Jesse Tree ornaments

I have always loved the Christmas season and wanted to make some sort of daily activity for our little family to remember the reason behind why we celebrate Christmas. I was inspired by this blog and thought that making a Jesse Tree would be a great way to share the message of God's promises to my sweet girls.

I fully understand that Lucy won't get it this year, but I wanted to get these done so that next year, when she is able to understand a little more, and my hands are full with two little girls, they would be ready to go.

I did some homework because there are many tutorials, Jesse Tree blogs, etc, out there. 

I finally found a blog that I loved that uses the Jesus Storybook Bible as the guide.

I then found another blog with a tutorial that matched about 2/3 of the ornaments listed with the Jesus Storybook Bible guide. For the rest of the ornaments that weren't on the blog tutorial, I either hand-sketched/designed them or found Google images that would work.

These took me about 5-6 solid nights to complete, from start to finish. 

It wasn't as hard as I thought it might be, just a little tedious with cutting out and gluing all the small pieces. I needed something that didn't require sewing, since I'm not a great seamstress, so this worked well.

What I used:

-felt of every color

- ribbon of every color

- felt glue

- sequins

- embroidery thread and needle

What I did:

- used the blog tutorial mentioned above and printed out all of the templates. I then placed a sheet of paper over each of the templates that I wanted to use, traced them, cut the pattern out and then took the pattern, placed it on felt, traced and cut out the design. 

- I learned the hard way- if one of your designs needs embroidery detail (like the sheaf of wheat or the tablets for the 10 commandments), embroider them BEFORE gluing the design to the backing. Otherwise, it's really hard to hand-sew through dried glue. (if you don't want to hand-embroider stuff, you can always use a fine-tipped Sharpie marker)

- I chose a colored felt for the backing, then glued the design onto the backing using felt glue.

- I then cut ribbon, glued it to the back of the ornament

- I cut out cream-colored felt a little bigger than the backing sizes and glued the cream felt backing to the ornament

- done!

Can't wait to start using these next week!