More Christmas-ness beginnings...

So I guess you could say I've been dabbling into Christmas decor for a little while now. Right after Halloween I took out my bottle brush trees and they have been wooing me even since, I love them so much. I have about 30 of them all over the house in little clusters, and at night I light tea lights amongst them and enjoy the glow, it's really pretty. These will probably stay up until we move. Other than that though I haven't done a whole lot, I usually wait for December before getting *really* into it. But I did manage to do a few little projects, the biggest being the felted sweater wreath.

I originally saw this project on someone's Twitter, it's a project by the folks over at Value Village, my favourite thrift store (not sure if they have them in the States? They must, it's like a Salvation Army or something...) Anyway, it looked really cute and I had it in my mind for a bit, and actually planned to buy some wool sweaters on my next trip to VV, but then on my last Modified Day Off, I was bored and was going through clothes to give to-who else?-Value Village, and I came across this tree-green acrylic sweater. It hit me all of a sudden, and I was inspired to try to make the wreath using it, even though it wasn't wool. So I took my scissors and cut out 2" square-ish shapes (they really weren't uniform at all, I just kind of free handed it depending on the sweater's shape). It took me about 45 mins to cut out all the squares.

(blurry shots of all of squares from the sweater)

Once that was done I used some of Dan's soldering pipe-stuff for the wreath (since I didn't have any wire), and basically just poked the solder through the middle of the squares, it was really easy since the sweater was kind of a loose weave or whatever. Once I had a long string of squares, I coiled it into a circle, made a little hoop at the top for hanging, and voila! I eventually added a bow and now it's hanging in my back door, I love it :)

I might switch up the ribbon to a more 'modern' colour combo later, this was just an old ribbon I had lying around, but I love the fact that I can switch it up from year to year, or add little ornaments/felt flowers to it, it's a great basic wreath that I can modify for Winter/Fall and the holidays. And it was FREE!

(The other thing I might change before putting it away for next year is the soldering wire, it's a bit too 'loose' and the wreath sags, I have to keep adjusting it, but if you use a fairly thick gauge wire it should hold its shape.)

Other than that I've made a few little cards, usually I try to make a few cards every year at least, but this year I'm taking the easy way out, I had these silver blank cards from another project lying around, so I simply added some Christmas papers/embellies from last year to them, but I think they turned out kind of cute, I'll probably make 10 or so over the coming weeks.

There are tons of other projects I'd like to attempt next month, but I'm not sure if realistically it's going to happen, there's so much going on already, my days at work are getting busier and busier (my to-do list keeps getting longer and longer, plus I have all my going-away stuff to prepare) and my energy levels, though still pretty high, will probably take a dip in the next 6 weeks or so, so I need to be choosy about what I can do. Basics like gift buying/tree trimming/turkey dinner making will probably be at the top of the list and everything else will have to be put off. But I'll try (Luckily for me I'll have lots of pretty things to look at online if I can't get them done in my own home) :)

Well, better go pack for tomorrow, we're heading home and I can't wait!

Hugs,
G.