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.

Canadian web pages are different from North American web pages here?

      The answer is yes folks; that's the law sometimes. If you are reading my blog in a different country than where it originates here in the U.S., Blogger may need to alter what you are viewing. That's o.k. by me; better something than nothing I always say. So, my Belzsnickle Blog (Belsnickle) for the Canadian audience is listed as http://belsnickle.blogspot.ca and it is a shorter version than the original. Sorry for the confusion.

Photocopy Leaf Prints for Your Blessing Tree

      Who doesn't like to go for a walk in the fall leaves? For this project you will need to do so, however, I've included just a few samples of leaves you may print out that were found not far from my own home just below.

      Take your little ones for a stroll through the park or neighborhood to collect some lovely fall leaves. Spread these face down on your printer's screen and close the lid, scan, and print in full color. Cut them out and back these with a bit of glue and a few nice fall themed papers. Insert a wire between the layers while you are pasting. I used a cotton covered wire and then painted my stems with brown and gold acrylic paints to mimic the real stems of leaves. These little delicate beauties may be hung from the very tips of a fragile Blessing tree; their colors will not fade for a few years nor will they shrink, crack or fall from your own indoor tree.

Left, xerox prints of my Fall leaf collection. Middle, cotton batting covered wire. Right, My leaf stems are ready for painting as soon as the paper ornaments have dried.

Because my blessing tree is so very delicate, so must my ornaments be. Leaves are by their very nature light weight and so are the my leaf ornament versions for this year's tree.

I collected these beautiful Fall leaves in my neighborhood for my Blessing Tree.

You can capture their color and shapes with a scanning bed, no problem!

There are many yellow leaves in our little community as well.

You should see the magnificent Maple tree this one came from!

More Fall Leaf Crafts for Your Home:

• Kirigami Fall Leaves
• Fan folded leaves for kids to craft
• DIY Giving Thanks Golden Leaf Garland
• Glitter Leaf Garland

Thanksgiving Ornaments Made From Indian Corn

Indian corn comes in many colors.

      I chose to hang a few miniature Indian corn from my Blessing tree this year for the Thanksgiving holiday. As I was shopping for supper one night, I found their warm golds, bright oranges and varied brown tones to be irresistible. So instead of buying tomatoes and lettuce, I splurged and purchased these little cuties.

      I trimmed the bulk of the husks off of their tops; these would be a bit too over-powering for my delicate little tree. Then I simply twisted some twine around their stems, added a bit of tacky glue to a few remaining husks and then pasted these around the stems to cover the knots. Wrap a few tight rubber bands around the husks so that these stay in place while they are drying. I also trimmed off the tips so that the corn looked more attractive.

Here are just a few of my Indian corn ornaments hanging on the Blessing Tree.

More Decorating With Indian Corn for Thanksgiving: 

• A Trip to the Farmstand - What to do with Indian Corn 
• Thanksgiving Table Settings - Indian corn resting in wheat  
• Corn related content for young students here