Pipe-Cleaner Christmas Trees

I never planned on such an early Christmas post but like it or not, Christmas is barreling down on us. I hate that I think of it that way sometimes but I not only have a personal Christmas, I also have Christmas at work- more trees and decorations, more food and festivities, more hustle and bustle. Any time I can cut the work load without sacrificing the holiday spirit- I'm all for it.


Cute and cheap and quick! That's the ticket! I found myself wanting "something more" for a centerpiece on the tables at work last year and came up with these little guys. They go together fairly quickly and I got plenty of compliments, particularly on the ones made with the white sparkly pipecleaner.

Important Bit- I honestly don't remember if I came up with this on my own or if I had seen it somewhere else and just didn't remember. All I know is that I was doing a centerpiece for a meal with the patients and it had to be super-duper inexpensive. If you've done this or have seen it some place, please let me know so I can give proper credit.

The bare minimum items that you need for each tree are:

Styro cones

Pipe cleaners

I used 6 inch cones for these trees and that size took 17 pipe cleaners. Of course I went with the sparkly ones.

Insert one end of the first pipe cleaner into the top of the cone about 1/2 an inch.

Bend the pipe cleaner over at a 90 degree angle,

 

and start curling it in a circle around in a circle on the flat top of the cone.

 

The stem will spring loose if you don't hold on to it so you'll need to "keep a holt of it" as they say out on the farm.

The first stem should make it over the edge of the flat top on the cone. The nice thing about the sparkly pipe cleaner is that it sort of sticks into the styro a bit to hold on. We'll talk in a minute about the softer pipe cleaner.

When you run out of stem, make an elbow about 1/4 inch long ...

and stick it into the cone.

 

Insert the next stem right beside the first one and continue to wrap the cone.

 

Be careful about leaving too much space between each stem or the cone will show through. If you're using white pipe cleaner that's not such an issue. I try to coil the stems so that the ends of the little bristles overlap just a tiny bit.  That seems to be a fairly economical way of doing it but of course you can wrap the pipe cleaner more densely if you prefer. Just remember that you will need more than 17 stems of pipe cleaner if you do.

 

Wrap the pipe cleaner all the way down to the base of the cone.

Turn about an inch or so of the last stem under the base and insert the end into the styro.

You can make toppers for your trees if you would like using whatever you have on hand. I had these small ornaments and just ran a pearl pin through each one and stuck it onto the top of the tree. 

You could decorate your tree with sequins or beads if you wanted to but I didn't do that so don't have any pics to show you how cute I'm sure it would be. 

The white tree you see above (in the middle) is made with the sparkly white pipecleaner and got lots of compliments. People had no idea what it was made from. Then we have a fun little Santa's Hat tree made from the softer pipe cleaner. There was a pom pom on top but it apparently went on back to the North Pole, never to be seen again. The white at the top of the Santa Hat tree gave me an ornery time- it didn't want to stay put.

Cut a piece of stem about half an inch, fold it into a "V" and use it to anchor your cantankerous section of stem into place.

For last year's patient Christmas Dinner table, I was working with a lime green and red theme but green Christmas trees are so expected so I made mine red.

We set up one long banquet table so I generally use a long centerpiece that stretches most of the length of the table. I ended up with about half a dozen more trees after I took this photo.

I bought the silver sparkle stars at Michael's. They're foam and a little hot glue gun action was all it took to get them to stay.

The Intern made this centerpiece for our overflow table. So simple but so festive. Maybe it would look nice if the entire thing were set on a silver or glass platter.

So there you go- easy little trees for your Christmas decorating needs. My mind is already churning for this year- maybe an entire Christmas tree forest with trees of different sizes, some fuzzy, some sparkly, maybe some wrapped with ribbon. Oh boy, the possibilities.

And even though this is a Christmas post, don't forget to have a beautiful Thanksgiving.

Terra Cotta Goodie Pumpkins

OK, so I was a bit pre-mature with my last post when I stated that it was my token, thereby meaning "only", Halloween post. Just wanted to quickly share these little pumpkin goodie "bags" I made to take to work on Monday for our little staff shin-dig. These are made with the two smallest terra cotta clay pots- 1 1/2" and 2 1/2". Paint them orange and black or use chalkboard paint, which I did with these. You could use regular black paint and decorate with the silver metallic sharpie if you wanted to but the chalkboard paint is so much fun!

I laid green tissue paper over the top and added candy corn (mmm...), encouraging the weight of the candy to pull the tissue down into the pot, which lets you fit the bundle to the size of the pot better, meaning it fits better in the pot than making a bundle and then trying to cram it into the pot. Which really means you can fit in more candy corn! Tie up the top with curly ribbon and there you go.

I don't remember since I already had the tiny little pots but they cost something like 25 cents. Easy and cheap.

So if you need something to put by place settings or give out to co-workers, easy easy.

So that's it for today- see ya next time.

This Year's Token Halloween Post

OK, here it is- this year's Halloween post. While I've been doing some fun cute things at work with my patients for Halloween, those activities don't really fit in here for a variety of reasons, and there just hasn't been much in the way of spare time for me to work on anything for The Jungle. Except for this funky candle holder.

This was supposed to be a tutorial today but when I went to click on "Move" to get the photos from the camera to the computer, crazy Halloween gremlins must have gone nuts and by their evil forces forced my pinky finger to hit "Delete". Or something.

I do have photos from a different candle that I worked on, however, so I'll just go over that with you. Both are made basically the same way.

Start with a clear glass candle holder, vase, or drinking glass. Spray that with adhesive spray and let it dry. Best to turn the candle holder upside down before you spray to keep the inside clean.

Starting at the top, wrap a length of ribbon around the holder. Leave about a quarter inch of overlap.

Start your next row of ribbon by using the first strip, which theoretically is straight, as a guide. Proceed all the way down the holder to the base.

This holder had a rounded lip at the bottom so I cut a tissue paper circle just larger than the base (I guessed at the size, to be honest) and smoothed it up over the bottom. Seemed easier that trying to tape off the base, which I've done and it does leave a nice clear bubble at the bottom. But this works also.

So when I got to the bottom, I just covered the tissue paper mess with a row of ribbon. Enough of the adhesive was still exposed that I didn't even need to add any more adhesive.

Then go back and tack down the ribbon ends with a bit of adhesive. I used a little dab of Yes! Paste in this case. Eat some candy corn, add your candle, and ...

... instant easy candle holder.

I knew the second I saw this great bead fringe that it was going on this vase that I picked up last year at the Dollar Tree. It has a great outward curving lip so the beads can hang freely. I taped off the top so I didn't have to deal with trying the get the ribbon to lay flat on the curved lip and taped off a couple other strips on the body of the vase to leave open strips just for fun.

The patterned ribbon casts a lovely shadow on the wall and it would be fun to do the entire vase in a pattern sometime.

I struggle a bit with Halloween and wish that I didn't like it as much as I do. It's just an excuse for candy, costumes, and goofiness, as far as I'm concerned and we pretty much stick with fall-ish and benign activities, if we do anything. No inflatable monsters decorating our yard. If you make the argument that Halloween based in pagan tradition, then what do you say about the pagans who celebrate Christmas? Halloween is actually kind of a mish-mash of several traditions both cultural and religious. Some will tell you that Christmas is based in pagan tradition. Everyone wants a piece of the action, I guess. We have an understanding at our house that we simply don't do ghosts, vampires (oh I'm so sick of vampires), bloody body parts, etc. We've had a good bit of fun with costumes over the years but this year, seeing as my Zippy is solidly into the double digit age, I offered to just buy her a sack of candy if she ditched the trick-or-treating. She's thinking about it but she did have her heart set on being either the winged chick from the Maximum Ride series or someone from The Hunger Games.

Anyway, Halloween the past few years has gotten to be incredibly gross and graphic with much more emphasis on outright horror than I remember as a kid. Is it a reflection of our fears as a society that things are slowly slipping from our control, that the world is increasingly dangerous, or that maybe there really is true evil in the world? I have my opinions beliefs, I'm curious as to yours.


On the other hand, Halloween is also just getting stupid. Karey Hoke from Boise State wrote this article for the ArbiterOnline last year about women in trampy costumes. Still applies. Joy the Baker's post, Don't Be A Sexy Panda... is great. I love the point she makes: not only is slutty a huge disrespect to women, seriously- been there done that already. I don't by any means consider myself a prude and I made some outrageous costume choices back in the day, but let's move on now to something creative. I mean, once we believed that Angie Dickinson, Policewoman, could really chase bad guys in those heels, Halloween costumes for women were on their way to the gutter.

Image via TV Rage

One of these years I'll get it together and sew an Elizabethan gown for Halloween and there won't even be a push up bra involved. Oh my goodness, all that scrumptious fabric to role around in ....  sigh. I'm a sewer at heart.



Image via Cincinnati Weddings

Guess I've digressed pretty far from whatever topic we were on and there's probably no point in trying to get back to where we started. Go make a cute little candle holder that doesn't have eyeballs, brains, or breasts popping out of it and I'll see you next time.


Thanks for visiting today.

Dala Delights

I do hope that you've had a chance to visit the Flickr Group for the Dala Horse Craftalong. So many equine beauties! Look for the Dala Horse Craftalong button in the sidebar to the right, give it a click, and prepare for a feast of crafty delights. The Craftlong ends on August 21st but you can continue to add photos to the group after that.

I love Dala Horses. They have such great history and a centuries long tradition of fine craftsmanship. Visit Hannah, one of the co-sponsors of the Craftalong, at her blog iHannah for some great info on Dala Horses. But even if I didn't know about all of that, I would be hooked by their colors.

So did I finish my first attempt at embroidery in ages? Yes, as a matter of fact, I took most of one glorious day of my week off work to sit on the couch and stitch. Here it is...

(Special thanks to my lovely assistant Zippy for modeling the apron.)

OK, I didn't plan on making an apron. I started rummaging around through my stash to work on this project and the only sturdy fabric I could find was this child's apron leftover from a previous project. My original intent was to cut it away from the apron and I may end up doing that, just as soon as I figure out what I want to do with my horsey gal.

As I mentioned, I ran the dogs off the couch one day this past week and spread out my playthings to work on my horse. How does one incorporate dog hair into an embriodery project? I was trying to remember the last time I did any embroidery and honestly can't recall. Cross-stitch has always been my thing and after looking at the beautiful work on Carina's Craftblog I started thinking it would be fun to try some embroidery again. Then along came the Craftalong- perfect opportunity! I dusted off my embroidery hoops and went to town.

Due to time constraints (only one week off work, school starting soon, a long To Do list) I didn't add any decorative elements around the horse. It's heavy on the stem stitch but visiting all of the beautiful stitch possibilities in the books was great fun. If this were cross-stitch I would show off the back but since it's a beginner's effort at embroidery I think some of you more accomplished needleworkers would faint dead away if I did that. So let's just look at the front. I am aware of things that did not turn out so well or that I simply did wrong. I would also love to hear your constructive criticisms so that I can take advantage of your knowledge and skill in order to improve. That sounds hokey but I'm sincere about it. Go ahead, say it. I can take it.

This being The Butterfly Jungle, I knew immediately that there had to be butterflies. So I studied the horses in my little collection, noted the consistencies in design, and then threw them out the window. Well, not totally. I tried to keep the general design the same. But not. So here you can see that the saddle is a butterfly. The three floss colors on the left were for the mane because I just made this up as I went along. Makes you want to faint, I know, but that's how I was rolling because it was my vacation week and that's what I wanted to do.

I tried a satin stitch for the butterfly's body but because this was worked on a heavy canvas I don't feel that I could get the stitches close enough. Is there a secret? Do you split the canvas threads? Anyway, the other satin stitch areas that I had thought about doing got nixed.

Little Lazy Daisy butterflies in the mane and bridle.

I am very cognizant of the fact that this is humble beginner's level work. The easy part was fooling around tracing the horses and coming up with designs. When it came time to actually start embroidering I thought, "Uh oh, how am I going to do that?" Thank goodness for the needlework section at Barnes & Noble. Oh who am I kidding- thank goodness for Barnes & Noble. When I still had not started for several days it was time to step back and see what was going on. I realized that the problem was my fear. Who did I think I was adding my intro level embroidery to the Craftalong Flickr group with all of the beautifully worked items by wonderfully talented women? And then I decided, to paraphrase Bette Midler, "To heck with 'em if they can't take a joke." All in all, and completely aware of my amateur standing in embroidery circles ('cause I do know you can embroider a circle), I'm pleased with my modest little horse. Ya gotta start somewhere, right?

My heritage is actually Norwegian and I sometimes feel a twinge of guilt for liking Dalas so much. Same with those gorgeous Moro floor clocks. I'm Norwegian, not Swedish. Thank goodness for the Fjord horses of Norway and the two little fellas in my collection that I can't for the life of me remember where I got. First I trace the outline ...

It's been great to have you stop in today. Thank you. I'll see ya next time.