Photo Ornaments from Gift Tags

 

Every year, I make a photo ornament of Kiddo for his grandparents and other family members. (And of course, we also keep one for our own tree.) Some of my absolute favorite ornaments growing up were the photo ornaments I made in preschool. I loved looking back to see how much I had grown from year to year. I'm excited to share that experience with my little guy as he gets older.

For his first Christmas, I made a "snow globe" style ornament using a clear plastic ball ornament. Then last year I made a salt dough hand print with a photo glued on the back.

This year I wanted to continue the tradition, so I turned to Pinterest. I liked the ideas I found at this post from She Knows, so I went to Hobby Lobby to look for cookie cutters or pom-poms. (Hobby Lobby shout-out! It recently opened near us and that place is amazing!)
Well, they were out of cookie cutters, and though I found some cute pom-poms, I wasn't really sold. I took one last sweep through the Christmas aisles looking for inspiration when I came across these gift tags.

I just knew they had potential, so bought them and came home to find the perfect photo. My mom made a craft foam hand print wreath with the kiddo a few weeks ago, and one of the pictures she had taken was perfect! I used PicMonkey to crop the photo down to a square, and then I added in Kiddo's name and the year. Then I opened the picture in a Word document, shrunk it down to 2.5 inches (the diameter of the gift tags), and filled the page. Once I printed it out, I used a tag to trace a circle around each photo.

Then I cut them out and got ready to paste them on the back of the gift tags. But first, I had to take off all the ribbons. I learned my lesson with past projects - always put small parts (like ribbons) in an envelope or baggie so the don't get lost!

Once the ribbons were removed, I cut out the photos and used a glue stick to attach them to the "To/From" side of the gift tag.

Once they were glued, I took my scissors and cut off any over-hang. To protect the photos from being damaged, and to make them more durable, I decided to pull out my personal laminating machine that I've had since my Elementary Education days in college. After a quick run through the machine, I cut them out. Then I used a small hole punch to put new holes in the laminated ornaments.
Once they were all punched, I replaced the ribbon and they were ready to hang. Here is the final product. So cute, right?

And since I had all other materials already on-hand, all I had to pay was the $2.00 for the gift tags, plus tax. This was the easiest ornament project yet, and it came to only $0.18 per ornament! Not bad at all!
So, there you have it - this year's photo ornament. Do you make any special keepsake ornaments year after year?