult, and I think that’s why I love them so much.  Each year I put them on their own tree (they don’t quite go with the pretty decorations on our main, Pretty Tree). And as much as I love the way the pretty tree lights up our living room, the fun tree with the animated Noah’s ark globe and mouse tea party ornaments is definitely the one I look forward to seeing every year.

I still carry on the tradition, though now I live on the opposite end of the country as my mom so I usually make Doug tag along for the experience (he’s a good sport).  My only rules are that the ornament has to somehow symbolize the past year, and it has to have the date on it.  We have the cute heart one with the year we got married, and one shaped as a key for the year we bought our first home.  Recent years have been trickier, though I have managed to find ornaments to symbolize the summer evenings we spent fly fishing in the canyon and the hours I spent taking paint classes.

This year, as Christmas ornaments have been hung in the stores, I’ve kept wondering what in the world to get to symbolize 2013.  It’s been a weird year.  When I think back on it I immediately think- ‘UGH! Worst. Year. Ever!’  My health has been just awful.  Of the 8 years I’ve been sick, this was absolutely the hardest from the very beginning (Literally. I was in the emergency room on New Year’s Day)  But then there’ve been so many unbelievable things too!  My pattern business went from a little Etsy shop to Sweetbriar Sisters, LLC, carried by one of the nation’s largest wholesale distributors and featured at Quilt Market.  I mean, are you kidding me?!  I can’t even believe it!  Between dealing with my health and keeping up with Sweetbriar Sisters, I really haven’t had time to do anything else.

First I jokingly thought of getting something sick related.  Maybe I could find a Christmas ornament of a heat pack or bottle of pain killers.  But there are only so many chronically ill patients out there wanting to commemorate their lives by hanging a trinket on a tree…  I’m pretty sure Hallmark hasn’t picked up that line yet 🙂  So I moved onto the other thing I did this year; sewing. Ten minutes into trying to think of something I could buy, I just laughed.  Here I am trying to symbolize a year of pattern designs and I want to buy something?  That’s just silly.  Making one was definitely the way to go.

I picked Rex from our Delightful Dinos pattern.  He was the very first softie pattern I ever made and the three dinos have become one of our most popular patterns by far.  I took the PDF pattern and reduced the printing size (instructions below) and went to work.  I won’t pretend the tiny pieces weren’t a bit fussy to work with, but he was so adorable I think it was worth it.

Want to try it out yourself? Here’s what to do.

1) Get a mini version of your pattern printed.  If you have a PDF version of our patterns, click here to see how to do that.  If you have a printed version, click here for instructions.

2) Gather materials.  The materials will be the same, only smaller.  I was able to find 1/4″  black shank buttons at JoAnn Fabrics for the eyes (black beads would work too!), and smaller buttons for joints were really easy to find just about anywhere I looked- the ones I used were about 3/8″ wide.  I didn’t use Poly-Pellets or the light weight interfacing for the body (if you’re doing an animal with wings you’ll still want the interfacing for them!).  You’ll also need some ribbon to for hanging.

3) Pattern adjustments.  In the Dino above, I sewed the pattern as is.  It’s adorable, but let me tell you- the soles of the feet weren’t very fun to sew in that scale!  I ended up making some more ornaments where I left out the bottom of the foot.  They were still adorable, and so much easier.

4) Get sewing!  You’re all set, follow the directs like normal and create your own adorable ornaments to be cherished for years to come.