If you’re looking for some new ornaments this year, these diy gnome Christmas ornaments are clever and fun to do with your kids. Gnomes are all the rage lately, and will look cute tucked among the branches of your tree.
In this blog, we’ll show you how we painted, assembled, and decorated these darling little diy gnome Christmas ornaments. My 2 and 4-year-old grandsons even made their own.
LONG-LASTING CHRISTMAS TRADITION
When I was in college and engaged to be married, one of the morning shows had a segment on Christmas traditions. One of the ideas they highlighted was having a new ornament for your children each year, starting when they are born. When they turn 18 (or 20 whatever. . .) and leave home, they will already have ornaments for their first tree. I loved this idea and implemented it.
Every year my kids and foster kids get a new ornament. Sometimes it reflects something that happened during the year, like if they got a cat. Other ornaments reflect their nickname or hobby. There are a lot of really great customizable ornaments available on Amazon. Some years we make homemade ornaments, like this year.
I saw a craft during the summer, where they took different shaped wooden pieces to make a gnome. At Dollar tree, I found a witches hat, a ghost, and an apple ornament. PERFECT! I also found some wooden gnomes that were ready to paint, but I liked this idea better because I got more ornaments for the money (8 instead of 3). The wooden bead I found last year at Walmart for a different craft. They’re actually doll heads.
Directions
Design
The first thing I do is look for some inspiration pieces. I scour Pinterest and other social media looking for gnomes designs I like. My 4-year-old grandson wanted to do blue — his favorite color — but his mom ix-nayed that because her tree is only reds and greens. I argued that blue is winter, but alas, mom won out.
The body can be a different color than the hat. The beard can be white or gray or brown or tan. You can paint any design you want, and decorate with any number of items. We dug through my craft drawers, pulled out paint and brushed, filled the water container, and got the paint pallets ready.
Paint
Throw down some paper towels, newspaper, an old sheet, or anything you have to protect your table. To save your kids’ clothes, grab an apron, an old t-shirt that’s slightly too big, or have them wear clothes they can get messy. We put one of my old shirts on them and then secured it like a ponytail in the back to take up the slack, tucking the tail inside the shirt.
Now paint! The body and the beard don’t need to be painted all the way, since some of it will be covered over. Put one piece at a time in front of the kids. While that one dries do another, and so on. The Momma helped a lot with the 2-year-old, but let the older son do his own thing. I went with an ombre look for my seaside gnome.
Crisis Averted
Here’s a fun thing that happened. The younger boy was painting green and the older, red. YB reached over with his green paintbrush and made a big smear across the red body of OB. Oh NO!! Not to worry. Do you know why? Because to make red darker, you don’t add black. You add green — its opposite! So I taught a little color theory and showed OB how to mix red paint into the green smear and ta-da!! We now had a darker red body. (Thank you, Child #4 for the art lesson this summer.)
Details
When one layer is dry, add more detail. We showed OB how to make dots by dipping the handle of the paintbrush in the paint and touching it to the surface. You can leave them solid or create stripes, plaids, polk-a-dots, etc. My daughter made a plaid hat for her YB by making stripes in both directions with a couple different colors of paint.
The nose can stay natural wood or add some flesh tone and touch of pink. I love this step because it personalizes it. Brown tones and a black beard for my Native American kids.
You can use a blow dryer to get everything ready for the the next step, or go have some snacks while you wait for everything to dry. Apples and peanut butter. Yum!!
Assemble DIY Gnome Christmas Ornament
When everything is dry, glue the ghost (beard) to the apple (body) and then the hat to the ghost. Lastly, you will glue on the nose. Attach the string to hang it and be done, or you can add some decorations.
Decorations
The grandsons chose buttons and some cute holiday doo dads for theirs. I decided to go with a warm weather Christmas ornament from my earlier post, so I added shells and pearls along with snowflakes. I know. There aren’t snowflakes on the beach, but I liked it.
MAKING MEMORIES
Better than making ornaments is making memories together. Don’t forget to put the year on the back of each ornament so you can look back and remember which year they were made or given. You can also put the age of the child that made it. Our kids always love decorating the tree each year. They talk about the memories. “Remember when Tuffy chewed this ornament?” “I remember Dad making this reindeer. Poor thing.” (Dad or the deer?)
Some years I put up my own tree with matching ornaments, but the kids have always had free reign of their tree. They hang their own ornaments and some years we have cookies and hot chocolate. Other years we just a can’t wait for it to get done. Mom hands out the ornaments and Dad hands out the hooks. And then I try really hard to resist the urge to move the ornaments to better spots. They actually do a really good job (because we talk about artistic balance as we decorate). Teaching teaching teaching.
It is a tradition that will be over next year, as we’ll finally be empty nesters. If I’m lucky, the grandkids will come make ornaments with me again.
YOUR TURN
What ornament tradition do you have? Are you a fan of the gnome fad? Do you put your tree up before or after Thanksgiving?
So clever! Love the way they come together into something new!