DIY adorable Christmas ornaments from natural fibers, foil and old tights!

Hi everyone and welcome to my channel! I'm Irina and today I'll show you how to make natural bristles or sisal ornaments for Christmas decoration. My first ornament is a squirrel. To make it easier for you to repeat this DIY I prepared templates. Cut the template out of cardboard and using it as a base I'll sculpt a volumetric ornament. I made volume using aluminum foil. Make a lump of foil to fit on the template and hot glue it to the cardboard and then crumple the foil giving it the desired shape. I covered both the body and the tail with foil on both sides so that they became voluminous. Legs are left flat on one side because we'll glue them to the body. Don't attach the ears yet. To make sisal stick better to the base I wrapped it into rolled nylon tights. They have good natural color so will not show through much from under the sisal and they stretch very well so you can wrap all the curves. I glued the tights to foil with hot glue. I did this without any special system, just took a rectangular piece and wrapped around the foil base, pulled it in the right places so that everything was covered tightly. Glue and cut off the excess. At this stage I glued the legs to the body but I didn't stick the tail yet to have good access to the squirrel's back. Now attach the eyes. I bought ready-made eyes 6 mm. You can also use black shiny beads. Before gluing them make some dimples for eyes with your fingers. Bend the cardboard ears a little and wrap in tights. Now glue the ears to the head and glue the eyes. If the ornament is supposed to be hung on the Christmas tree a loop is needed. I twisted a loop on a piece of wire and wrapped the wire around the head and then around the neck. Sorry didn't shoot it very well but I hope it's clear. Now sisal or bristles. I bought mine at hobby department. It was a set of three colors in a box. There are also boxes with one color only. One set with three colors was enough for me to make a To imitate animal fur cut off a bunch of sisal fibers about half of inch long, slightly shift the top layer so that fibers didn't end up as a straight cut and hot glue it to the base. You are to move along the body from the bottom up as opposite to the direction of fur growth. Cover with white sisal lower part of the tail, the inside of the ears and the tummy. And the rest will be ginger colored. I'll try to find links for where to buy sisal. It's usually sold as gift box filler and if you can't find sisal you can also use coconut fiber. It's sold as material for birds nests at pet shops or there are also coconut baskets for flowers. You can tear it into fibers and use as well. In order the fur had realistic look the back must be covered from bottom to top, feet from base to tips, head from nape to top and further to nose. And after everything is ready the squirrel gets a haircut. Cut all the sisal making it shorter and less messy until you get more or less smooth surface. I've left the tail more fluffy only trimmed the longest fibers. Now you can glue the tail to the squirrel's body. I gave her a pine cone in her paws and made a nose out of piece of cone. Tie a string and I wanted some brightness and so I added red artificial berries. This squirrel resulted a bit fatty fatty. I think it's better making the template more slim and then final result will be more proportional but I still like it. The next Christmas ornament is a hedgehog. I also made the body from foil this time not using a cardboard but simply focusing on a template. It turns out a kind of pier in shape. The legs are just like those of a squirrel voluminous at one side and flat from the other side. And I also wrapped the base in tights. I made the hedgehog a white priest and I decided to make the rest gray colored. Perhaps some tan color would have looked more natural but I wanted to make all the ornaments different. You only need to cover with fibers the tummy and sides. We do not touch the back. I almost forgot to insert eyes. Remembered about it the last moment. Glue the legs from base to tips and make a haircut. Attach the legs to the body. I made the hind legs white. And the most important thing for a hedgehog is making it spiny. To imitate prickles I took some wooden chips for smoking. They are usually sold together with charcoal and other barbecue accessories. I used Weber hickory wood chips. These chips are quite large so I divided some wider chips into narrower spikes with scissors. When I was going to begin attaching prickles I remembered that I had forgotten about the loop completely. Since the breast was already covered in sisal it was too late to wrap the loop around the neck and I just bent the ends of the wire and stuck it into the base and then hot glue it. Now you can attach the prickles. I hot glue it first along the perimeter a kind of sun and then filled the inside of the back with prickles. After everything was filled in I hot glued some more prickles to hide traces of glue if visible anyway. By the way if you don't find any wood chips you can also make prickles from chopped wooden sticks. The nose was also made from part of pine cone. It remains to make a rope loop and I also added berries to the hedgehog back. If I had I would definitely add some small artificial apples here. In my opinion the hedgehog turned out to be just lovely. My son adores hedgehogs. He has a collection of toy hedgehogs and so this ornament is for him. I'm thinking of touching up the chips with a gray stain to better match the gray sisal coating. I wanted some birds and I'll show you two options at once an owl and a sparrow. I made the bases without template in this case. This is pear shaped like I made for hedgehog and sparrow also has a pointed tail base. Wrapping the base with tights as before. For owl I used bigger sized eyes. They are eight millimeters but it could have been even larger. The bigger the better here. Cover the owl breasts with white sisal from bottom to top. Around the eyes I hot glued tufts of sisal folded as a fan to emphasize the pop-eyed shape. Cut this rounded. I made a beak from wood chips of suitable shape and I also made wooden eyebrows. Now let's get to the plumage. For this I took two types of wood chips. Smaller and larger ones. These are from another package of wood chips already. Start with the tail. Hot glue a white long chip vertically. Then gradually glue more chips to it on the sides moving upwards and trying to imitate bird feathers. After the long ones use some shorter chips. I had some white and brown chips in a bag and I decided to make contrasting backrest and wings. I picked up brown chips and glued them over the back moving from the bottom up and made the wings light colored. Now let's make all feet. Bend a piece of wire about 10 inch long in half. You'll get a loop. From each side make two more loops a little shorter. You can help yourself with pliers and here we got three fingers. And the fourth loop looks back. This is the back finger. Bend the tips so that the fingers became a little bit curved and bend ends of wire upwards to make a foot. I wrapped wire frame with raffia, hot gluing it here and there so that everything held tightly. Glue the legs to the body and add some sisal around the legs. And in addition two tufts of sisal under the eyebrows to make them more expressive. Sparrow is done much the same way. I decided to make him dark wings and a light colored back. I glued the chips over all the head to the very beak. Legs of the sparrow are much easier to make. I wound up some raffia over a twig and glued to the bird. The twig was decorated with berries and artificial spurs. And the owl got a cone with berries to hold in legs. Birds always look great over the Christmas tree and I really like the way the feathers from chips look like. Again you can play with color if you use wood stain or you can also take colored sisal and make for example a red cardinal or titmouse. But again it's better using muted natural tones and not a bright red or bright yellow color. And finally the last of today's collection of ornaments a reindeer. Again I wanted to make the version easy to reproduce so I didn't sculpt it over some wireframe but made a template. Two sides with legs and a central detail with a head. Make the sides voluminous from white side like we did with legs for squirrel and so on. And for the central detail make a rounded head but the rest of this detail just cover it with half an inch layer of foil so that there was some distance between the legs. Glue all three details together. I covered the legs with foil only from the outside. The fact that the inside of the legs is flat will be completely invisible once finished. At this moment the base looks like a dog but trust me the ears and antlers will change that. But if you want to make a dog for a Christmas tree you know that this template will also work. Cover the base with tights just like the rest of the ornaments. I also covered the cardboard ears with tights and glued them to their place. Let's go for antlers. I bent the antlers from wire just like the legs of the gnoll. I've prepared a template of half of antler. You can use it as a guide when bending the wire. After everything is bent wrap the main axis with wire for extra strength. The second half is done mirrored. Give the finished antlers the desired shape with pliers. I also wrapped the antlers with raffia. I just glued on the tip and then wrapped all the frame. I'll also try to find links for raffia sources and leave them in the info box below. I wrapped the hovers of the deer with raffia too. Now it's up to the fur. Glue the belly of the deer with white sisal from tail to chest as well as the inside of the ears. Then I remembered that as usual I forgot about the eyes. Glue on them. Over and under the eyes glue small tufts of sisal to form an elmwood shaped cut for the eyes. For the main color I took a natural light brown tone. Coconut fiber would also work great here. Glue the base over beginning from the bottom of the legs and moving up and along the base from tail to head. And of course I forgot the loop so I fasten it like I did with the hedgehog. Stuck the ends of the wire into the sides and hot glued for extra secure. Glue the head from the back to nose and of course don't forget to make the deer a fashionable haircut. It remains to tie a string and decorate if desired. I made a wreath from a spruce and several berries. Although I made a loop I think that this figure still looks better not hanging over the tree but standing as a Christmas decoration because it turned out to be quite large. I was very much worried about the proportions in the process of work. My husband said that the deer was overfed but in the end it seems to me it looks quite proportional. If you slightly change the patterns of the sides you can make a lion deer. Along with houses and gnobes deer is one of the most popular Christmas decoration so I hope it will inspire you to make something like this. And here is full today's collection. Such decoration of natural bristle or sisal are also sold ready-made and they may be quite expensive but making them yourself is not difficult although it will take you a couple of evenings. Hope you like today's video. Please don't forget to subscribe if you want more interesting ideas for Christmas. Have a nice day and bye!