Homemade Christmas Presents: Family Ornaments

Some of my favorite Christmas ornaments are the personalized family ones.  I wanted to make one, not only for us, but also for some of our friends and family.  I still have a personalized one from my childhood that has my parents, my sister, and me (but no little brother!), and I think it's awesome.  

To make these, I grabbed a package of colorful beads and some small, round, wooden beads at the craft store.  I already had the wire on hand.  I cut one strip of wire and doubled it over for the "base" to hang the people from.  I looped each end of the base so I would have something to attach the ribbon to hang it.

Then I cut a smaller strip of wire for each person, threaded on the beads (3 colorful ones per adult, 2 per kid, and just 1 for baby bean), and twisted it around the base.  For those that I knew, I tried to use their favorite colors, or at least more feminine colors for the girls, and masculine colors for the boys.  A pliers helped, but my thumbs still hurt from the twisting.

I had plans to add a little nameplate to the top with "DeDeyne 2012", but I couldn't find anything that looked quite right, so I just left that off.  I still like how it turned out, and I hope the recipients of the other ones I made will like them too!