These Christmas Gnome Ornaments are so cute, easy, and cheap to make! They’re perfect to hang on your tree or make great homemade ornaments as gifts.
DIY Christmas Gnome Ornaments
Is there anything cuter than homemade Christmas gnomes?
These DIY gnomes have so much personality and look so great hanging on a Christmas tree. I especially love how the Christmas lights behind the cream felt beard shine through. Depending on the color of Christmas light you use, it either makes them more colorful, or illuminates them with a beautiful glow.
You could even skip the ornament ribbon, and attach one of these to a wreath. I think that would be adorable! It would definitely be a fun addition to your Christmas decor, and I think that wreaths with fun elements like that make great festive holiday wall art.
Optional Changes
The main optional changes with these ornaments have to do with fabric and with color.
The most obvious one is to use faux fur as the beard. That would be so cute! It can also be a little harder to find, which is why I went with a felt beard.
If you have a more colorful aesthetic, you could make lots of these gnomes with rainbow colored hats! You can pick up bright colorful felt at the dollar store, and I can imagine this looking super cute and chic hanging on a tree. I’m picturing one with a navy hat, one with a yellow hat, and one with a bright pink hat.
How to Make a Gnome Hat
This step is a little finicky, but if you have patience and only trim off a little fabric at a time, it will come together. I recommend only trimming a little fabric at a time because it can be easy to trim too much fabric, which means you’d have to start over and would have wasted some fabric.
Since the fabric size is based on the size of styrofoam ball you use, I didn’t really think a felt gnome pattern would be too helpful, but I promise it’s a relatively easy ornament to make once you play with it a little bit!
To make the gnome hat, start by taking the fabric you’re going to use for the hat, and wrapping it around the ball you’re using as a base to find out how wide you need your cut of fabric to be.
It’s best if the edges overlap just a little on the back of the ornament. Cut the fabric to that width, then decide how tall you want the hat to be, and cut the fabric to that height.
To shape the hat, start making the cone shape with the hat fabric by making the bottom into a large circle and the top of the fabric into a tight circle that wraps around itself. This will show you where the obviously excess fabric is that you can cut off.
Keep repeating this process of removing the extra fabric until you have a triangular piece of fabric that wraps into a gnome hat nicely.
Glue the bottom edge of the hat around the center of the styrofoam ball.
Cut a small piece of ribbon to act as the hanging loop, and glue it to the top center front of the fabric (making sure the pretty side of the ribbon faces forward). Glue together the back seam of the hat.
How to Make Gnome Ornaments
The beauty of this ornament is that it’s no-sew! Thanks to a little hot glue, these are super easy to make. The full directions to make these homemade Christmas ornaments are in the printable card at the bottom of the post, but here’s a condensed version of the directions:
- Measure, cut, and glue the gnome hat. Don’t forget to add the ornament hook ribbon before gluing the hat shut in the back!
- Measure, cut, and glue the gnome beard. Style the beard by cutting some wisps at the bottom – this gives it so much character.
- Sketch and cut out the eyebrows. Position the eyes and pom pom nose where you’d like them, then glue them down.
- Enjoy hanging on your Christmas tree!
What You’ll Need
To make these gnome ornaments you’ll need a couple of tools (affiliate links):
- Low-temperature glue gun. I like to use a low-temperature glue gun when I’m working with styrofoam because it works better than a standard high-temperature glue gun. This is the one I use – it’s affordable and I love how well it’s lasted over the couple of years that I’ve had it.
- Styrofoam balls. I bought these ones online, but I think you could also find some at the dollar store.
- Cute fabric. I found this amazing plaid fabric at the thrift store, but here’s a beautiful and similar one you can buy online.
- Felt. I like to keep both cream colored and a true white felt on hand. Depending on which fabric you use for the hat, one will probably look better than the other. I ended up going with the cream because it’s complemented the plaid I used really well. I bought my felt at the dollar store, but you can buy it here online. You could also use this faux fur to make the beard.
- Small sharp scissors. Using small sharp scissors is really helpful to get the wispy look at the edge of the beard. These are the scissors I used.
- Pom poms. Mine are from the dollar store, but you can also buy them here.
- Ribbon. I’m using a dark gray sparkly wrapping ribbon that I bought last year at a small dollar store, but any pretty ribbon that matches your fabric will work. I also really like this ribbon for these ornaments
- Hot glue sticks. You don’t need anything fancy or with amazing strength here. Just the basic ones will work.
- Ornament hooks. I’m sure you’ve got some kicking around in your Christmas decorations. If not, you can find them at the dollar store, or buy these ornament hooks online.
DIY Christmas Crafts
If you’re looking for more easy upcycled and thrift flip Christmas crafts, be sure to check these out!
Click here to pin this project for later!
These Christmas Gnome Ornaments are so cute, easy, and cheap to make! They're perfect to hang on your tree or make great homemade ornaments as gifts. The styrofoam ball I used was a little rough, so it had some grip to it, and I found that to be really helpful. It kind of held the fabric in place once I positioned it while I glued it down. I think this would have been harder to make using a smooth ball as the base. I used a cream colored felt for the beard because it looked better with the fabric I chose for the hat. I think it's helpful to have both colors available and choose the one that matches the best. It's important to make sure that the length of the beard is proportional to the length of the hat. I made a really long and pointy hat, so it made sense to make my beard a little elongated, too. Have fun with the position of the eyebrows! You can make the gnome look surprised, confused, or even grumpy based on the angle you choose for the eyebrows.Christmas Gnome Ornaments
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