Christmas Decorating

I'm sure you've figured out by now that I love Christmas!  I love Christmas trees, Christmas presents, Christmas wrapping paper, and this year, I've been so excited to decorate my house for Christmas for the first time.  I decided to start with my mantel and decorate it with a bunch of trees.  I also added a silver tinsel garland, a few miscellaneous Christmassy things we've been given (a moose, for example), some vases that I had up before, and some candles.

Some of them are store-bought or gifts, some I made, and one is a combination.

For all the ones I made, I created cone shapes out of old cereal boxes and decorated from there.

For this glitter tree, I painted the cone white first, then applied a layer of tacky glue and spread glitter over that.  Once that dried, I applied another layer of tacky glue and glitter on top of that, and then sprayed glitter spray paint over that.  I finished with an acrylic sealer to keep the glitter from falling everywhere.  My sister had the little wooden star that I glued to the top.

I bought this tree at the Dollar Tree and the lights at JoAnn's.  I'm still not sure I like it, but it helps balance out the greens on the mantel.

I used playing cards from the Dollar Tree for this one.  I had a deck leftover from a previous project, so this cost me nothing.

This one was very simple - just a yarn wrap with glue all the way underneath.  I wrapped twice to hide all of the cone underneath.

For this book tree, I used pages that I had cut out of Little Women when I was making a book box for my sister.

This tree was probably the most fun to make (after the glitter tree).  I first drew swirls with white crayon on white paper, then painted green and blue watercolors over the top:

When it dried, I punched out 1" circles, which I then glued all over the tree.

All in all, this display cost me under $5, since I had most of the supplies on hand.  I purchased the silver tinsel, the green tinsel tree, and the green glitter tree at the Dollar Tree, and the light bulb beads at JoAnn's, but that's it.  I think it looks pretty good!

Merry Christmas!

Love and Light Bulbs,

Leah Joy