Spun Cotton Crafts ~ Sugared Spun Cotton Fruit Ornaments

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Spun Cotton Crafts ~ Sugared Spun Cotton Fruit Ornaments

This is a super simple, yet high impact, project for creating mini vintage-style spun cotton sugared fruit ornaments.

Supplies: Spun Cotton Craft Shapes, Glitter, Dresden Berry Caps, Miniature Leaves, Small Flowers, Craft Paint, Paint Brushes, Scissors, Glue, Wire (20 or 22 gauge - or use the wire stems from leaves)

Step 1: Paint your spun cotton fruit pieces. Let dry.

Step 2: Separate flowers, leaves and peps into single pieces. Try pairing different pieces together to decide on preferred looks.

For apples, pears, peaches. oranges, lemons and limes: Trim stems to about 1" so they will fit in the holes of the spun cotton pieces.

For strawberries: Cut apart a Dresden berry cap, trim a flower stem to about 1".

For cherries: Twist 1" of two leaf stems together just below the leaves then wrap around paint brush handle to make a hanger. Separate the two ends to allow for the cherries, like the photo to the right below.

Step 3: Create loop hangers by twisting a small length of wire around the handle of a paint brush. You can use stems cut from the leaves in the previous step.

Step 4: Glue hangers, leaves and flowers into fruit pieces. Let dry.

Step 5: Add glitter by lightly coating with clear-drying craft glue and sprinkling with glitter. Let dry. We used a very light hand to add snowy glass glitter for a sugared look.

Tips: Use a skewer or pipe cleaner in the hole as a "handle" when painting and drying, too.

We used velvet leaves, but you can also use fabric leaves and add a sparkling of glitter, or create your own leaves from crepe or craft paper.

To paint two-tone fruit: Paint a light color all over, paint a darker color onto part of the lighter color while still wet and blend well for an ombre look. The glittering will even out the look like in the orange below left.

To create blueberries use two sizes of spun cotton balls. We used 2 larger and 3 smaller. To connect the berries, make a cherry stem but bend the two ends into a "N" shape. Add one berry at each lower point. To add the last berry, use a small piece of stem wire to attach into the stem of a lower berry and the hole in the last berry.

Paint "seeds" on your strawberries: For a dimensional look paint small burgundy dashes, let dry, then add yellow dashes on top but slightly to the side so some burgundy still shows.

Paint a small black "X" on the bottoms of the pears, oranges and apples for a realistic look.

Add glitter lightly -- you can always add more later!