Who Owns the Sun? ☀️ – Five in a Row Christmas Ornament

When we lived in North Carolina a few years ago, we were part of an amazing homeschool group, North Carolina Five in a Row (NC FIAR).  Every year the group leader, L.N. organizes a FIAR ornament swap.  She is so sweet to let me participate in the swap even though we don’t live in NC right now.  I was supposed to do an ornament for Who Owns the Sun? (by Stacy Chbosky) last year but the Camp Fire interrupted my plans.  So this year I’m making IOU Who Owns the Sun? ornaments for 2018 and The Salamander Room ornaments for 2019 (I’ll have a post on that one coming soon).

I bought wooden sun shapes from a seller on Etsy.  I spray painted them yellow.

Then I traced a circle on each yellow sun shape using the lid to my salt grinder. By the way, I highly recommend these New Star Fast Food Trays we got on amazon. We use them as craft trays and they work really well.

Next, I used orange acrylic paint to make the sun’s rays.

I decided to add a dark yellow/light orange ring to sort of blend the yellow and orange colors.

I tried to write the words “Who Owns the Sun?” in the middle of the sun shapes but it didn’t turn out as well as I wanted it to… So I painted over that with some yellow acrylic paint.

I had E drill a small hole in each sun shape to put a ribbon through for hanging on the Christmas tree. After the holes were drilled, I made a second attempt at the lettering. I used a white paint pen to write the title of the book in the center of each painted sun shape. then traced around the white letters with a black sharpie marker. I tried a fine point marker and an ultra fine point marker, finally deciding that I preferred the wider black line.

Next I used a spray-on matte finish sealer on both sides.

Finally, I tied on a piece of yellow ribbon for hanging on the tree. Ta-da! Here are the finished IOU ornaments for last years’ 2018 swap. Better late than never!

🎄 I hope this post inspires you to craft a Christmas ornament or two this year!