Wooden Letters Ornaments

I made these fun ornaments out of wooden letters from the dollar store -- two packs gave me enough letters to make the four ornaments shown. The Looney Tunes, Bugs, and Taz ornaments are made by gluing the words together, while the Daffy ornament is made of individual letters linked with jump rings.

To begin, I laid out my letters on a flat surface and arranged them into the words I wanted.  I set the two words of the Looney Tunes ornament horizontally, and the Bugs and Taz ornaments vertically, overlapping and tilting the letters for visual appeal.  Once I had them laid out the way I wanted, I glued the letters together using tacky glue.

When the glue was set, I painted the letters with acrylic craft paint. You have to work carefully around the edges where the letters overlap, letting each color dry before painting the next. If you prefer, you could of course paint the letters before gluing them together -- there's less chance of smearing the colors that way.

Once the paint had dried, I drilled the holes for the jump rings and hooks using a very small drill bit in my Dremel tool. I coated all the ornaments with podgy to give them some shine, and while the podgy was still wet, I blew a light layer of iridescent glitter over the Looney Tunes and Daffy ornaments.

I used a different technique for the Bugs and Taz ornaments; instead of using the iridescent glitter on wet podgy, I waited until the podgy had dried and then spread each letter with glitter glue in a coordinating color (blue on blue, red on red, gold on gold, and green on green).

Once everything had dried, I added the jump rings and hooks for hanging. The "Tunes" portion of the Looney Tunes ornament is linked to the "Looney" part using jump rings; the "Daffy" ornament is made of individual letters drilled and linked to each other using jump rings.

You can of course make ornaments that spell whatever you'd like -- names, hobbies, pets, Harry Potter themes, or Christmas greetings offer lots of possibilities. If you like, you could add extra dangles by drilling additional holes in the letters and attaching small items using jump rings (beads, buttons, small charms, jingle bells, or tiny ornaments would all make cute dangles).

My sets of letters came with only one of each vowel, so I was left with the letter "I" and a bunch of extra consonants. Since I don't have enough letters to spell any more words, I will probably use them to make ornaments like the one below using initials. (I was able to make an "O" for this one by snipping the tail from the Q.)