Ornament for Dad

My sister and I made these ornaments for my dad's birthday this year. He was born in early December, so it seemed appropriate to have something we could put on the tree (or the wreath, in tight quarters) each year.

I designed the background in Illustrator and included his initials in his handwriting, which I scanned from a letter and cleaned up in Photoshop.

The central piece is a fly that my dad hand-tied for fly-fishing. He was an avid fly-fisherman and always tied his own lures, so we have a really beautiful collection of them and we chose some of our favorites for the ornaments.

I spent forever looking for the right type of ornament and finally realized I should be searching under jewelry findings. I wanted something that felt classic and a little antique-y. I ended up purchasing these shadowbox lockets from this Etsy seller. They were perfect. I did as the seller suggested and sealed them with E6000, since they aren't meant to be opened up repeatedly.

I haven't put it away yet and I probably won't this year, but in the future I think it will be nice to pull it out of the box each year as we're decorating the tree, which always falls right around his birthday.