Christmas Means Crafting!
/I LOVE to craft! It brings LIGHT into my soul, and I enjoy coming up with meaningful gifts to give to family and friends.
Today’s post is about a project I’ve been gathering things for, for a while now. I tend to do that with many of the crafts I do. I get an idea in my head, and it takes time to find all the things necessary to complete the idea in my mind. I’m pretty sure my brain looks like a crazy circuit board of a computer ready to explode, but I love making these ideas come to fruition. Not every one I come up with turns out, but sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised.
A few years ago, I started gathering blown glass Christmas tree toppers for my sisters. I make a unique hand-made gift for them every year. At first I wasn’t quite sure how to display them, but as I continued gathering, a thought began to form in my mind.
I came up with the idea to get a 20” long wooden dough bowl/tray, drill holes in it, glue wooden dowels in the holes, place the tree toppers on the dowels, arrange some greenery in the bottom of the dough bowl/tray, and finish it off with a strand of my favorite battery powered fairy lights – with a remote control.
Ronnie is such a good sport to help me with my projects. I explained to him what I was trying to accomplish, and he happily helped with the hard parts. He went to the hardware store and bought wooden dowels, and drilled the holes I marked in the bottoms of the trays to fit the dowels.
I started with the biggest and center tree topper. Then I marked the ones that would go on each end. The other two were centered in between the end toppers and center topper. I marked each dowel to fit as far up inside each tree topper as it would go – plus the depth of the hole, then Ronnie cut them off for me, and I glued them in the holes. I used my favorite E-6000 glue because it’s clear, and a little bit thick which is what I needed for this project.
Having to wait a full 24 hours for the glue to completely dry is always hard for me!!! I get so excited to see what the finished project will look like!
But I was a good girl, and was so happy the next day to place each tree topper on its wooden dowel holder. Some of the toppers were good, but others were a bit wobbly. Ron came up with the brilliant idea to use some “UHU Museum Putty”.
I used to get this from our local craft store, but it closed a couple years ago. Now I have to order it on Amazon. This putty is reusable, and molds to just about anything. Forming a ring of it around the top and bottom of each wooden dowel did the trick, and the tree toppers stayed in place.
As with most of my projects, I like to add some type of florals or greenery to soften and give depth and dimension.
I didn’t want it to be too thick or full because I wanted the tree toppers to be the focal point.
I found the perfect simple garland of faux cedar to nestle around the base of each topper, and then added a strand of fairy lights, because LIGHT is magical and makes my soul do a happy dance every time I figure out a new way to use it in my crafting!
I prefer the fairy lights with the gold or copper wire. During Covid, these were impossible to find online, and so I had to settle for silver. However, I found these lovely strands with copper wire again on Amazon, and they are just what I had envisioned.
Because I can’t do anything easy, I also wanted to incorporate these blown glass bead snowflake ornaments somehow.
I’ve had these in my closet for about 10 years now waiting to be used on the perfect project. But how would I attach them?
I found some cute wire stars on a stem, but the stem was a little bit short. So I came up with the idea to drill a hole in the edge of the wooden bowl/tray, cut a straight piece of a wire clothes hanger to fit down in the hole and partway up into a couple of wooden beads I had laying around. Then I glued the stem of the wire heart down in the top part of the two beads all with E-6000.
This meant I had to wait another 24 hours to tie the ornament complete with ribbon bundles onto the wire heart. This was the finishing touch for each arrangement. I’m so happy with how these turned out!
I have mine sitting in my window above my kitchen sink surrounded by bottle brush trees and an assortment of other small Christmas trees I already had in my Christmas things.
One of my favorite quotes I’ve mentioned a few times now, is from Dieter F. Uchtdorf. “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.” I always love it when I get to complete a project that I’ve been gathering things for a long time! I will be delivering these to my sisters this week to enjoy throughout the Christmas season. The tree toppers are fragile, but will look nice placed in a higher window sill, on a mantle, on a higher credenza, or inside a curio cabinet.
I hope these arrangements fill the homes they will go to with LIGHT! I know making them brought LIGHT into my heart.
In two weeks, Candle in the Window will be celebrating our 100th online post! In honor of this, we will be having another great Christmas Contest Giveaway! Be sure to watch next week for the Contest Giveaway instructions to win!
The winner will receive a Christmas package filled with many of my favorite Christmas things, including “Saranoni” - “Stanley” - “Illume” - “Thymes” “Apolis” and more! So be sure to Like, Follow, Save, and Tag next week for a chance to win this warm and cozy assortments of gifts!!!
Keep looking for ways to give, serve and share your LIGHT! Love Ya, Les :)