Wednesday, February 16, 2011

It's still cold outside

...so I am still blogging about Christmas! Amongst my goals for this year: to try and blog about ideas for the holidays before the holidays. Let's just say you are now officially 10 months ahead!


Above are examples of two beautiful homemade crafts that added immeasurable charm and happiness to our holiday decor. The poinsettia wreath was a gift from my friend Liz. It came as a kit from Martha Stewart with everything you needed included in the kit. I have to say that is my favorite kind of craft: all the ingredients, clear instructions, and a beautiful finished product. It is also fuel for the imagination. This wreath is almost completely made from crepe paper. Each flower is comprised of three double sided petals and then glued on top of each other. Think of the possibilities! Next year I have big plans for poinsettia's to feature big in our holiday decor.

How cute is the stocking garland? I know, adorable. My sister made this for me and I absolutely love it. I love the patterns of the paper, the sheer brilliance of the concept and the Wow effect it brings to a room (or a mantel for those of you lucky enough to have one).

My sister lives close to the Phoenix Park (the largest enclosed park in Europe - bit of trivia for ya) which is filled with huge horse chestnut trees. In the Fall the trees shed hundreds and hundreds of conkers. Conkers are used by school children (and certain adults) to play a popular game where you thread the conkers and then try to knock the other person's conkers off their thread. On a walk one afternoon Laura and her beau collected a ton of them to play the game and brought them back to their homet. After using the extra's for a lovely candle display, Laura had a brainstorm and created the amazing garland you see above.

She cut out the paper stockings so that the top of the stocking was on a fold and slipped it on the rope between each of the conkers. She used double sided tape to keep the stockings together. I think the ingenuity comes from the different papers and the different size stockings. You could easily use this idea for all sorts of shapes - hearts at Valentine's, eggs at Easter, etc. And if conkers aren't available in your neck of the woods, try acorns!

Sorry for the quality of the photo - apparently the i phone really didn't catch the details.

Also sorry for the state of my windows. . . I really have no excuse for those!


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