Christmas Crafts

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Christmas is: decorating.  It excites me to put away the usual home decor and bring out the special trees, ornaments & such that help bring that Christmas feeling to my home.  However, when I brought up my Christmas decorations this year, I found that I was bored with a large majority of what I had.  (Seriously, are you surprised?)  So, I got to work on making a few new additions to the yuletide decor.  My only stipulation was that I had to spend as little $ as possible.  And I'm proud to say that I only spent $6 on the wreath.  Everything else was made using all the other 'craft crap' and wood I found around the house.

I've had so much fun I might need to make this an annual tradition (as if the Christmas season isn't busy enough already...)  I might also need to make a tradition of giving away a few of the things I'm tired with...I only have so much storage room, you know.  Here are some of the things I've made so far:

Ornaments
Every year I like to do a different tree, so this year I decided to do an alphabet tree for Jack.  Instead of a star I have a big letter 'A' at the top of my tree, and I have ornaments depicting each letter of the alphabet.  I needed something for 'H' and 'W', so I made these.

The wreath is similar to the rag wreath here, but I used a much smaller ring.

Tree

I LOVE those cone trees I see everywhere, but I'm way too cheap to actually buy them.  So, I decided to make one.  I formed cardstock into a cone using the method shown here.  Then I wrapped it in twine using a glue gun to make it all stick.  I got the idea here.  I have many plans for similar trees, but I probably won't get around to them this year. 

Wreath

I saw this tutorial long before Christmas and decided to try it myself.  It was lots of fun!  However, if you decide to do one for yourself to hang outside I would suggest using the cheap dollar store ornaments...the paint on the nice ones I used has started to peel due to the cold.

Christmas Countdown

I originally saw this idea here, and decided I needed to make one of my own.  I used paper rather than vinyl for the numbers.  If I were to do it again I would definitely borrow a Cricut from a friend...cutting all the numbers out by hand was a pain, and they didn't turn out as nice as I would have liked.  But, I'm still happy with the overall result. 

I still have a couple more projects that I hope to finish before Christmas.  I saw this technique & thought it was absolutely ingenious, then quickly came up with a way to use it.  However, since my printer is broken I'll have to wait to try it out.  But, I'll make sure to show them to you when if I finish.