Christmas Tree
I happen to have access to a great system of libraries in Jefferson County, Alabama (the county in which Birmingham is located). Most of these libraries offer a free craft night (or morning) for those interested. You do have to sign up in advanced, and they often fill up fast. If you are interested in crafting though, they are great to go to, so be sure to check out your local library!
For November, the Hoover Public library had a class on making either a holiday wreath or tree. I wanted to do a tree, so I selected that project. The base of the tree is an upside down clay pot base painted white with a foam cone glued onto it. Everyone making a tree was provided with that. What you did from there was totally up to you! The library provided various supplies including, but not limited to, fabric, yarn, glitter, pens, tinsel, pipe cleaners, beads, ribbons, sequence, paper cutouts, fake gems, glittery Styrofoam balls, and mini pompoms. They also had various supplies for constructing your project including glue guns, tacky glue, needle and thread, and pins.
For my tree, I wrapped yarn around it and secured it with hot glue. It actually took much longer than I thought it would to glue each row down! I knew I wanted to keep my tree simple, so I selected a green ribbon with gold sequins on it to decorate the tree with. I experimented with various bows before settling on the final version. I wanted to have some ribbon drape down the tree for extra color too. The other ladies in the class had the excellent idea of using a pin to hold the ribbon down in areas for extra volume. The ornaments on the tree are actually pins that I pushed into the tree. I like the little bit of color they add without being overpowering.
To add a little color to the base, I painted a thin layer of gold glitter over it. It is hard to see in the pictures, but added a nice finishing touch.
I promptly had to put the tree out of cat reach. Anything shiny and new seems to attract them!
Mesh Wreath
Every year on Black Friday, we start out the day by going to Petsmart to stock up on kitty litter for the next year. It's not a fun trip, but it saves up a bunch of money since, anyone who has cats knows, they use a lot of it!
There's nothing else we needed that day, but while I'm out, I like to go see what else I may enjoy. I have been eyeing those cute mesh wreaths for a while now, so when I saw the mesh on sale, I knew it was time! I wanted a festive wreath that I could longer than just in December, so I went with gold mesh and a dark red ribbon trimmed in gold.
 |
| Making of the wreath with all my supplies |
Making the wreath itself is very easy. I just followed a YouTube video on how to attach it down. The only problem I had was I put the mesh down too close to itself and ran out of mesh half way through. Hence, I took it all off and put it on with more spacing. I was still running out of mesh before I got all the way around and decided to just put a big bow there rather than undo the whole thing again. I think I ran out of mesh because I had an 18 inch wreath form. To complete it all the way around with one roll of mesh, I should have gotten a 16 inch form.
I still really like how it turned it. To make this wreath, I used:
- One 21 inch by 10 yard roll of mesh
- One 2.5 inch by 25 feet roll of ribbon
- One 18 inch wire wreath form
- Old twist ties to hold things down to the wreath form (I have a collection of them in a kitchen drawer so I wanted to use them instead of buying wire to tie things down)
With the holiday sales, this wreath cost less than $10 in supplies to make! There was nothing left over, so you would definitely need more to make a larger wreath.
 |
| All that was left of my supplies |
No comments:
Post a Comment