Better late than never.
Woohoo, finally got my part of the Christmas decoration done yesterday \o/ Here's what I made.
First off, another wreath, which was supposed to look something like this. I'd planned to detail every step but then totally forgot about it, which is why this "tutorial" is a little shorter than the one for Halloween. I started out with all of this:
A 35 cm styrofoam blank, two balls of yarn (one white, one red), an artifical twig of... stuff with berries and artificial snow sprinkled on it, three kinds of ribbons (one red and white striped, one just red, one red and qhite chequered with snowflake applications), red and white striped candy canes, a couple small Christmas tree ornaments and my trusty glue pen.
I started out by measuring the styrofoam thingy to determine how big red and white parts are supposed to be (and totally messed that one up but I'm good with improvising, so I managed to save the whole thing anyway) and wrapping the yarn around the styrofoam ring (and discovered once again that I hate wrapping yarn around things. Why do I keep making wreaths where I have to wrap yarn around things?), starting with white yarn, like this:
Did I mention that wrapping yarn around things really sucks?
But look, it's starting to shape up nicely:
What do you mean, it looks like life-saver thingamabob (Rettungsring, The word I'm looking for is Rettungsring)?
Anyway, this is where the pictures stop because I had to charge the glue pen and went to do other crafty stuff (of which I did take pictures but let's finish this one first) and promptly forgot to take up taking pictures once I got back to the wreath. But anyway. Here's the finished result first:
And here's what I did: I shortened the twig with garden clippers, then glued it to the wreath. Next were the candy canes (are they wrapped nearly un-unwrappable on purpose, by the way?), after that I used the red and white chequered ribbon, glued it to the backside of the wreath and realized that 80 cm was apparently too short to tie it around the wreath and serve for a bow, so, you name it, I improvised by tieing it, then glueing a bow, shortening the ends and using the (very small) surplus to wrap it across the pretend bow to make it look like a knot. Yes, it was as complicated as it sounds. Glueing a few Christmas tree ornaments to the wreath was a real piece of cake after that, at least. The last step was getting the red bow for suspension to stay mostly where I wanted it to stay so, yes, glued that to the back of the wreath, too (I also had to pin it to the inside of the ring with a thumbtack as I realized later. This whole thing was one exercise in improvisation, I'm telling you...). I do like the end result, though. Looks way better than I expected it to look. This is the final result, by the way:
(in case anyone's interested: it's held by two thumbtacks pinned into the upper edge of the door. Hopefully holds better than the tape I used for the Halloween wreath...)
Now for something completely different. Last year, I'd prepared not only owls painted on transparent sheets but also snowflakes. I never got to cut them out and do anything with them, so I figured a Saturday alone at home might be a good time to finally get to that.
This is how I started out:
I'd planned to use my to date still brand spanking new scalpel but apparently, scalpels and transparent sheets don't go so well with each other, so I had to resort to scissors. After painstakingly cutting my way through way too much plastic, I had neat stacks of snowflakes:
Err, those aren't all of them (I'd planned to hang them up with the owls, in lieu of the leaves and as it turned out, I actually had too many snowflakes but we'll come to that later). After that, I used a needle to make little holes and thread them. It ended up like this:
Turned out that wasn't such a smart idea. If you ever had to untangle Christmas lights, you will be able to feel the horror of having to untangle a load of snowflakes hanging together by really thin thread. Lots of fun, and no one else but me to blame.
Anyway, first things first, new companions for the owls above Dad's computer corner in our living room:
Woohoo, it's winter in Owlyland \o/
But what to do with all the surplus snowflakes? Oh, right, balcony door!
Yes, there's a dragon in the corner. He doesn't mind snowflakes. He just misses his companion from the other corner who just wouldn't stay where he was supposed to stay. But that is a story for a different day.
Last but not least, finally converted the obligatory candle thingy bowl to Christmas, so have some pics as a bonus:
If this feels like deja vu to you: yes, it looks almost like the one I made last year (apparently, I just used a lot less silvery stuff, though? O_o). That's okay, candle bowl thingy gets about the same look every year, it's supposed to look like this.
Now all I need to get my Christmas to do list done is baking some cookies (strangely, so far I haven't been caught by the unsurmountable urge to bake this year. I'm kinda hoping I'll get to do that with my sisters next weekend because I actually miss that urge. What is happening here?). So... how does your decoration look like? How are your Christmas plans going? Any special things planned? Tell me!
First off, another wreath, which was supposed to look something like this. I'd planned to detail every step but then totally forgot about it, which is why this "tutorial" is a little shorter than the one for Halloween. I started out with all of this:
A 35 cm styrofoam blank, two balls of yarn (one white, one red), an artifical twig of... stuff with berries and artificial snow sprinkled on it, three kinds of ribbons (one red and white striped, one just red, one red and qhite chequered with snowflake applications), red and white striped candy canes, a couple small Christmas tree ornaments and my trusty glue pen.
I started out by measuring the styrofoam thingy to determine how big red and white parts are supposed to be (and totally messed that one up but I'm good with improvising, so I managed to save the whole thing anyway) and wrapping the yarn around the styrofoam ring (and discovered once again that I hate wrapping yarn around things. Why do I keep making wreaths where I have to wrap yarn around things?), starting with white yarn, like this:
Did I mention that wrapping yarn around things really sucks?
But look, it's starting to shape up nicely:
What do you mean, it looks like life-saver thingamabob (Rettungsring, The word I'm looking for is Rettungsring)?
Anyway, this is where the pictures stop because I had to charge the glue pen and went to do other crafty stuff (of which I did take pictures but let's finish this one first) and promptly forgot to take up taking pictures once I got back to the wreath. But anyway. Here's the finished result first:
And here's what I did: I shortened the twig with garden clippers, then glued it to the wreath. Next were the candy canes (are they wrapped nearly un-unwrappable on purpose, by the way?), after that I used the red and white chequered ribbon, glued it to the backside of the wreath and realized that 80 cm was apparently too short to tie it around the wreath and serve for a bow, so, you name it, I improvised by tieing it, then glueing a bow, shortening the ends and using the (very small) surplus to wrap it across the pretend bow to make it look like a knot. Yes, it was as complicated as it sounds. Glueing a few Christmas tree ornaments to the wreath was a real piece of cake after that, at least. The last step was getting the red bow for suspension to stay mostly where I wanted it to stay so, yes, glued that to the back of the wreath, too (I also had to pin it to the inside of the ring with a thumbtack as I realized later. This whole thing was one exercise in improvisation, I'm telling you...). I do like the end result, though. Looks way better than I expected it to look. This is the final result, by the way:
(in case anyone's interested: it's held by two thumbtacks pinned into the upper edge of the door. Hopefully holds better than the tape I used for the Halloween wreath...)
Now for something completely different. Last year, I'd prepared not only owls painted on transparent sheets but also snowflakes. I never got to cut them out and do anything with them, so I figured a Saturday alone at home might be a good time to finally get to that.
This is how I started out:
I'd planned to use my to date still brand spanking new scalpel but apparently, scalpels and transparent sheets don't go so well with each other, so I had to resort to scissors. After painstakingly cutting my way through way too much plastic, I had neat stacks of snowflakes:
Err, those aren't all of them (I'd planned to hang them up with the owls, in lieu of the leaves and as it turned out, I actually had too many snowflakes but we'll come to that later). After that, I used a needle to make little holes and thread them. It ended up like this:
Turned out that wasn't such a smart idea. If you ever had to untangle Christmas lights, you will be able to feel the horror of having to untangle a load of snowflakes hanging together by really thin thread. Lots of fun, and no one else but me to blame.
Anyway, first things first, new companions for the owls above Dad's computer corner in our living room:
Woohoo, it's winter in Owlyland \o/
But what to do with all the surplus snowflakes? Oh, right, balcony door!
Yes, there's a dragon in the corner. He doesn't mind snowflakes. He just misses his companion from the other corner who just wouldn't stay where he was supposed to stay. But that is a story for a different day.
Last but not least, finally converted the obligatory candle thingy bowl to Christmas, so have some pics as a bonus:
If this feels like deja vu to you: yes, it looks almost like the one I made last year (apparently, I just used a lot less silvery stuff, though? O_o). That's okay, candle bowl thingy gets about the same look every year, it's supposed to look like this.
Now all I need to get my Christmas to do list done is baking some cookies (strangely, so far I haven't been caught by the unsurmountable urge to bake this year. I'm kinda hoping I'll get to do that with my sisters next weekend because I actually miss that urge. What is happening here?). So... how does your decoration look like? How are your Christmas plans going? Any special things planned? Tell me!