Ornament Exchange

For the past three years now I have participated in a Christmas ornament exchange.   It's fun for me, it forces me to use some creativity.  This is the first year that I did not use a pattern already written.  Yes I could start working on the idea in January but it's oh so fun to procrastinate and panic and wait until the last month or so....and finish them the afternoon of the party!..Here is how I came up with my idea.

In my daily Bible reading about a month before the exchange, I was reading about angels...ding..."I'll make an angel"... so I did a little digging for angel inspiration on cyberspace...came across this link...love this idea
I decided to apply it to my angel idea....but wait..I needed a typewriter.

 This little gem was waiting for me at an estate sale with my name on it...I was almost in a panic though because we had all thrown out our typewriters long ago...what would we ever need those old things for right? This lovely little Royal 50's typewriter looked as if it was never used.  Still had the book and a working ribbon..we even found a spare ribbon at the same sale. Those angels were destined to be!

 Using vintage cotton/linen from another sale I cut my fabric to 8 1/2 x 11 and ironed it to a piece of freezer paper...the waxy side stick to the fabric.  It was then easy to insert the fabric into the typewriter and type inside my angel bodies traced on the fabric.  I chose different verses in the book of Luke where the angels were announcing Christ's birth to the shepherds...

 Then also using Donna's idea, I stamped on their bodies around the type.  I tried to use silver metallic but it came out kind of grey...still looked good though.

 For my angels body backing I decided to die some cream colored wool with Kool-aid...another new experience for me ...fun and funky...I just sprinkled it on the fabric being careful not to really mix it so it would be random and let it simmer until soaked in.

 Here are my pieces of fabric...I forgot one the pieced was a blue...the one on the right..I used the cream pieces however with the red and turquoise.

 I used heat n bond light to bond the bodies together and then sewed around the bodies with a decorative stitch like Donna did on her advent ornaments.    They got wool roving hair and wings tied on with wool yarn.  I did not want to give them faces....I wanted the focus to be on hair and wings....I liked the red hair and when I make more I will give them the red...

 This is the blondie...she has a treble clef stamped on her body.

And this is the sassy red angel....she has the word "behold" stamped on her body.