Let's make a cute little gnome!

Hi guys, it's Corrine, thanks so much for stopping by. Today I'm sharing a quick tutorial of how to make these adorable little gnomes. I shared these on my Facebook and Instagram and received several messages asking if there was a tutorial for this, so I thought I'd pop on real quick and show you how to make these. Super quick, super simple, and you can turn them into ornaments. They're great to wrap on Christmas presents, give them to the recipient and they can use them in their tree. And on this one I did not add another little piece to hang, but it sits in my tree anyways. So these are super cute, super simple. You can also add some jingle bells to his little hat, he's got his little nose. And this hat, I got the idea from Pinterest. If I can find the original post, this was probably three months ago that I saw this, two or three months ago. I will try and link that below if I can find it, but I'll show you today. They had a few pictures showing how to make it, and that's what I'm sharing today. Here this one I added a little snowflake to his hat, some jingle bells. So let me show a few things that you'll need to get started. Let me zoom out just a little bit. So you just need some yarn. I'm using just some generic yarn mainstays from Walmart. Today I'm going to do a red and white. I like doing the beard white or gray, and that's what I had in my stash when I made these. I actually have some left over so I'll show you with that. You're going to need some scissors. I like using my Tim Holtz scissors because they're such a fine point, they cut very sharp on the edge. So you'll just need some sharp scissors. I also will be using my glue gun, but if you don't have a glue gun or you don't like to use one, Beacon Fabri-Tac works great. I have a little paintbrush and some Antique White by Apple Barrel. Any type of off-white would be great for his little nose. And for the nose, I'm using those hole plugs that you buy from Home Depot. I paid like two bucks for a pack of ten, and I use these for feet on the bottom of boxes if you're making little dresses or something like that. Whatever you have in your stash that would work for a nose. You're going to need some cotton balls. You're also going to need a paper towel or toilet paper roll. They're about the same diameter, so whatever you have on hand, and we're just going to cut it down. And you're going to cut it to about a half inch, whatever you want the brim of his hat to be. On these I did about a half inch. And then I have some jingle bells here. I'm not sure, I think I might use these tiny jingle bells that I had in my stash. You don't have to even do that. I have a little snowflake here, and I also have a little bow that I may put on his little hat. And then I also have just a little bit of crochet twine to be able to wrap these tiny jingle bells around. If I'm using the larger jingle bells, I could probably get the yarn that I'm using with it. And lastly, you're going to need either a pom pom maker. These I bought off Amazon and I think they were like $9 or $10. You can just search pom pom maker on Amazon and lots of brands will come up. They actually come in four different pieces. This is the one I've used here. I prepped it for this video to make it go a little bit quicker. But I will also link to a video if you don't have or don't choose not to buy a pom pom maker, a simple video of how you can make a pom pom at home without the pom pom maker. So I found a good one when I was searching for this to make this video. I found a good one that I'll link down in the description box below. I think she does a great job, but these make it super, super simple. So like I said, I did kind of prep for this. You can eyeball it and you just kind of want to flatten it in half and cut about a half inch with your scissors. And that's what you're going to need for your hat. But I'm going to use this as an example. Like I said, I made a larger one, but I'm going to use this as an example to show you how to use the pom pom maker. So you want to open up. There's going to be two sides. You have two sides here and two sides here. Okay, you want to start with one and you want to get your yarn and wrap it around. Let me see if I can find the end of this. Like I said, this is just the scrap I have left of this yarn. You're just going to want to wrap it around, hold it here and wrap it around. Okay. You do not have to be perfect on this. The key to a good pom pom on this is a lot of it. So you want to wrap it around and then go back and forth. You don't have to sit here and push it all over. The first one I made, I did, and they turned out great, but you don't have to do that. I've made lots of pom poms with these. Go all the way around. Try and keep it fairly even, like don't leave big gaps, and then go all the way to this edge. And you want to do this until it is completely full. If you make it too full, it's going to be hard to close, but I like to go so much so that it's almost straight across here. You don't have this curve. So I just keep going back and forth. This is super simple to do. You want to get all the way to the edge here and then just come back in the middle. Okay. So I'm happy with this one. Then what you'll do is cut off the end, close it up, and then open the other end and do the exact same thing. Wrap it all the way around until it's very full. Let me show you again how full this one is. That's what's going to make for a really good pom pom. So once I've wrapped the second end, you're going to end up with this. So I have two wrapped pieces, and let me show you again how full these are. So close them back up, and then there's going to be a tiny little gap. This is where your scissors come in handy. There's a tiny little spot here. Make sure these are closed. And just start cutting. You want to cut all that yarn. You want to make sure there's no yarn left in there that's attached. So these scissors work great. Any sharp scissors will work. You want to cut all the way across and keep this closed. Try not to let it open on you. The fuller you get this, it may want to open on you, so just make sure it doesn't. So cut all the way across. So now you can see we've cut that one side completely open. We're going to do the exact same thing to the other side. We're just going to fit our scissors right in that gap there and start cutting. And as you can see, there's still a piece left in there. You want to cut that because you won't be able to wrap your yarn around it otherwise. So go ahead and cut all the way through. And this is again for his beard. Try not to let it open on you. And make sure I've gotten all those little pieces cut. Now we have both sides cut. So now we're going to take an extra piece of the same yarn and we're going to wrap it around those two. This is what's going to hold our pom pom together. We're going to press it right into there, all the way around. And that's why I said you want to make sure you have no pieces sticking. Sometimes you'll get a piece that sticks and it won't want to go all the way through. So wrap it all the way around and pull it really tight. If you don't pull it tight, it's not going to hold your pom pom tight. So you want to pull it to where you almost feel like you're going to break it, but you probably can break it. I've never broken one. I must not have that much strength. And then I like to go back around again and do the exact same thing. Probably not necessary, but pull that tight, give it a knot. Now go ahead and open up your pom pom, both sides, and then these two white pieces pull apart. So we're just going to pull those open, and I put them right back together again so I can set it out of the way. And here is our pom pom. And there are going to be a couple pieces you'll need to trim off. These are our starter pieces, where we started. And you may need to also, you know, just trim any that are extra long. Usually with this project, I don't have to trim too, too much. His beard looks cute. Okay, so now let's move on to the hat. We're going to want to use a different color yarn for his hat. And what I did that I found it easier is I'm using this just as a guide. This is six inches. I took my yarn and wrapped it around probably 30 times and just wrapped, just so you get the same amount of yarn each time. Makes it easier. You don't need this much yarn at once, but I find it much easier. I'd rather use a little extra yarn than not enough. So after you wrap that around quite a few times, probably 30 times, cut off the end of one, and now you have the same size pieces to make it easier to work on. Okay, so we're going to take our paper towel or toilet paper roll. To remind you, I cut mine about a half inch. You could do a quarter inch, whatever you like. And what you want to do is take your string, fold it in half, loop it through, and we're always going to loop it through the exact same side each time. Okay, so it's going to be looped like this, and then you're going to take the two tail ends and loop it into the other end. And pull it tight, pull it together. Okay, so we're always going to hold our paper towel in one hand, the same hand, and we're always going to hold our yarn in the other. Fold the yarn in half, put the part with the loop into the paper towel or toilet paper, grab the two tail ends and loop them through, and pull it tight. And this you want to push together because you don't want any gaps when your hat is done. So again, we're going to take our yarn, loop it, the same way we're putting it through each time, we're moving it to our left hand. Okay, we're going to take the two tail ends, loop them through. This is very relaxing to do in front of a movie, just do a bunch of them. These are cute on packages as well. And then pull it tight and push it over. So you're going to have the little knots in the same spot every time. Okay, so we're going to do a little loop, put it through the same way to the left, grab our two tail ends and loop it through, pull tight and push it together. I'll do two more since I have two more here, put them through. And last one that we're going to do here, put it through, you want to pull it tight and push it together. Okay, so here's what you're going to end up with. Let me zoom out a little. Here's our little hat. So the next thing we want to do now that we have all of those, and like I said, you want to make sure that you have enough on there that there's no gap, you want to push it through the other side. Push it through and pull it out the other side. Make sure they're all even, there's none stuck up in there. Okay, once you're happy with that, you're going to need an extra piece of string to tie around. And again, this is just, you want to eyeball this, how much space you want at the top of his hat. I like to give it a good little size of a beanie here. And just tie your matching yarn to it, double knot that, make sure you're happy with that. And this is where the cotton balls come in. You're going to want to press a cotton ball inside of it. That's going to give it its shape. And I actually think, I didn't do this with my other ones, but I think I'm going to add a little bit of Fabri-Tac to the top, just to make sure that cotton ball isn't going anywhere. I'll just add a little amount there and then press my cotton ball in. And that gives it its shape, its form, it'll hold its form. We're going to add another cotton ball as well. So now once you're happy with that, go ahead and trim these pieces to be the length that you want to stick up. We can go back and trim a little more if need be. And here's his little beanie, it's so cute. So now we're just going to add his beanie to the top of him. And I forgot to plug in my hot glue gun, so I think I'm going to use my Fabri-Tac. I'm going to add another cotton ball, I just want to make sure it's full in there. So I'm going to use my Fabri-Tac. But I do normally like to do both, I like to add a little bit of Fabri-Tac and my hot glue gun. Like I said, I forgot to plug it in, so I'm just going to add it on there. Actually I'll plug it in and I'll be right back. Okay so I went ahead and plugged in my hot glue gun, I don't like to wait for things to dry. So I'm just going to put a little bit of my Fabri-Tac on there. And then also my hot glue, it's not quite ready but I'm trying to rush it for this video. And then just place it on your gnome. And hold it there for a few, that's why I like the hot glue, it'll dry fairly quickly and give the Fabri-Tac a chance to dry. While we're waiting on this, you want to paint your little nose. Like I mentioned earlier in the video, I used Antique White and it'll just give it more of a skin tone. So what I like to do is just put a little piece of ATG on a piece of paper and set my little feet down on it and that helps hold it in place while I use a paintbrush and give it two quick coats. And then you're just going to want to press his nose into right below the hat and right into his little beard. So again I use hot glue for that and just hold it there for a second. And that's it! You can decorate it how you choose. I think for this one I'm going to put two of the tiny jingle bells. I have this little bow that would look cute on the brim or the snowflake. I think I'm just going to use the tiny jingle bells for this one. So I'm going to thread them on there and tie that right around his cap. The yarn would be a little too thick to get it through here so that's why I like the crochet twine something small and you don't see it. You can also take an extra piece of your yarn and tie it onto the top of his hat here to turn it into an ornament. So I'm just going to knot this around, pull it tight, and then cut off the ends as close as I can get. So here is our cute little gnome. I hope you've enjoyed this process and that you make a few to add to packages or your Christmas tree. Super fun to do, super simple, and this would be great with kids. If you have any questions please leave me a comment. Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you all have a very happy new year!