This is the eighth in a series of twelve paper ornaments I’m making this year, one a month, so that when December rolls around I won’t be surprised I’ve done nothing about my wish to have a full paper crafted Christmas Tree.
I was worried when I started this project in January that I wouldn’t keep at it and get it finished. Turns out I may have set my bar too low – every month when I start to search for ideas to make a paper ornament, I have a hard time just picking one!
This month, I decided I wanted to do a reindeer. It’s a classic holiday animal and I figured there’d be a lot of good crafts to use as a starting point.
The Internet rewarded me a jillion choices. I was really taken with this one (it’s#7 3D Reindeer Ornament Paper Craft) and the blog post even included a template with the super friendly caption of “Free to Use, Copy and Share.”
I brought it into my drawing program of choice (Adobe Illustrator) and made a few little changes to make it easier to cut with my Silhouette Cameo. You can totally cut this one with scissors or an X-acto knife as well.
I exported my Illustrator file as a DXF file, because the standard version of Silhouette Studio doesn’t support AI or EPS files, but it has no problem with the DXF format.
Once I had my cut pieces, I set about decorating, using a Sharpie and some glitter pens. I’m not sure when wearing glasses became hipster, but somewhere it did, which is cool with me (do hipsters say “cool”?), because I’ve worn them since kindergarten. So I cut some teeny tiny glass frames for my reindeer.
In the original post, the crafter used little pieces of a drinking straw to separate the body parts on the ornament. That would have been a great idea two weeks ago, right before everyone went crazy about plastic straws killing the planet and I quit bringing them home from Chipotle when we get our lunches.
Instead I rolled up some strips of paper and made my own paper beads.
I kind of like this look better since it matches the rest of the body parts.
I used a small bent paperclip to stiffen the ornament as I threaded twine through it – you can go without that step but then the middle tends to sag a little when it’s hanging on the tree.
Pin this for later when you are ready to make some super cute hipster reindeer paper ornaments!
Don’t forget to check out the other ornaments in this series:
No. 2 Glitter Snowflake Ornament
No. 3 Paper Christmas Tree Ornament
No. 4 3-D Paper Snowflake Ornament
No. 5 Paper Strip Ball Ornament
No. 7 Glitter Paper Star Ornament
No. 9 Paper Peppermint Candy Ornament
No. 10 Brown Paper Packages Ornament
No 11. Chalkboard and Wood Slice Ornament
No. 12 Santa Hat Topper and Full Tree Reveal
This post will be linked up at these great link up parties.
This is so very cute! Thanks for sharing with To Grandma’s House We Go!
Absolutely adorable! I love reindeer so I need to make a couple of these!
Groovy reindeer craft!