Look out Crate and Barrel, I copied your Christmas tree ornament display thingy. Don't worry, I still love you anyway.

 

As soon as I saw the original at my local C&B I instantly thought I could make one myself. So I pinned it for later and quickly forgot about it. It only came back on my radar while we were finalizing our Xmas shopping. See, we usually get Matt's mom one of those fancy Swarovski crystal snowflake ornaments for Xmas and I thought this would be a nice way to display them. So with two days to spare I started this last minute project. The supply list is pretty short; a 1x2x8" board, 2 small dowels, and some stain. I already had some poly, nails and screws.

To make the triangle I cut the angles at the top of my tree, both of which are 45 degree angles, on a miter saw. Then, I laid my bottom piece along the bottom and used a t-square thing to level it out based on the inner and top most points. Once it looked good I marked my cut lines and ended up with this.

 

 

Now that my tree shape was established I needed to plan out where the ornaments would rest. I eyeballed this process as well by laying a dowel, tracing it with a pencil, and using ornaments to help figure out spacing. Once I knew where I wanted my dowels to cross I marked the center of my boards.

 

 

To drill my holes I started out with my drill perpendicular to the board like so.

 

 

But once the hole was started I repositioned my drill so that it was roughly at the same angle as my lines were. I started with a smaller drill bit and then bumped up to the one that was closest to my dowel size.

 

 

Now that all my holes were drilled at roughly the same angles I slid my dowels in and marked my cut lines.

 

 

After cutting my dowels and glueing them into place I secured the first two pieces of my triangle together with some wood glue and two shots from my nail gun. After that my base was somehow a little smaller than what I started out with. No problem, I just lined one side up so it was flush with the side and marked where I needed to cut on the other end.

 

 

With the board cut to the correct size I attached it to the rest of the tree with screws up from the bottom, that way you won't see them. Now for ornament placement. I used our dremel tool to create little notches in the dowels to indicate where you should hang ornaments, and to keep them from sliding to one side or the other if they happen to be on hooks. The dremel notches were not exactly pretty, so I smoothed them out with some sand paper wrapped around some scrap dowel.

 

 

Now sand, stain, poly and add a little base and you're left with this!

 

 

I need to make one for our house now.

 

 

Oh, and how many of you had a Miley on your tree this year?

 

Nikki Kelly

 

Recently I mentioned that I'm attempting to embrace my self imposed title as a blogger (you know, because of this little old blog), and I've been trying to step outside my comfort zone a little. Anyway, after going to the Eat, Drink, Create event I wanted to keep the stepping out of my bubble momentum rolling. First up was actually the very next morning! Anthropologie was hosting a little crafty event to get their display ready for Earth Day, and since Anthro has the most amazing window displays I was pretty stoked to be a part of that. The display that we were helping with was going to be a vertical pallet garden, so they had us cutting out leaves galore, making strawberries, cabbage, and kale. Now that Earth Day has come and gone and their display is up I wanted to share it with all you fine folks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is their finished display! This is the tomato garden.

 

 

And here's the cutest little strawberry patch ever! Bonus, they'll never go bad!

 

 

Ok, my next event is a little more recent but also in celebration of Earth Day. Ikea along with the Denver Craft Ninjas hosted an event called Reduce, Reuse, Recraft. Anyone that has ever entered through the doors of Ikea knows that one thing they're not short on is cardboard. So instead of bundling it up to be recycled Annie decided to save some of it for crafts! This is Annie showing just one of the projects available for the day, a cardboard pendant light!

 

 

This is Becky of Denver Craft Ninjas showing off some of the other projects available, faux mounted antlers, cardboard deer head, a moose cut out to decorate however you please, and there was a cute little shadow box with a little bud vase inside.

 

 

 

Since I had already been down the mounted deer head path before I chose to make the pendant light and a moose cut out project. There weren't very many mooses (mise?) so I grabbed one of the scrap panels that they were cut out of. Here are all my supplies that I gathered up. It was so nice that Ikea gave us a big variety of fabric, paper, and decals to spruce up our cardboard with.

 

 

Here's my (almost) finished projects! I glued some of the pink striped fabric to one side of my half circles and have them oriented all the same way. I really love how the moose silhouette turned out with the same fabric behind it. I think I'd like to get a little bit of batting to put behind the fabric before I glue it to the back piece of cardboard. That way the moose will be a little poufy. Oh, and IKEA threw in the light cord and LED bulb for anyone making the light, pretty sweet! Now I just need to find someone to give these things to.

 

 

So have you ever gone to a local crafty event? Make sure to check out Becky's post to see some of the other projects of the day, I'm a little jealous of the black moose with the rainbow fabric background. Now that I've been to a Craft Ninjas event, I'm excited to go to another!

 

Nikki Kelly

 

So I noticed that a lot of people are making their own hey girl memes today with pictures of their boos, and well I wanted to too. If you made some, leave me a link in the comments, I think they are hilsome. So, without further adieu.

 

 

 

 

Just to be fair to Mr. Jones, he has never said any of these things. When I took that picture of him in my craft room he was very adamant that I mention that he was building and not crafting. Anyways, here's to the man I love with all my heart on this especially mushy day. I love you honey bear!

Nikki Kelly

 

PS I just figured out why everyone is doing hey girl memes. There's an awesome linky party going on here!

 

Or if you're the overly optimistic type you could say I'm way ahead of the game for next year. Either way the fact is that I bought this fabric before the Christmas of 2011. Nothing super fancy, I was just planning on making it into a tree skirt for my Xmas tree. Well once January 1st (2013) rolled around I no longer wanted any traces of Christmas staring me in the face anymore and Matt and I made plans to get everything packed up and put away last week. After that discussion I was reminded about my yet to be started project when I saw the fabric with the empty decoration boxes. I'm still not sure what made me decided that I needed to get my tree skirt made ASAP, but that's what happened. I had made the decision that I was not going to put this sad folded up yard of fabric back into a box with other decorations until it became a tree skirt.

 

 

So the first thing was to cut it into the shape of a tree skirt. I chose round as you can see in this picture. There were more geometric ones, but that involved math and I like round ones better. In addition to cutting this into a circle I also cut some felt that I had bought to be the underside of my skirt. Now that I'm writing this I realized that I didn't take one single picture of the felt. Oh, well. It's not really that important.

 

 

Once I had the fabric and felt cut to size and sewn together I wanted to see how the size played with my tree. I'll say that I was waiting to put the tree away until I tested out the skirt, but you can draw your own conclusion. Either way I think it fits quite nicely.

 

 

Then I was stuck. I didn't have any bias tape to finish the raw edges with. What I did have was some more of this fabric left and some momentum. Not wanting to waste either I decided that stockings would be a fantastic project to go along with my skirt. So I found an old jankey stocking to use as a template. I just took a pencil and traced around it right onto my fabric.

 

 

Here is the first one cut out.

 

 

Since there are three of us in our little family I needed to repeat the process two more times. For those ones I just laid the cut one on top of the fabric and cut around it.

 

 

After sewing the stockings together I cut the seam allowance with my zig-zag-y shears, that seemed to help it lay flatter when I turned it right side out. This part was pretty lame and made my fingers go numb a little.

 

 

After that I realized that I would need a liner so I found some plain white fabric and did all of that three more times. At this point I was not feeling so motivated and decided that since I didn't have the supplies to complete the stockings or skirt I would be done and go watch tv. That was some time last week.

 

 

It wasn't until Sunday (I think) that I actually went to Joann's to get the rest of the stuff I needed. I got some bias tape, some furry blanket type fabric to make a cuff, and some thread. Actually, I forgot to get the thread and had to go back. Lame.

 

 

Sewing the cuff was pretty easy, I just folded it over, cut it, and sewed it. Sewing it to the stocking fabric was easy too.

 

 

But sewing it to the lining proved to be difficult. Not because the fabrics didn't work well, but because I had to figure it how to put it together so that when it was all said and done it was facing the right way. I had to do that for each one! I couldn't really remember clearly and I even sewed one inside out.

 

 

I did prevail though! The last thing to take care of was the hole that I left to turn everything right side out again. Once that was stitched up I was done-zo!

 

 

Here they are in their completed form! I didn't take many progress pictures of the skirt, but I watched some YouTube videos (this one and this one) to learn how to sew bias tape to the edges. I chose to go with gold and it took just under two packs. Sadly, you'll have to wait until next year to see them in action, I already put everything away.

 

 

Please tell me someone else is still working on something Christmas related!

 

 

 



 

That sure is a fancy topper you have there!

 

 

I finally have a star to put on top of my pretty white tree! I was inspired to make it after seeing these amazing DIY ornaments on ModFruGal. They're made from strips of wood veneer and I. Love. Them!

 

 

So, with these über inspiring wood veneer ornaments paired with my topper-less tree I decided to make a giant star (like the smaller ones I made last year). After checking out the wood veneer strips at Home Depot I decided against it. The veneer was pretty, but one side had this really thick glue that is intended to be ironed onto wood. So off to the craft store for some bass wood! What what? Bass wood is right next to the balsa wood (that ultra light and flimsy wood that people make little airplanes out of, or whatever), but I thought it felt just a little sturdier. The thinnest pieces are 3/16" thick. So for this project you will need two sheets ($5 total) that are 2' x 3". Once I had my super thin wood in my studio I used a utility knife and a metal ruler to cut them into 1/2" strips like so.

 

 

Then, just like the smaller versions I made last year I wove and glued them together so they looked like this.

 

 

Ok, so now I will warn you, if you are already frustrated you might want to take a break. Go have a drink, watch some tv, whatever, because that was the easy part. In order to take your bass wood creation from looking like it belongs on the New Mexico State flag to a beautiful star you will need to twist and bend the strips so they come to a point. If you try that righthissecond your wood will break and you'll probably cry. First you will need to soak each corner in water to make the wood pliable (ooh, that actually is a technical term!). I soaked each corner for about ten minutes each. When I filled up the plastic container I used hot water, but as time went by it got cold. It didn't really make any difference, apparently water is water.

 

 

I didn't lay the whole thing in the water for fear that the glued parts would come undone, and as you can see, my container wasn't big enough. Since this part will be the most time consuming, go make yourself another drink. Maybe some spiked eggnog to make things festive! Mmmmm, eggnog.

 

 

After ten minutes or so your wood should be soft enough to twist and bend together to create a point of your star. I used some binder clips to hold the strips together while they dried.

 

 

Once you have all your points created you have to let the wood completely dry out before you glue the ends together. Trust me, I didn't think it would be that important and long story short they didn't hold, and I had to reglue them. So just do what I say, mmkay? Oh, and a few of my woven joints started to come apart, I think from soaking in the water, so I just reglued once it was dry and used more binder clips to hold them together while they dried.

 

 

Once your two sections are twisted and glued, then they face each other and the left over strips get glued to the points on the other half. This is what makes it puffy and 3-Dimensional. Once my star was complete and dry I did a little ombré dying treatment using some yellow RIT dye and an old spray bottle. I used two cups of water and an eighth of a cup of dye and sprayed everything but the woven parts. Then I added another eighth cup of dye to the bottle and sprayed the outer two thirds of the points. Once that dried I added another eighth cup of dye to the bottle and just sprayed the last third of the points. I never added more water to the bottle so each time it got a bit darker, I learned that from my BFF Martha.

 

 

Now that I had this pretty star I needed some way to attach it to the top of my Christmas tree. That's where this jankey piece of wire comes in. It used to be a dry cleaning hanger, but I used my lady charm to turn it into a tree topper holder. Just so you know, lady charm really means some pliers and spray paint. It's not my finest work, but in the words of Farmer Hoggett, "That'll do pig. That'll do."

 

 

Now take that jankey wire thing and your beautiful star and stick 'em on top of your tree!

 

 

 

Ahh's! I can't stand how good my tree looks! Especially in these pictures. It doesn't look quite as magical or full as it does in the pictures.

 

 

 

So have you ever made a tree topper? How did you actually attach it to the top of your tree? Who else has a white tree out there? And if you're looking for more DIY Holiday decor check out my projects from last year: