Card Tree
Save your mantel from a paper blizzard with this "tree." To craft it, you'll need two wood dowels. Cut them into five segments, starting with eight inches wide and enlarging each piece by two inches. Fold two yards of ribbon in half, then place the shortest dowel about six inches from the fold, spacing the rest about five inches apart from one another. Hot-glue so the dowels are sandwiched between the two ribbon tails. Attach your favorite greetings to the dowels with small binder clips and hang.
Advent Calendar
Count down the days until Christmas with little paper envelopes, sized to hold all sorts of surprises: candy, tickets, tiny toys. Use rubber stamps to ink the dates, and other motifs, on the envelopes. You can also embellish them by adding tags, string, washi tape, and clip art. Then, simply pin the envelopes on a pretty corkboard.
Honeycomb Wreath
Toilet-paper, paper-towel, and mailing tubes have never looked so fine. To upcycle yours into something front-door-worthy, use an X-Acto knife to cut each tube into two-inch slices. Then, lay a bowl (ours measured six inches across) rim down on a flat surface and arrange the cardboard slices around the bowl, using this photo as a guide. Hot-glue the slices where their sides meet. If you like, perch jingle bells inside.
Advent Calendar
Use ordinary grocery-store matchboxes to count down the days till Christmas. Just hot-glue the tops of empty boxes to one another to form rows (start with nine boxes for the base, and decrease by two until you have a single box). Cut wrapping paper to cover each section; secure with hot glue. Next, hot-glue the rows in a pyramid shape as shown. Use number stamps (available at craft stores) to mark the boxes 1 through 25, then fill with candy and trinkets.
Upgrade a Plain Glass Ornament
At around a dollar each, these empty orbs offer an affordable catalyst for creativity. Fill one with small wooden chips, another with a single stunning peacock feather (attached to the ornament's top with hot glue). Or compose a more obvious Christmas scene by dropping a model fir tree into a globe dusted with artificial snow. You can also use tweezers to position branches inside and even hot-glue a tiny cardinal in place.
Photos courtesy of Country Living
Photo Wreath
To make your own photo arrangement, hot-glue a selection of black-and-white snapshots (use copies if you're worried about ruining the originals) to a wire wreath form.
No comments:
Post a Comment