Crafting With Driftwood for Christmas

      When my kids were very young, my husband and I lived in San Francisco. On weekends we would go to the beach for long walks and then splurge on a few hot ciders at a local market in Half Moon Bay. Occasionally I would find an interesting piece of driftwood on the beach and if it was small enough, I'd take it home and make good use of it. 

      One Christmas I painted a small piece of driftwood like a Belznickle and wrapped it up for my husband. Although it was a strange ornament it didn't look out of place on our tree, which was decked out entirely with Belznickes. 

      My younger child absconded it for her own collected memories and she now hangs him on her tree every year.

Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. It is a form of marine debris or tidewrack. Above you can view the front, up close and back of my hand painted driftwood Santa.

More Driftwood Ornaments:

• A Recycled driftwood angel ornament
• Driftwood sailboat ornaments by Ruth McGovern
• Betty's Driftwood Santas
• Driftwood Ornament Ideas
• Driftwood Christmas Decor for a natural, beach style Christmas

      "A fun DIY video, how to build a driftwood Christmas tree . . I will post the full step by step tutorial on my blog (tomorrow Dec 16th) with more details and a link to buying the tree we made for this video. visit, http:// debisdesigndiary.com..If you enjoyed this video subscribe to my youtube channel for more DIY tutorials, I post new videos regularly to youtube! You can also find me on Facebook Facebook.com/debisdesigndiary" Here is the video DIY of the cute beach ball ornament Debi made.

Paint Faux Stained Glass Baubles

       I painted these faux stained glass baubles approximately ten years ago. I used some specialized products to achieve this unusual stained glass effect. The Gallery Glass® products have been around for a long time. If you can not find them in a shop near you, you can visit the company online and order the supplies yourself. I've included a link to their website below with one of their videos.

Supply list:

• A colorful selection of Gallery Glass® Window Color: pearly white, red and blue
• I used Gallery Glass Redi-Lead Strips (thin black)
• acrylic silver paint 
• large clear glass baubles
• a china marker or grease pencil
• X Acto knife

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Clean the surfaces of your glass baubles to insure maximum contact with the Redi-Lead Strips. Use Windex or vinegar and let the glass ornament dry.
2. Draw a design on your glass bauble using a china marker or grease pencil. You won't see these marks because your going to cover them up with the Redi-Lead Strips.
3. Apply the Redi-Lead Strips on top of your lines made with the china marker to create a simple pattern. These strips stick but can be moved around for a few seconds before the tacky surface dries. I cut my strips into clean, precise angles using an X Acto knife as I laid them onto the glass surface.
4. You may choose to use Gallery Glass Liquid instead. This liquid version of "leading" is more difficult to use on baubles, however.
5. Use Gallery Glass® Window Colors to fill in the spaces between your designs.
6. I painted the lead stripping using a silver acrylic paint on my glass baubles, but you can leave the black color if you wish. 
7. Let the paint dry before hanging the baubles.

      http://www.plaidonline.com/ Learn how to lead with 

Gallery Glass Liquid Lead and Redi-Lead strips!

 Join Carol Smith as she takes you through the process.

Pin a Sequin Drum for Your Vintage Inspired Tree

Sequin ornaments like this little snare drum are becoming very
popular among ornament collectors. I often find them tossed 
into plastic baggies and sold in bunches at garage sales. If you 
aren't lucky enough to find the real vintage ones, you can make
them yourself. I've included directions below for those of you 
who can manage to purchase the polystyrene or Styrofoam drum 
shapes on the web.  This little drum shape is not as easy to find
in hobby or craft shops anymore.

 Supply List:

• 2 inch diameter and 1 1/2 inch tall Polystyrene shaped drums or Drum-shaped Styrofoam pieces
• 8mm diameter cup sequins: red, green and white
• red, green and white seed beads
• star sequins
• flat head pins
• tacky white glue
• white pipe cleaner or chenille stem
• gold beads
• 1/2 yard of gold ribbon for trim
• thin gold twine

Step-by-Step Directions:

1. Before pinning your drum, you will need to mark diagonal lines with a soft pencil on the side of your Styrofoam drum. Also leave a strip of space at both the top and the bottom of the side edges unpinned. The width of these strips should be the same as the gold ribbon you will be using to trim the edges of your drum.
2. Thread one seed bead onto your pin and then also a sequin of the same color.  Touch the tip of each pin with a bit of white glue as you pin to hold your work in place after the glue dries.
3. Next pin four rows of red sequins following the diagonal pencil marks. Follow these four rows with four rows of white, then green sequins. 
4. Use a bit of tacky glue to adhere the gold ribbon around the top and bottom edges of the drum's sides.
5. Pin gold beads through the gold trim allowing approximately 1/2 inch between each bead.
6. Twist the gold twine gently around each gold bead, there should be ten of these at the top and ten at the bottom. Look at the photos above and below to visualize this chris-cross pattern made by the twine.
7. Cut and pin a little loop for one end of the drum to hang a hook from.
8. Bend a white pipe cleaner 2 1/2 inches long in half and pin this down on top of the drum with a small piece of gold trim. Glue on a gold bead to each end of this pipe cleaner. This stem mimics the drum sticks for your sequin snare drum. 
9. Pin a few seed beads plus starry sequins to both the top and the bottom of your Styrofoam drum and add a wire for hanging this little vintage drum.

Different angles of a small sequin snare drum made in the 1950s or 1960s for the Christmas tree.

More Vintage Sequin Ornaments:

• Sequin Ornament Kits from Herrschners
• Bright Things: Vintage Sequin Ornaments
• DIY Vintage-Inspired Sequined Christmas Ornament

How to Make Vintage Chenille Stem Santas and Snowmen

I pasted cotton batting balls to the top of my chenille stem figures and then
added a variety of tiny trims to finish my Santa and snowman ornaments: a tiny
 bottle brush wreath, red ribbon, a small cotton batting top hat and a few
red winter berries.

      Traditional chenille stem figures were wrapped with Bump Chenille stems. Each stem had and still does have four "bumps" per wire. You can make one character with one piece of Bumpy Chenille just like the vintage ones sold in old catalogs or on ebay.  Most craft or hobby shops carry Bump Chenille but if you can not find it in a shop, search the internet and order it ahead of time for this easy old-fashioned, vintage craft.

Step-by-Step photos of twisting a chenille stem figure.

Directions:

1. Cut one bumpy piece of chenille stem with two bumps and a second piece with only one. The two bumps will be the legs of your tiny armature and the single bump with be the arms.
2. Position the single bump in the center of the double cut bump wire and then twist the double cut bump wire around the arms to shape the body. (shown above)
3. Now your ready to paste on a tiny bead or picture for a head.
4. Twist the tips of your arms where the hands of your figure would obviously be to hold tiny bottle brush trees, a miniature sack of toys, a tiny candy cane etc...
5. These light weight ornaments are perfectly suited to hang for a feather tree or you can even decorate a package with them.

These tiny Bump Chenille stem figures will be hung from my feather tree for Christmas.

 Vintage Chenille:

•  A Very Vintage Christmas
• Vintage Inspired Chenille Stem Candy Canes
• A pipe cleaner skiing Santa and Reindeer from Martha Stewart
• Vintage Chenille Stem Ornaments pinned by Roslind Sherman

Dressing Up Millinery Fruits for The Christmas Tree

My strawberry millinery fruits are ready hang on the Christmas tree.

This Fruity Turban, 1917

      Millinery fruits have always been popular ornamentation on both ladies hats and on Christmas trees. The word millinery refers to the designing and manufacture of hats.

      Millinery is sold to women, men and children, though some definitions limit the term to women's hats. Historically, milliners, typically female shopkeepers, produced or imported an inventory of garments for men, women, and children, including hats, shirts, cloaks, shifts, caps, neckerchiefs, and undergarments, and sold these garments in their millinery shop.

      The origin of the term is likely the Middle English milener, an inhabitant of Milan or one who deals in items from this Italian city known for its fashion and clothing.

      You can read more about millinery shops at the Colonial Williamsburg webpages here and watch video about fashion accessories from head to toe here.

      Decorating with fruit themes during Christmas was quite typical of Early American Colonists. You can learn how the colonists decorated with pyramids or fruit cones for their Christmas dinner parties at history.org as well.

      Several years ago I purchased some inexpensive milliner fruits to "upcycle" into something special for my Christmas tree. 

       I will have a collection of fruit themed ornaments on the tree nearest to my dinning room this year. You may use any fruit you like for the simple ornament craft below but I have elected to make clusters of strawberries for my tree. This is not only because of their red color but also because the strawberry is somewhat reminiscent of German glass, mouth-blown, strawberry ornaments of which I have always been fond of.

Left, a couple of plastic canisters of inexpensive millinery strawberries. Center, I have wrapped the stems of two or three strawberries together with wire and tape. Then is wrapped the wire "stems" with cotton batting. Right, I have shaped the wire into hooks for hanging the millinery fruit clusters on my Christmas tree.

Supply List:

• millinery fruits, your choice
• wire for wrapping the stems into hooks
• cotton balls
• green acrylic paint 
• white glue
• glitter, your favorite
• permanent black felt pen

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Purchase millinery fruits from your local resale shops or hobby stores.
2. I chose to wire two or three strawberries together to create a cluster of berries to hang from the branches of my Christmas tree. 
3. Then I covered the wired stems with white glue and cotton and painted these green. Let the stems dry thoroughly.
4. Make sure the surfaces of the fruits are clean before adding painted or inked details. I used a permanent black felt pen to draw seeds onto the surfaces of my strawberries.
5. Dab on a generous application of white glue with the tip of your finger or a brush.
6. I then rolled the millinery fruit in the glitter and allowed these surfaces to dry before hanging them on the tree.

More Millinery Inspired Ornaments for The Christmas Tree:

• Making Millinery Fruit Ornaments at the babycenter
• Gingerbread felt hearts trimmed with rick rack, pom poms and silk ribbon flowers
• Easy Fabric Ornaments for a Millinery Holiday Tree
• Red and white calico ornaments 
• Spool Craft Christmas
• Craft a Christmas hot-air balloon from a thimble

Carmen Miranda wore millinery fruit like no one else! She was in fact, a milliner by trade before being discovered by Josue de Barros. She eventually became a successful samba singer, dancer and Broadway actress during the 1930s -1950s.

Make a Pasta Angel Ornament

Three views of my pasta angel.

Supply List:

• Bow Tie Pasta
• Macaroni Pasta
• Thumbtacks
• tiny wooden beads
• Rigatoni Pasta
• Minute Pasta or White Rice
• Hot glue gun
• white spray paint
• decorative ribbon for the hanger
• wax paper or tin foil
• medium sized cardboard box
• paper face mask

Step-by-Step Instructions:

• Hot glue a wooden bead to the top of a Rigatoni piece of pasta. The Rigatoni will act as the torso of the angel, the wooden bead will be her head.
• Glue one piece of macaroni to each side of the torso to act as arms.
• Now hot glue the inverted tack on top of the angels arms to act as the candle in a holder.
• Next, glue on a Bow Tie pasta piece between the angel's shoulder blades on the back side of her torso; this pasta is her wings.
• The last gluing step involves adding enough glue to the top and sides of the wooden bead to make the hair. Use some tiny shapes of Minute Pasta or white rice for this step.
• Let the tiny Pasta figures dry and snip off any stray glue strands that are not attractive. Hot glue leaves some of these while you work.
• Choose a warm dry place to work so that the painted pasta angels will dry quickly between coats of spray painting. Make sure that this environment is well ventilated. Read the instructions on the label of spray can carefully. Wear a disposable paper mask while you are working to limit the amount of fumes that you inhale while working.
• Line the bottom of the box where you will be spray painting the angels with wax paper or tin foil so that the painted pasta ornaments do not stick the surface in which they are lying on as they dry. 
• It is important to spray paint within the interior of a box so that the spray paint does not land upon other surfaces that you do not intend to paint during the process. 
• Turn the pasta angels and spray them lightly in layers as they dry. 
• Hot glue a fancy ribbon to the tip of the angel's head or to the back of your angel's wings.

See more versions of pasta ornaments:

• Making Christmas tree ornaments with pasta
• Kids Create Pasta Angels
• Craft a Christmas Star With Your Little Ones

Craft a Simple Cotton Batting Acorn Ornament For Thanksgiving

      Here are some simple acorn ornaments for Thanksgiving displays. These ornaments are made from homespun cotton batting, a little paint plus glitter and they don't take long to shape. Young children will also enjoy collecting acorn caps from the woods in order to help craft these charming little decorations. Leave the nuts behind for the wildlife folks.

My little pilgrim decoration along
with acorns.

 Supply List:

• white cotton balls
• acrylic paints: red, orange, yellow, gold and brown
• acorn caps
• white glue
• transparent glitter

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1.  Pull apart several white cotton balls so that you can work quickly.
2. Add a bit of white glue to the center of a wad of cotton and roll this between the palms of your hands to form a small cotton ball.
3. Hold this ball up next to your acorn cap to determine how much bigger the ball needs to get in order to fit into the inside of the acorn cap. Add additional glue and cotton as needed.
4. Pinch off one end of the cotton ball to create the tip of your acorn.
5. Glue the ball to the acorn cap and let it dry overnight.
6. Paint your acorns in what ever color you desire and let the cotton batting ornament dry.
7. Apply a bit more glue with your finger tip and roll the acorn in glitter.
8. I twisted a fine copper wire around the stems of some of my acorns so that I may be able to hang these from my Blessing tree. I scattered some of the acorns throughout my Fall displays around my home.

Left, Acorn caps a plentiful where I live. Center, Here you can see my cotton batting acorns unpainted. Right, I've painted the acorns and have also rolled them in transparent glitter.

Left,  A close-up of one of the cotton batting acorns hanging from the delicate branches of my Blessing tree. Center, A little pilgrim and a few scattered acorn decorations at the base of my Blessing tree. Right, These acorns have attached caps.