Dollar Store Craft - Ho-Ho-Holiday Frame Ornament

Last year we made a fun hanging picture frame ornament craft with the MOMS Club. This year I found similar items so we could do it again as gifts for other people.

Last year's frame

When we first made this, Little Z was only 18-months old, so she wasn't good for much, other than peeling the backs off the foam stickers after I had started them, and then she was able to stick them onto the frame. She'd place an object with no glue down somewhere, then I'd try and glue it approximately where she had set it. Then she'd pick it back up and place it somewhere new, and make me wipe the glue off her hands. Rinse, repeat. I finally got her to leave some of the bits on, and once I discovered her dexterity with stickers (and her inability to pull them back off!) we stuck with those. [Pun intended.]

Ho-Ho-Holiday Craft Stick Frame Ornament

Materials:
8 craft sticks or 12 popsicle sticks (craft sticks are the tongue-depressor-sized ones)
Assortment of craft embellishments: small buttons, beads or pony beads, stickers, pompoms, googley eyes, sequins, 'scatter' (punched out foil or paper shapes you put in envelopes or scatter on tables for decor,) etc.
Craft glue
Ribbon, string or yarn

Step 1: Choose 8 craft sticks (or 12 smaller ones.) Decide which colors will go where for layout, with 2 each on top and bottom of frame and 2 each on sides. (Or 3 each with the small sticks.)

Step 2: Cut ribbon or yarn. You'll want enough to either make an arc across most of the frame, or 2 bits that can tie together in the middle above the frame. For smaller width ribbon, string and yarn, you can tie an end around the top stick about an inch from each end of the stick.

Step 3: If you didn't tie the ribbon onto a stick, put glue onto top ends of both sticks on each side of the frame. Press ends of ribbon or string into glue, then put more glue over ribbon, and on top ends of side sticks,  from the top edges of the sticks down to where the lower of the 2 sticks that will form the top of the frame will be. Place top 2 sticks over glue and adjust sticks gently to make them even.
Then place glue on bottom ends of all 4 side sticks, enough for both bottom sticks. Place bottom sticks on, and adjust sticks gently to form as square a shape as you can.

Step 4: You can let the glue dry a little, which is recommended for littler kids who might try and pick it up, or push down too hard, or whatever. Otherwise, begin decorating!

I used an empty egg carton to separate our craft items while keeping them contained. They also are shallow and wide enough to see what's there, as well as for her hands to grasp stuff easily. And this way she didn't have access to the whole baggie of each item, so I could save some for later.

This year she was very adept at dispensing way, way too much glue directly onto items as well as globbed onto the frame. She liked jamming all the sequins on together and had a hard time understanding that she had to glue each item separately, and that the pompoms needed big globs of glue, but that nothing else did! I would pick off all the loose sequins and pompoms (amidst much fussing from her) and then she'd place them onto random glue blobs that had dripped, or she'd make new ones!

The pompoms were a big hit. I'm glad I held some back,
or she would gleefully have used them all up!

She insisted that she had to blow the glue to help it dry.

This year's finished product!
(I'm showing off last year's picture, since
we haven't seen Santa yet this year.)

This craft is fairly inexpensive, and you can easily get enough to make several, or to have a bunch of kids make them. Joann Fabrics had the felt stickers, tinsel pompoms, and sequin scatter for $1/packet. I bought 2 packets of pompoms (each packet had green and red together) but didn't get a picture to show how many you get. I easily have five or six times what she used still in my baggie. Maybe more.

Each baggie shows how many felt stickers I got in each pack for $1 each,
except I got 2 packets of the snowflakes.
So all this (plus the ones she used on the frame before I took this picture) for $6

This represents 2 packets of scatter from Joann's, so $2 total.
Each packet had all 3 styles.

Joann's dollar section also had some stick-on gems in a variety of colors, roughly 30-40/$1, but I'm saving those for something else.

The Dollar Tree store had the same foam stickers as last year, and you get a bunch of them for $1. [Sorry. I forgot to take a picture! But the plastic tub was over half full with them.] I also found foam letter stickers in coordinating colors and pompoms there. They only had the small popsicle-stick sized craft sticks, and I've been scoping them out all year hoping for the big ones. (I could have gone with the small ones, and used 3 on each side instead of 2, but then the picture window would be much smaller.)
So the only ingredients that didn't come from a dollar store or dollar section were the ribbon and the large colored craft sticks, and they were somewhere around $2-$3 for enough to make 10 frames. The Dollar Tree has ribbon, so I could have bought it there, but I hadn't and was at Joann's, and their Christmas ribbon was all half off, so I paid $1.50 and had enough for 5 frames. If I'd been stingier, I could have squeaked in a 6th one, but I wanted them to be able to tie them into bows if desired.

$1 worth of Dollar Tree pompoms

My sisters, our mom, and our kids all got together for a little family holiday party. My youngest sister (Auntie Kayra) baked sugar cookies and brought colored frosting and sprinkles. I brought the frame craft. Our other sister, Auntie Kayneen had a class that morning, so she missed out on most of all the fun!

Pilu was a little too young for all that gluing, and I didn't want to be fighting with her to keep the bits on, so I brought a cut-out foam frame from a package of 8 from the Dollar Tree that's been sitting in my craft stash and let her go to town with the stickers. She'd pick one up, indicate that she wanted me to peel off the back ("Hehhhpp!") and then she was able to stick them on wherever she desired.

After crafts, it was cookie-decorating time! All the kids had fun stuffing themselves decorating cookies while waiting for pizza to arrive for lunch.

I frosted for Pilu,
but she shook her own sprinkles on!

I wrapped the frames in newspaper for all the kids, so they could surprise their moms. Jotch, Cody, Tually and Pilu all made frames. Little Z napped in the car with my husband during craft time, and Khiss got bored after gluing the sticks together. I sent a tub with a little of everything in it to decorate at home if he changed his mind.

I'm linking this craft post up with Fireflies and Jellybeans, Thrift Core and submitting it to Dollar Store Crafts!