Hey, so remember my teeny tiny Christmas tree? I asked you guys for words to make into Christmas ornaments, and you...certainly did oblige.

It's time for SAM'S READ AND LEARN CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT EXTRAVAGANZA.

I figured since I'm probably not going to use very many of them (see: Mum sending me a fuckton of ornaments) I would turn all the words you gave me into ornaments and set them loose on the internet to see what they may wreak. I made three tree-toppers, two garlands, and several pages of ornaments of varying sizes. All are laid out onto American standard 8.5x11 paper, most in Landscape orientation, so they should print on American paper fine and on A4 paper with some rather excessive margins.

If you look at these pages and don't see your word, drop me a line and I'll add it in -- there's a little space left over specifically for words I may have inadvertently missed.

A preview, with sized-down versions of the final pages, is available right here!

I did three tree toppers before realising that if I did any more I might be accused of having some kind of mania. They're smallish in scale, because my tree is, but you can enlarge them to fit. This is the Holiday Spirit one.


This is a special Doctor Who edition tree-topper, because I had just enough Who words to make it work:


And this I called the Geeky Topper but really it's just words I particularly liked and thought would be eye-catching on top of a tree:


After giving up on toppers, I started on English words (well, for a given value of English including "Words I know the meaning of"). I chose a font that I thought would make it easy to outline the words, which would give people a cutting guide. Plus I like the vaguely Frank Lloyd Wright look they have. Doctors in particular may enjoy the "body chemistry super ornament" in the lower right:


I really should have defined Elaphanthropod, in retrospect.


This one was kind of fun because I combined a bunch of words in a way which pleased me. I think Voluminous Velociraptor is my favourite.


SHINY BOOBIES. That was totally an accident.


I do kind of regret that pr0n doesn't look cooler. This font is really neat, but numbers and capital letters don't show very well.


After finishing with the "English" words, I moved on to foreign languages. Please forgive any translational inaccuracy; if it's really blatant, let me know and I'll do what I can to fix it.

This first page, I took all the "holiday" themed words (except the Chinese -- I was struggling with the ideograms for a bit) and combined them into one Super Ornament, which you can see on the right:


I'm particularly proud of my translated LOLcat.


How could I resist making an ornament out of Fremdsprachenfeinheitseifersucht? :D


I struggled quite a bit with the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese words I was given because it was difficult to get them big enough to make proper ornaments out of. I'm not entirely satisfied, especially with the Korean ornaments, but I've done my best.


Some people who shall REMAIN NAMELESS gave me very long words. So I turned them into garlands -- each letter can be cut out individually to be strung out into a garland.

Technically this is four words. *stern*


And this is just perverse :D


There are a couple of ways to acquire these pages. For people who just want to print 'em out, there is a PDF file available from Sendspace (megaupload mirror here). If you'd like to fuck around with the JPGs, there's a completed zip file also available from Sendspace (megaupload mirror here). Or you can go to my Livejournal Scrapbook and download single images if you just want one specific page.

Crafty tips:
For all pages, I'd recommend either printing them on card stock or gluing regular printouts to card stock (if you want the ornaments to hang around -- HA, see what I did there? -- for a while, I would use acid-free spray adhesive) before cutting them out. When I make paper ornaments I often glue the backs to construction paper, which adds some colour. Little kids think this is MAGIC. How is the paper two colours at once?

For the garlands, you can punch holes in each letter and tie them together with string, but that gets time-consuming. Easier is to glue the letters along a strip of ribbon or onto the links of a paper chain.

For the tree-toppers, I'd recommend gluing a bit of wire between the topper and its backing, then twisting the wire into a coil that you can settle over the top of the tree. Or, only glue the very edges of the topper and backing together, like a seam, leaving the bottom open. Then fit the pocket that creates over the tree. With the Doctor Who topper in particular you could probably also make the bottom word into a circle, glue it together, and settle it on the tree.

But, you know. It's your art! Go to town, do what you want, have fun.