The photo ornaments

I mean, it was gonna happen

A photo of mostly finished photo ornaments, hanging to dry their varnish, with text saying finished photo coming once they're dry

Currently the photo of them hanging to dry with little pools of dripped varnish beneath them, with text below them saying finished photo coming once they're dry enough to handle

A photo of the ornaments, all trimmed to size and given one coating of varnish to begin with, hanging to dry from a dry palm leaf, since that seemed both sturdy enough to hold them, while still being soft enough to poke little S hooks through to hang them from, being suspended above the ground by the wire frame that I commonly use to hang dry varnished items, all sitting on an old paperboard that was used to protect the table from paint, and the rest of Kabutroid's worktable behind, showing the varnish, chainmaille dragons, toothpicks, dice, and other miscellanea.

A somewhat close up photo of the Metroid nes box, hanging between the Dragonlance novel and Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

A closeup of the Dragonlance novel, showing the cover for it, with the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon prism image behind it.

The row of ornaments, hanging above the paperboard with little pools of varnish beneath them all, though not directly beneath any more because I moved the frame slightly to collect the hanging drips from the photos easier, and Kabutroid's worktable behind.

Yah, this was definitely going to happen. After the Team Sky emblem and the miniature Hofer painting that followed, that was going to evolve into making a whole pile of them as ornaments for a Christmas tree.

So, it started vaguely with my thought "Y'know... I have that one version of the Photo of a Woman of the Hofer Family, I could keep moving that from the wall to the tree and back... but that's a kinda nuisance. I should make maybe one more for the tree exclusively. But y'know... why stop there?" And so was born the idea of "ok, let's find a whole pile of photos that we'd want to turn into ornaments." We started with our idols and favourite bands, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Pink Floyd, The Prodigy, and expanded from there. I should have one of our parents that have passed, one for just us ourselves, a NES Metroid box, eh, let's get some more like that, the Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin box, that Hofer painting of course, we've already got extra print sizes to use for that, let's take a picture of that that Vic 20 cassette for Blue Meanies from Outer Space, my favourite game on there (and find a screenshot from the game for the other side), Planet Zebeth, you've gotta be in there, Opaskwayak Cree Nation, my second childhood hometown, aaaand since I've begun to love the series so much, the first printing of the first Dragonlance book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, for which we even found and printed the spine of the book too.

I figured if I made a whole pile of these at the same time it would go fairly quickly, and it did! The longest part was cutting all of the hardboard to size, taking like... 5 hours. We first took all of the photo printouts, put a sheet of doublesided tape on the back, cut them all out, and arranged them as tight as we could on the hardboard (with a few millimeters between them, give me some slack to work with). We boxcuttered all of those out, trimmed them all to size (I made sure to make the opposite side the same size as the front, of course), and carefully placed all of the other sides on their respective ornaments.

With all of that done, we took our lessons from the miniature Hofer painting, and coated them all in a few layers of gloss outdoor varnish to seal in the paper, covered the edges of all of the hardboard (minus that one binding side of the Dragonlance book) in PVA wood glue, and then, to give them all a nice, gloss coat (something I didn't do on the very first Hofer painting wall ornament, because I liked the painting-looking texture that left, but these would need a little more durability to bounce around inside the ornaments box, also glossy for the Christmas tree), I dipped them all into the varnish can for a thick, smooth coat, and hung them back up to dry and drip, collecting the accumulation of varnish off the lower hanging corner with a toothpick after leaving them for a few minutes. At that point, they were, for all intents and purposes, finished. They just need to hang-dry for like... several weeks, is my usual wont, to make sure they're absolutely rock-hard solid dry. But in general, after being hung to longdry, they were complete :D

Finished December 9, 2025