Christmas Elf Ornaments

The kids spent the evening making little elf ornaments (though some ornaments looked more elfish than others).

I saw some version of this somewhere before but can’t find where I saw it. I thought it was Family Fun magazine but it doesn’t seem to be.

Going from the basic idea of building little elves out of pipe cleaners and beads, here’s what we came up with. 

Azia's girl elf. . . she got black hair instead of an elf hat

Here's approximately what we used for each one:
(The kids all did theirs a little differently.)

• 1 1/2 pipe cleaners

• 2-3 large beads (we used wood beads) for face & body
  10-20 small beads (we used plastic pony beads because we had a bunch, but smaller wood beads would look better)
 
• Felt
• Ribbon for hanging hook
  *If you want them to look Christmas-like, use Christmas colored beads, felt, and ribbon. Ours ended up being rainbow colored.
• Scissors 

• Glue gun 
• Small jingle bell are a cute addition, too

First kids picked out their materials and the colors they wanted.

Next kids cut scarfs and hats out of the felt

We didn't use a pattern because they all wanted different shapes. The hats were just half circles (most diameters were about 2 inches) folded in and glued to make a cone shape. Some liked short little pointy hats and others wanted big, tall and skinny hats. The scarves were mostly about four inches long and half an inch wide. We cut a slit lengthwise an inch or so from the end of one side of the scarf so the other end could just be pulled through.

Lex mostly just liked cutting the felt into all sorts of small pieces. Not a whole lot of help.

After you have your felt pieces cut out, fold your pipe cleaner in half and begin stringing beads over that folded pipe cleaner: 1-2 big beads for the body, bead you’ve chosen for the head, the felt cone (hat).

Next begin sliding beads onto each “leg” till you have legs as long as you’d like. Bend the ends to make feet and also keep all the beads from sliding back off.

Take the 1/2 length pipe cleaner and twist it right around the middle of the folded long one (now functioning as the body) and then add beads to each of those sides to function as arms. Twist those ends when done also.

Use a sharpie (or other permanent marker) to color a face on it. 

Wrap the scarf around the elf’s neck.

Loop a ribbon through the pipe cleaner at the elf’s head. Add a few jingle bells if you’d like!

And then they’re done!

Lex, with the 4-year-old version of the project.  He liked stringing the beads on and did have them at one point.  Unfortunately I think he liked taking things apart and throwing them even more. The beads did not last.

Zoran with his elf

This is a snowman rather than an elf. Azia made this in the 2-3 minutes while I was getting out the supplies to make the other ornaments: Rundolph the red-nosed snowman.  She creates things at an bizarre rate.

Azia lined up all her new creations and photographed them!