Christmas Crafts

I've been keeping myself busy with DIY crafts for the holidays as you know if you've been following my blog!  I've made stepping stones and painted pine cones with my daughter and these past weeks I've scoured Pintrest for some awesome DIY projects to add to my own boards on my profile!  I also love Etsy's How Tuesday blogs for cool DIY projects as well!  I'd love to do them all but there's only so many hours in the day so I settled on making Ribbon Trees and Pyramid Gift Boxes!  They turned out so cute!

For the trees all you need are ribbon, hot glue, and paper mache or a rigid cone.  I'm having a woodland theme for Christmas this year and green and brown are some of my favorite colors anyway so I chose those colors for my trees.  I experimented with alternating 3/4" ribbon for the taller tree and 1" ribbon for the smaller one.  The only thing not listed in the ribbon tree tutorial (click the link to go see it) I found on how to make them is how to make paper mache which turns out to be super easy. 

Paper Mache Cone:

• All you need are equal parts Elmer's glue and water or equal parts of flour and water and about 2 tablespoons of salt per cup of flour used to keep your flour mache from getting moldy.  
• I made a cone shaped "mold" out of heavy card stock so the paper mache had something to support it while it dried.  Unless you want to reuse your mold there's no need to wrap it in plastic cling wrap.  
• I cut 1/2" wide strips about 5" long or so from a paper grocery bag to dip in the goo and I rubbed the mache on them till they were thoroughly wet on both sides but not dripping.  
• Make sure to overlap when you wrap the cone and no more than 3 layers at a time.  
• Make sure it dries completely before applying any additional layers.  If you use a paper grocery bag 3 layers ought to do you just fine, that's what I did for mine.
• Once dry I painted my cones dark brown to match my ribbon but paint yours to match the color ribbon you'd like.
• Then follow the tutorial for ribbon trees, it's easy!

I really loved how mine turned out!  I'll probably make more next year or to give out as gifts ;)

My next craft project was to make Pyramid Gift Boxes as shown on Etsy's How Tuesday Blog.  The directions are all on the link I just provided and there's also a template to use too.  I enlarged the provided template up on my scanner to the size I needed to be able to fit the painted pine cones Kaylie made to give out as gifts.  I was just going to tie them to gift bags but the pyramid boxes are a much cuter alternative!  You can also use the little boxes to hang on your tree as ornaments too!