Photo Ornaments in Amac Boxes

This guest post is from Wendy Price.  She is going to inspire you to run to The Container Store to pick up some Amac boxes!

Hi everyone!

I'm Wendy and I'm excited to be sharing a simple and inexpensive holiday ornament with you today! I love to give homemade treats for the holidays but always feel they look rather boring by themselves. So in an effort to dress them up, I came up with these inexpensive photo ornaments.


Supplies Needed:

• small clear boxes (Amac boxes from The Container Store)
• photos
• multiple stamped images or printables (AmberINK Fish Wishes Digital Stamps)
• foam adhesive
• ribbon
• fishing line

For my ornaments I used clear Amac boxes from The Container Store. They come in a variety of sizes and colors but I used the 2 inch square. If you're unable to find the Amac boxes any clear box will work. Many times the boxes that buttons and embellishments come in are the perfect size.

Choose your photo(s) and your focal image.  For the focal image you can stamp an image or print a digital doodle, but each image must be identical because we will be layering them.


Once you decide on your focal image, print out multiple copies if it's digital or stamp multiple copies if it's paper. For my sample I used a digital image from AmberINK Best Fishes. To save time and energy I went ahead and colored my image digitally in Photoshop. I knew because I was printing the image so tiny - at 2 inches - it would be a bit difficult to color by hand.


I did add details and shadows to my images with Copics after they were printed.

To create a 3-D scene with your images cut out multiple images to layer.


Build up the layers with foam tape. Don't worry about the being able to see the foam tape through the side view. We're going to hide that in a bit.

Cut a piece of fishing line to hang the ornament with.  Tie it in a loop.  Place your 3-D scene back-to-back with your photo and hide the fishing line knot between your photo and scene.

Place photo/scene inside the box and close so that the fishing line hangs out the top.

As a finishing touch and to hide those unsightly foam pieces, wrap ribbon around the sides of the ornament. Tie a bow at the top of the ornament.


You can add dates or names to the ornaments with rubons or stickers as desired.

I hope you enjoyed the ornaments!  If you decide to give them a try be sure to stop by my blog and share what you've made! I'd love to see them!

Wendy Price is a freelance designer from New Jersey. She's happiest when surrounded by lots of pretty colorful papers and stamps! :) Currently designing for Stampendous, Lizzie Anne Designs, Paper Craft Planet and CreativeXpress/ProvoCraft.

Her work can be seen on her blog: Paper, Ink and Smiles.