Crafty stuff: Glittery vintage cookie cutter ornaments

One type of item I see frequently at thrift stores, estate sales and antique malls is aluminum cookie cutters.

 

Every housewife at some point in the 1940s-70s must have had some in her kitchen, so they're usually easy to find and inexpensive. I've picked up quite a few, but stopped myself from bringing home more when I realized that other than putting them all in a big jar, I couldn't think of anything else I could actually do with them.

I did make these Christmas cookie cutter garlands a few years ago, using a combination of new reproduction cutters and vintage cutters from my collection. To make the garlands you need to use cutters with two holes in the front so they can be strung on the ribbon.

Most of the cutters in my collection are the ordinary type without the wooden handle and the accompanying pair of holes, therefore unsuitable for garland-making so they've still been sitting in their jar, patiently waiting to be turned into something fun.

Enter the Christmas issue of Inspired Ideas! If you're not yet familiar with Inspired Ideas, it's a wonderful online magazine put together by the fabulous and charming Amy Powers. In my opinion, the 2010 Christmas issue is the best yet! There are 170+ pages of yummy eye-candy and crafting and decorating inspiration, all for free! The feature about cookie cutters that caught my eye is on pages 157-159, by Heidi Woodruff, who has an appropriately-named blog called Everyday Cookies. Heidi used doll-sized vintage aluminum cookie cutters to make cute charms, but the suggestion that got my wheels turning was to cover cookie cutters in glitter and make them into Christmas tree ornaments.

Since I needed more ornaments for the Jolly Green Giant tree anyway, this was the perfect solution! And it was simple enough that Maren could help, so it would also fulfill the requirement of keeping her busy while she's been on her school break. (12 days and counting...)

I used Heidi's instructions from the magazine article, so I won't give a tutorial here. I chose the Christmas-themed cutters from my collection and used a Cropadile to make holes in the tops for hanging. I had originally intended to use coarse silver German glass glitter. Maren used pink and red glass glitter on her two ornaments (the pink flower and red heart) and the coverage wasn't great, so for mine I switched to Martha Stewart glitter. I tried the tree and a heart in Tourmaline, a lovely aqua color, but by far my favorite was the Antique Silver. It looked like the original color of the aluminum cutters, but sparklier! For glue I used a bottle of Martha Stewart Glittering Glue that I had in my stash. The bottle lid had an attached brush that was very handy for painting the glue all over the cookie cutters.

Once they were dry, I used Heidi's method for making beaded hangers. I used long head pins from my jewelry making supplies and glass beads cut from vintage beaded Christmas garlands.

The glittery ornaments are incredibly sparkly in real life and look so pretty on my tree! I was sad that I ran out of Christmas-themed cutters before I could make more. I've scoured the thrifts looking for bags of cookie cutters, but haven't been able to find any (figures--the rest of the year they're plentiful, but I need them for a project and they disappear.) I saw tons at the antique mall last weekend, but didn't want to pay antique-booth markup when I know how much they cost at the thrift stores! I'll have to keep my eye out this coming year and stash away a few to make more ornaments next Christmas.

Photo swiped from Rebecca at Thrifty Goodness

I knew that I wanted to make these for our yearly Goodness Girl ornament swap, but as I was out of Christmas-themed cutters, I used hearts instead. For these ornaments I punched a hole in the bottom of the heart as well as the top, and used more glass garland beads and a piece of a chandelier crystal to make a little dangle. I've yet to find anything that didn't benefit from even more sparkle. :) I packaged them in little muslin bags stamped with the year.

I've always wanted to have a "kitchen" tree, and I think these would be darling on one, hung from a piece of polka-dot ribbon. Thanks to Heidi Woodruff for the cute cookie cutter inspiration, and be sure to check out Inspired Ideas if you haven't already!