Handmade Holidays: Trees!

These fabric trees are so cute and so fun!  My sister-in-law has the pattern and made herself a very pretty one.  She very graciously offered to make me a couple.  What I like about these is they are so customizable...  You can use one fabric for the whole thing, or two coordinating prints.

This first one uses a traditional holiday fabric, and it utilizes the leftover yardage from one of the fabric wreaths I made.

The second one has glittery blue and grey/silver fabric, and I picked them because they're non-traditional Christmas colors; really more like winter colors.  I'm thrilled with how they turned out!  Thanks, Stacy!

Handmade Holidays: Wreaths

Earlier in the fall, I decided that my Christmas wreath needed to be replaced.  Actually, I threw it away last January as the decorations came down and the bone-chilling cold started to set in.  I was given the wreath as a Housewarming present back in 2003, and while it was a gorgeous wreath, the years of constantly being hung up, taken down, and stored took their toll.  Instead of being circular, the wreath was decidedly oval-shaped.

I started looking to Pinterest for some ideas.  What I really wanted to do was make one of those new ornament bulb wreaths that seem to be taking over people's boards.  However, after reading some tutorials, I discovered that the people who made them were having issues:  the wreaths would fall, shattering the ornaments, or the hot glue wouldn't be enough of a bonding agent to adhere them to the base and they'd start slipping away one by one.  Ack!  I'm not much of a crafter, and I need some fool-proof ideas and designs.

I came across a couple of posts about fabric-covered wreaths.  This sounded perfect for me!  One day in October, I went to the fabric store and selected two Christmas prints.  I picked 2 because I couldn't narrow the choice down to just one.  I also selected two small foam wreath bases for about $4 each.  I then went to the Holiday decorations section and selected some "pickings" to glue on top of the finished wreaths.

This project was perfect for me because it really didn't require any precision.  I cut the fabric into free-form strips with my sewing scissors.  Then, I wrapped each strip around the wreath and secured them into the back with my sewing pins.  The wreath was covered in about 10 minutes and then I hot-glued the decorations on top.

I have one wreath on our outside door and the other above our TV in the living room.  They're small, but cute.  And I was able to use the leftover fabric from the wreath on our door for another decoration: a stuffed fabric tree that my sister-in-law graciously made for me! (post on those to come soon!)

Handmade Holidays: Sock Snowmen!

 

Why hello there, little buddies!

Aren't these snowmen absolutely darling?  Would you believe me if I told you they're made of socks and rice?  They are!  And they're some of my new favorite Christmas/Winter decorations!

I'm going to try to highlight some of my handmade Christmas decorations on the blog for the upcoming weeks.  I'm blessed to have an extremely talented mother-in-law and sister-in-law who have made things for me over the years, plus I recently discovered a craftiness gene that had previously been dormant all my life.  I've made a couple things too, which I will talk about on here.

Mr. My Blog for Bonnie and I have lived in our condo for 10 years next summer.  Let me say that again....TEN YEARS.  I don't know how that's possible, since clearly I am only in my early 20s right now.  Ha!  Time certainly flies, and while you don't always realize it, you start to see it in small ways.  One itsy bitsy way I discovered that a lot of time had passed was by looking at my Christmas decorations from last year.  To be brief:  they had seen better days.  My wreath was kind of mashed and mangled into more of an oval shape than a circle; some of my table runners and random decorations were a little shabby looking.  I decided this year to bring some new things out, some things that represent where I am now that I'm in my early 30s as opposed to my early 20s when we bought this place.  Namely: some handmade items.  Handmade has become a true love of mine.  When I was 22, it would pretty much have taken a true Christmas Miracle for me to walk into a craft store and buy the materials needed to make a wreath, or a quilt, or anything.  I would much rather have bought the items pre-made in a place like Target or Walmart.  Fast forward to 9 years later: when I realized I needed new wreath, I happily went on Columbus Day weekend to buy the materials.  I really liked two fabrics so much that I ended up buying 2 styrofoam wreath bases so I could make two instead of having to choose for just one!  Times, my friends, have changed.    

This Sock Snowman idea originally comes from the blog Then She Made.  But really, it comes to me via my sister-in-law.  She found the idea on Pinterest, where it had somehow eluded me even though I pin on there an embarrassing amount of time.  She showed me her finished snowmen and was gracious enough to provide me with 2 extra tube socks she had leftover from her project.  When I furiously texted her "Where do I buy twine for this thing?" her husband very sweetly bought me some from Home Depot, accurately realizing that me strolling through a giant store like that searching for a tiny ball of twine would be like the start of any sprawling Greek tragedy:  the scope and horror of the drama would appall everyone. 

I had so much fun making these little guys.  They are so easy and I think they're absolutely adorable!  Click on the link for my sister-in-law to go to her blog post on the Snowmen, where you'll be directed to the post that gives step-by-step details on how to create these.  Check out some additional shots below!

 

Too cute!  I added a little Bokeh to this shot to make it look like snow was falling on my cute little snowmen.  I'm bizarre like that.

 

Here's Rupert curiously checking them out just after I finished hot gluing their little hats on.  

It's Black Friday, so many people, myself included, will start decorating their homes for Christmas soon.  Enjoy the start of the season!