Local garden club creates ornaments out of natural materials
By Shauna Shepler
Until the early 20th century, people decorated their Christmas trees with ornaments and decorations made from natural materials. These ornaments and decorations were easily made with apples, berries, nuts and other items, using only a few simple tools or none at all. They can be made as easily today as they were more than a century ago.
The Down to Earth Garden Club of Findlay began making Christmas ornaments from natural materials and displaying them at the Hancock County Historical Museum in 1988. According to Beverly Atkins, author of the book, Decorating with Natural Materials, no one in the club new how to make the ornaments at first, but they were looking for a holiday project to do.
Then one day, Atkins had a brain storm while walking through the woods near her home. "I saw some dried up materials on the ground and thought, 'It would be nice if I could make Christmas ornaments out of this," she says. But her first attempt backfired after she stored a tree made out of seeds, milkweed pods and grass in her garage. "Some mice ate the seeds and pods, and the grass fell out after it dried on the tree," she says with a laugh.
As time went by, Atkins began looking in her trash can for inspiration to make even more ornaments. "I started to realize that orange peels, corn cobs and husks, beans, squash and watermelon seeds have just as many decorative properties as pine cones, milkweed pods, roses and other plants," she says.
Atkins says she has had no formal art training, but still enjoys the challenge of trying something new. She began drawing in high school and now enjoys doing needlework and working with clay in her spare time. She and her husband belonged to a local carving club years ago, but she says, she is not a carver. "I would draw a design and my husband would carve it out."
In her book, Atkins lists 24 ornaments that can be made with natural materials. Each ornament takes just minutes to make, although 13 of them require a glue gun and adult supervision for kids under 13. "The great thing about glue is you can make just about anything with it," she says. Some of the ornaments can even be painted using acrylic paint.
The members of the Down to Earth Garden Club have made everything from teddy bear ornaments out of pine cone teasels to snow flakes made from Dusty Miller plants that grow in summer, and from wooden chains to stars made from hickory and walnut halves to angels made from corn husks to birds made from pine cones and clay..
The garden club's most popular ornaments, Atkins says, are the wooden chains. Her personal favorites vary from year to year, although she does like the corn husk angels. She also enjoys making ornaments out of rose petals. "Those are very pretty," she says.
The easiest materials to work with, Atkins says, are pine cones and milk weed; these materials are the most durable and ornaments made with them can last up to 20 years. The hardest material to work with, though, is the Dusty Miller plant, because glycerin must be put on and left to freeze dry on it to keep the leaves from falling off. Ornaments made with this material will last up to a year, Atkins says. Ornaments made with fruit are the least durable, of course, because mold can grow on them.
For the last three years, Atkins has been teaching the public how to make her beloved ornaments. The classes are usually held during the first week of December at Oakwoods Nature Preserve, and the cost is $8.
The garden club makes about 75-100 ornaments each year, but displays only 40-50 of them, Atkins says.
Garden club members will be on hand Tuesday, November 27 at the Hancock County Historical Museum in Findlay to arrange their display, and an Open House will be held at the museum on Saturday, December 1 and Sunday, December 2. The ornaments will be displayed through January 2008.
