Cork Painted Ornaments

We've really enjoyed making ornaments this year! 

We've been experimenting with several new types of ornaments, like these snow white mitten ornaments. But if you've been hanging around this fall, you also know we've been liking using cork as a crafting material.

So of course, why wouldn't we combine the two ideas into these easy Cork Painted Ornaments?

Although most of our projects so far have involved using a wine corks, this inspiration came from a different cork product we also had on hand: bulletin board cork tiles. We had a set of one foot square tiles which can be hung on the wall to create bulletin boards. Ours previously had been on the wall in an office space, but we hadn't used them in a while. 

The cork tiles are about 1/4 inch thick and proved to be easy to cut with a pair of kitchen scissors. Before cutting I traced ornament shapes onto the cork with a pencil so that I would have a guideline as I cut. 

Once I'd cut out the shapes, the ornaments were ready to be painted. We used acrylic craft paints in a variety of "Christmas" colors. 

Before painting Big Brother and I chatted about how ornaments often have a pattern or design on them, he started thinking about how he might do this on his ornaments. 

He started with designs like lines and then added in more details like dots. 

On other ornaments he added just a few straight lines that intersected. 

After the ornaments dried we hole punched the top and added ribbon. No two ornaments were alike. 

Big Brother has already been excited to hand some of the ornaments out as holiday gifts, but I'm hoping we keep a few for our own tree! I just love how simple and classic these turned out. 

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