Making Nativity Ornaments

Every year, I host an Ornament Exchange for my crafty friends.  I think this year is the 11th year!  We all look forward to it and plan our ornaments throughout the year.  

This year I made a Nativity wooden ornament.  I have been collecting clothes pins for a couple of years now and decided it was time to make the project.

I found some Christmas carol papers that I cut out and glued to the backgrounds.  I sanded the edges and sponged them to give them a little bit of an antique look.

I had a package of wooden ornaments and one of wooden hearts and I used them for the background.  I painted the wooden cut outs and stained all of the clothespins, which was kind of messy.  

The little clothespins were from Michaels and they made the perfect baby Jesus.

Joseph was painted green and Mary was painted blue to give some color.  And I had a roll of burlap ribbon that I cut and used for the swaddling cloths to keep baby Jesus warm.

Mary gets a jute rope bow and lastly I added some buttons and sparkly embellishments to finish them off.  

I ordered the rusty stars online and used some old Stampin Up wire to attach them to the ornaments.

There a LOT of glue from my glue gun used to hold everything all together.  

I made about 20 of these so that I had extras to give out at Christmas and some to put in my shop.  They took a couple of weeks to get all of the steps made to complete them.  But I like how they came out.  The girls at the Exchange loved them. 

But then I had another idea...

Remember the old quilt that I picked up at the Vintage market in the spring?  I cut out some hearts from it and sewed along the edge to hlep them keep their shape.  

I thought that the quilted heart would make a good background for the clothespins.  I decided to use the older vintage clothespins for this craft.

Here is what they look like and I have to say that they really have a vintage look to them!

The clothespins have been well used and I think that adds to the project.  I didn't paint Mary and Joseph this time, but left them plain.  

And I had to glue the star onto the quilted piece because the background wasn't stiff enough to hold the wire.

I didn't get a chance to use or give any of these out this year, so I will save them for next year.  :)

Which Nativity ornament do you prefer?  The one with the wooden background or the quilted background?