Makin’ it: Photo ornaments for any year

When I unpacked this 2010 ornament (below), I felt bummed out that I hadn’t made one for last year, 2011, when the boys were all in their matching jammies and Sawyer was barely out of his fourth trimester. The prior year, in an “I have my shit totally together” moment, I created this ornament on mpix.com — a local-to-me business that makes the best of the best photo prints and some durable nice ornaments too. This year, I wanted to go back in time and create a 2011 photo ornament, but when I browsed some of the photo sites, they were only selling 2012 ornaments. Whoops.

You see, last year I had a little baby and creating photo ornaments was low on my list. I’m excited to share that I figured out how to do this. It wasn’t too hard. It only costs about $10 plus shipping.

So I got in my time machine and created a very sweet ornament in minutes.

1. Process the photo on picmonkey.

I picked my favorite photo of the boys that would work as a circle, uploaded it at picmonkey.com and cropped it as a SQUARE. I centered my holiday message with last year on it. I saved it in the highest resolution I could.

2. Create round ornament on mpix.

Christmas ornaments are rather buried on the MPIX website under the heading “Holiday”. Find ornaments, choose the DIY custom option and follow instructions for uploading the image. You can do circle like I did or a custom shape. OMG so cute, right?

I got so excited to see my preview that I created another ornament for 2012 (and wrote this post while the thing is still being made and shipped!). Because my Superhero photo is tightly packed with awesome, I skipped the holiday message just included the year.

In future years, I won’t have to lament that we missed commemorating Sawyer’s first Christmas because I made this flipping cute ornament. If I had more time, I might go back and create these ornaments for ALL my children’s Christmases. It would certainly be faster than making them baby books or year videos.

Then again, maybe I’ll wait ’til next year.

This is part of our Makin’ It series of fun crafty projects for parents. Not all are photo things either, we make food too! See more projects here.

[This post wasn’t sponsored or anything. I paid about $23 plus shipping for these ornaments and a heap of blown-up prints]

Updated 12/13 The ornaments arrived today and look terrific!