Christmas Craft: Clothespin Elf Ornaments

I am one of those pinterest obsessed moms. I pin hundreds of things but I do actually end up trying quite a few.  I found this post, which I cannot read, and that inspired us to create our own elf clothespin ornaments.   Our elves came out even cuter than I had hoped. Mr. No had just turned 5 when we did this craft so I would say 4 year olds with patience or a good amount of parental help or 5 and up as the age for this craft.

Our materials (for 9 elves):
9 standard clothespins
green paint
glue
white foam
green foam
18 tiny pom poms: 9 green, 9 any color you want
18 tiny googly eyes
red ribbon

The majority of our art supplies come from Dollar Tree so this was a very inexpensive craft. We had a large package of standard clothespins that we had used for our counting clip cards and they were perfect for our elves. I drew a pencil line on the front of the clothespin where Mr. No should stop painting so the elf wouldn't have a green face and let him paint all the elves green.

Since kid's paint dries fairly quickly, we didn't have to wait long to continue on with our elves. I ended up cutting out the little collars for the elves.  Mr. No tried, the kids scissors gave him a lot of problem and then got frustrated so, since this is supposed to be fun, I cut the collars out of white foam. He attached them.

I took the opportunity to work on fine motor skills as well and we used tweezers to attach the tiny green pom pom noses.

He didn't want to use the tweezers for the googly eyes so those went on by hand.

Since we were doing Elves and Santas, I cut out the hats as well.  When given the choice between elves and Santas, he wanted to do both.  He loves to create. I thought he would be overwhelmed but he was happy to do them all except for the cutting. The hats were made from just 2 matching triangle of foam, one glued to the front and one glued to the back by Mr. No.   Then we added the pom pom on top.  We glued a white ribbon loop to the back with white glue but a hot glue gun would be best.

And there are our very cute and very easy Elves and Santas Christmas ornament gifts. Here's the post on how to make the Santas.  I have to admit that I am one who, even if I can guess from one photo how to make something, likes to see step by step instructions especially when working with Mr. No.  It lets him see how things will progress so he doesn't get frustrated when it doesn't immediately look like the end product. And I think his end product was adorable!



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