Simple Paper Ornament for Christmas

I wanted to try to make an ornament to decorate the house last year. Neither my boyfriend or I were raised to be festive, so we don't even have a tree. My parents are Chinese immigrants so not only were they working hard to make a buck, it was even harder to assimilate and learn American customs. Anything "American" was always brought home from whatever my brother and I picked up from school. My boyfriend immigrated to America when he was 12 from Belarus, so these doings are even more foreign to him. He was born Jewish by heritage, but never practiced the lifestyles of one due to antisemitism in Belarus. I am 26 now, closing in on 30 in a blink of an eye, and it got me thinking about how I would raise my children being that their parents are coming from completely different backgrounds. What do we integrate, what do we not integrate? I decided that it would be healthy to introduce everything to them, so they are well-rounded. This step in minimal decorating of the house was a small branch stemming from that original tree of thought.

So what I did was scour the net for interesting, simple ornaments that I can make from paper. I came across a Modern Paper Ornament from Chrisjob. You can follow the link to follow the instructions on how to make it.

You can see how it measures up next to me and next to one of my cats. Instead of bright colors, I opted for more subtle ones--we have a lot of dark and modern styled furniture. The silver ornament was also originally cut using white cardstock. I proceeded to paint it with silver acrylic paint and sprinkled on a generous amount of fine silver glitter. It is dangled with floral wire because I had it and I knew it wouldn't draw too much attention from a previous project I worked on with my friend, Jenny, for her wedding decorations.

Now I'm wondering if this winter will be as mild as the last one since I keep posting about last winter's holidays. lol