Cindy Crushes Programming: Fandom Ornaments, by Teen Librarian Cindy Shutts

I have Faith Healy today with me. She is the teen Librarian at the Crest Hill Branch of the White Oak Library District. She is so good at crafts. She is going to talk about her Fandom Ornaments.

Fandom Ornaments

So I run a Fandom Art Club. I started it when we were able to start in person programming again. It let me combine fandoms that teens love with crafts. I tried to make in all inclusive by doing all fandoms all the time, but that was a lot of work for me, so I narrowed it down to different fandoms to be focused on like Disney Perler Beads, Demon Slayer Bracelets. I did think it would be super easy to do an all inclusive fandom ornament though. When teens signed up I asked what characters they would like to do and from there I worked off it. I also made sure to have a few basics of popular fandoms.

Supplies

• Clear Ornaments
• Paint
• Images based on characters
• Cardstock, multiple colors
• Glitter
• Hot glue and Hot glue gun.
• Permanent Marks
• Googly eyes.
• Mod Podge

Process

I had three options to make:

• A Disney Mickey Mouse Ornament
• A character Ornament where the character is made into the ornament. (This one was the biggest requested one) (See the Shoto Torodiki ornament)
• Or just mod podge an image or icon to an ornament (This one no one did)

The Disney ones were easy. I just needed paint, cardstock and a template for the ears. The one that was the most work was the character ornaments. I had to find good pictures of the characters’ hair to make them look good. That took a few days to find them all plus a few extras just in case.

To do the ornaments,

1. Open the ornament, pour either paint or glue in.
2. Shake around to cover the entire ornament. (Teens loved this part) I made sure to have paper towels available for teens who were not fond of messes.
3. Hold the ornament upside down and let access drain out.
4. Cut out image, hair, or ear template. For the hair I just printed on normal printer paper and it worked nicely. For the ears, To make them stand up like the picture, I used cardstock, but printed the template on regular paper
5. For image, Attach Image like the pegasus for Percy Jackson on with Modpodge
6. For character ornament Attach Hair with hot glue and googly eyes with hot glue. (If facial features like a scar paint on top of ornament) I did have some teens who were extremely talented and drew awesome eyes with permanent markers on the ornament. Use paint or marker to draw a face.
7. For glitter, let glue dry a little, 2-5 minutes pour a good amount of glitter in and shake around until covered. Pour out excess glitter.
8. For Disney ornament hot glue the ears onto the ornament.

I had a hot glue station where I did a majority of the hot gluing unless teens felt confident with the hot glue gun.

Teens had fun and ended up making multiple ornaments each and taking a few home. The hardest thing was a teen request to do characters I never heard of BT21. I learned they were characters created by BTS. luckily I found a few characters and made them templates, and that teen loved what I made available!

 I did have another teen request the cat from A Whisker Away. We used white cardstock to make ears(I didn’t do a template, she just cut out triangle ears), painted the inside of the ornament white, and used permanent markers to make the eyes and color in the ear. That teen loved that I made that an option for her as she had seen the movie over 15 times.

I have attached all the templates for the hair I made here, a lot of them are anime as that is what my teens are super into right now. Feel free to use. There are a lot of options to go with this and my teens had fun. Some made meme faces with their ornaments.

Cindy Shutts, MLIS

Cindy is passionate about teen services. She loves dogs, pro-wrestling, Fairy tales, mythology, and of course reading. Her favorite books are The Hate U Give, Catching FIre, The Royals, and everything by Cindy Pon. She loves spending times with her dog Harry Winston and her niece and nephew. Cindy Shutts is the Teen Services Librarian at the White Oak Library District in IL and she’ll be joining us to talk about teen programming. You can follow her on Twitter at @cindysku.

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