How to Make Easy Holiday Gnome Ornaments

So, I have a super easy craft for you to make today – holiday gnome ornaments! And, if you do any sort of crafts such as knitting, crocheting, or macrame, you likely have the materials already on hand. These make great stocking stuffers, gift wrap ornaments, office gifts, and so much more. I mean, how cute are these gnomes?

I will walk you through all of the easy steps in this tutorial to make these little guys – once you get the hang of it, you can start playing with different materials and accessories.

Are you ready? Let’s get these gnomes started!

Here are all of the materials you’re going to need to make these holiday gnomes. PLUS CLEAR-DRYING GLUE! Of course, I forgot to include the glue in the picture! I keep telling you all that this is a real-life blog with a real live human behind it. I’m far from perfect but do my best here on my little site!

Here’s the list of the items pictured to make these cute little gnomes:

• 2 different colors of yarn – any weight will work, but the weight will affect the outcome. I find a medium (4 or 5) weight yarn works best but you can certainly adjust for thinner or thicker yarns.
• Scissors
• Paper towel or toilet paper roll
• Measuring tape or ruler
• Tissue paper
• Beads and accessories for the nose and beanie
• String, twine, ribbon, or cord for hanging (I used hemp cord on the ones pictured at the start of this tutorial)
• Clear drying glue

First up is making the brim of the beanie from your paper towel or toilet paper roll. All you do is cut a piece of the roll – I typically make mine about 3/4 of an inch.

You are going to wrap some yarn pieces around this to make the beanie. For this, you’ll need about 35 pieces of yarn, cut to 9 or 10 inches each. You can make them even longer, if you’d like. These strands of yarn don’t need to be exact measurements – you can trim them once the beanie is together. To make the beanie, simply fold a piece of the yarn in half, put it around your cardboard beanie ring, and pull the loose ends through the loop end. Pull the ends tight so the yarn is then snuggly fitted around the ring.

Above is what your first looped yarn for your beanie should look like. Continue looping the remaining yarn around the ring, pushing each string together as you go, like so:

You want all of your yarn pieces tightly pushed together. Once you’ve fully covered your cardboard ring with your yarn strings, you should have at least one or two strings left. Lay out one of the loose strings and then place your beanie strings over them at the halfway mark, like this:

Then tie that string around your beanie strings and tightly tie. If you want to even out the top yarn threads, you can give it a haircut by trimming the ends a bit.

You’ve now created your gnome’s beanie!

Yay!!!

Next up, you’ll make the fluffy yarn body of the gnome by making a pom-pom. To do this, I wrap the yarn around my hand but you can use about a 3-inch portion of your cardboard roll instead. You’re going to continuously wrap the yarn around your hand (or roll) about 45 times. Here’s how it looks when you start it on a roll:

Once you’ve finished wrapping it, carefully pull if off your hand or the roll. Then take an extra piece of yarn and tie your wound-up yarn tightly together from the open sides and tie it in a knot, like this:

Trim off the excess yarn from the tie string and then, using a sharp pair of scissors, cut through the end of all the loops, so there are no loops remaining. You now have the pom-pom body. If you want to trim off any wonky ends, do so now.

Yay!!!

Now, you’re going to stuff the beanie with a little bit of wadded-up tissue paper, so that the beanie is about half full. Half of the pom-pom is going to fill the rest of it. You can really use whatever you want or have to stuff the beanie, I just happen to have quite a bit of tissue paper!

Once you’ve got your beanie stuffed, carefully apply clear glue all around the inside of the edge of the beanie, then stuff your pom-pom into it so that it’s firmly in place.

Now, using clear glue again, attach your nose and hat ornament. Ideally, the nose should be just a bit under the rim of the beanie.

Once your glued pieces are set, attach your cord, twine, or ribbon by carefully looping it through the back of the yarn you used to tie your beanie. Knot it, then pull the knotted part to the beanie, so the knot doesn’t show from the front.

You have now completed your adorable little homemade holiday gnome ornament!

Yay! Go You!!!

Now, you can customize these all kinds of ways so I’ll give you some ideas:

• Change up your yarn colors and types – again, thinner weight yarns will require more, thicker yarns less, but can still be done
• Think of favorite team colors – football, baseball, hockey, soccer, basketball, etc.
• Don’t be afraid to play with the accessories
• Use longer threads to make a taller beanie
• Use cardboard instead of a paper towel roll to make a bigger beanie, then use a larger template to make the body for a larger gnome

If there’s anything I wasn’t clear enough on, be sure to drop me a comment and I’ll do my best to clear things up. As always, thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoy making these as much as I do!