DIY Stenciled Christmas Tree Ornaments

Our Christmas tree is full of metallic ornaments in gold, silver, copper and bronze. It’s also a handmade Christmas around here – because it’s fun to make things! – so each year I make a few more ornaments for the tree. This year some stenciled ornaments were added.

When I saw the broad flat surfaces on unfinished paper mache ornaments at the craft store, it was literally stars in my eyes – I knew they’d be perfect for stenciling:

I painted some gold and others silver, like the ornaments I shared in a previous post about Krylon Looking Glass spray paint and how not to use it:

Once the ornaments got their silver or gold base coat, it was time to stencil.

Now, all the stencils in my collection are much bigger than these ornaments. But that’s not a problem. Who says you have to fit the entire stencil pattern onto something? Using a small part of the stencil can make really cool abstract patterns. I used the Marrakech Medallion and the Indian Paisley Damask stencils from Royal Design Studio. As you can see, only a small part of the Indian Paisley stencil would fit on an ornament:

The stencil is bigger than my kitchen island, in fact! Again, no worries. This is what we’re going to do:

Simply slide your ornament under a section of the stencil that you think would look good. I looked for areas where I could fit one complete design element on a stencil, like the small paisleys shown above. Then just let the other design elements run off the edge of your ornament. You can center the pattern, or don’t worry about that and lay it out really off-center for an abstract look.

Here’s the results I got:

Now, this is only one side. You know what that means! It’s double the fun! On the other side, use a different stencil and even a different paint color. As the ornaments twirl and turn on your tree, you will see different patterns.

Here’s some of the ornaments hanging on my tree. Some of these are the same ornament, different sides …

This one is painted silver and stenciled with the Royal Design Studio Stencil Creme in Bronze Age:

The stencil creme was a joy to work with – plus it looked so luscious and I was working on the kitchen island and so tempted to lick it! I got to play with the cremes at the Haven Conference last summer and they make nice crisp lines. And they have a luminescence, like think peacock feathers. Very pretty paints.

The next two were painted with the Orange Ice stencil creme:

This is the other side of the ornament above – see how you can have two totally different looks and colors on one ornament:

So you can see, when you scoot the ornaments around under a large stencil, there’s an infinite number of patterns you can create on the ornaments. I love how these turned out! I like the abstract patterns that look like they came from all over the world. The patterns also really pop out on the tree too – you can see them from a ways away in the room.

P.S. My tree is from Balsam Hill. I got it at a great sale price!