Handmade Christmas

I am more excited about Christmas this year than I have been in a long time. I don't know if that's because there is a very real sense of a 'count down' due to the fact that I have opted to make everyone's prezzies this year or something else. Whatever it is, I like it.

Kyle and I haven't really bothered with Christmas trees in the past. This will be our third married Christmas, but its the first one that's in our own home (apartment) where we can't share in the light of our parents collectively decorated trees.

I had neither the money or inclination to buy a new one AND all the decorations it would take to populate it. With Gabe getting into everything it wouldn't matter anyway. So while I'm riding this whole 'handmade' Christmas thing, I thought I would make one.

I was inspired by a picture in Australian Homes and Gardens, but this is definitely more on the Eleanor is ghetto side of craft.

I very often HATE what I have painted, and so sometimes after layers of paint have gone onto a particular canvas I will cut it off and throw it away leaving a naked wooden frame ready for new canvas to be stretched over it and primed and painted and all that stuff. Instead I took one of those frames and stapled some linen over it.

Then I cut a tree template out of contact, stuck it down and then painted over the fabric with some mistinted house paint I picked up a month ago (with grand intentions to use it for something else)

I then nicked off with mum's glue gun and stuck anything I could get my hands onto on the tree. I have a tendency to keep a hold of things for a long time, and also to buy things for projects which never get made. So I had heaps of buttons, faux gems, decorations from Gabriel's baby shower, pocket watches that I gutted to turn into perfume lockets, old jewellery, odd earrings, a dream catcher, fabric flowers and badges that had no other purpose.

The star at the top I made by following a kinigami tutorial (in portugese?) on YouTube and then adapting it with a heap of folds and some glue and beads.





Our Christmas Tree!!