christmas craft: paper ornaments

Since moving into the new house, I've been busy with lots of decorating and organizing and have yet to establish a little craft-making area. Because I'm not making much of anything new at the moment, I thought I'd reproduce a few projects I've showed in the past on my personal blog - edited slightly for relevant content...

This one is for Christmas time, and I love it because I'm not a real "crafty" look kind of person when it comes to decorating for the holidays - I like to keep it simple. These are modern and fabulous, and though I've saved the ones I made in our apartment, I'll probably whip up some new ones this year to match my new color schemes.
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I love the internet. It has the best ideas. Here's a super easy DIY Christmas decorating idea from design*sponge: paper ornaments.

The supplies:

• Various colors of cardstock (I chose mine to be a bit Christmasy yet also match my existing decor)
  
• Paper cutter
• Ruler
• Stapler
• Thread

(And yes, that tiny little sparkly thing is my stapler. This craft is so easy that it can even be made with a stapler completely lacking in heft.)

To start, you'll need your cardstock cut into 1" wide strips.

To make the bigger ornaments, I used 3 colors of paper. First, I cut the center strip to 6". Then I cut two strips of color #2 to 7", and two strips of color #3 to 9". Finally, I cut two strips of color #1 (the center color) to 11". Of course, you could make any color combination desired, just lay out the colors you want and cut the middle strip to 6", and then a pair of strips for the concentric layers at 7", 9", and 11" each.

To assemble the ornament, stack the strips with the 6" piece in the center, and one of each 7", 9", and 11" pair on both sides of it. Make sure the ends are flush, and staple. Then line up the ends of all the strips on the other side so that they are flush, and put in another staple. Voila - an ornament! If you want to make hanging really easy, staple the thread onto the ornament while you put in this second staple - then just tie a little knot around the staple and you're already ready to hang from the ceiling or in a window.

I also added some smaller ornaments for variety; for these I cut the center strips to 4" and then the outer strips were 5" and 7".

Sooooo easy (the whole thing, from picking out the colors to hanging them from the dining room light fixture, took me about 15 minutes. And that's just because I had a hard time deciding which configuration to hang them in), and instantly festive. It's hard to capture in the photos, but they really look quite good hanging above the table, if I may say so myself.... I especially like that they look nice with the blue and green of the decor in our living and dining room, but still look festive and Christmasy with some red added in.