Merry Christmas. Minus the Red and Green

Well, I promised to give you a sneak peak at my new NT (Non traditional) Christmas tree. If you saw my earlier post this week you know that the colors for that tree are apple or lime green, dark brown, silver and my favorite, turquoise. Now to make this even more NT , the tree itself is white.
So while it'll take me at least one more season to get it just where I want it, I want to share it with you now. Please feel free to leave comments telling me what you think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ribbon tree topper that ties in a couple of the NT colors.

Silver painted pine cones with bows.

A couple of handmade ornaments. Glued glass beads onto glass ornament balls and gluing silver beads onto green glitter balls.

Hope you enjoyed this sneak peek.

Merry Christmas!!

May Arts Ribbonista Christmas Blog Hop- Day 4

The Count Down Has Begun!! 5 Days 'til Christmas

Hi everyone. If you're a new visitor, I hope you'll see something here that makes you come back, if you're following the  May Arts Ribbonista  Christmas Blog Hop, glad you hopped by. If you haven't checked out the previous three days, after you visit here,  head back to May Arts and check them out.

Boy, this year has gone by so fast, it's a blur. One minute it was the middle of the summer and before I knew it, Halloween had passed and the gobble, gobble of the Thanksgiving turkey was just a faint memory. Is it me or does it seem like folks are putting up Christmas decorations earlier and earlier each year? I can faintly remember (hey, don't laugh, wait til you start to have senior moments) not putting up my Christmas tree until the middle of  Dec. Of course, that was when my boys were younger and we made an event out of going to cut down our tree. Artificial trees don't start to drop needles the minute you put it up so I guess that's why they are up so soon. Or, is it because Hobby Lobby has Christmas merchandise in the store by the end of July? And if you've been in a HL this past week, you know those 4-5 aisles of Christmas merchandise has been sold down to maybe 3 aisles!!

Well, you really don't have to run out and buy a lot of Christmas home decor items each year. You can always use what you already have and love in your home. I say love because if that pillow is on your couch for 10-11 months out of the year you must at the least have a strong like  ( if not true love) for it, so why move it for 1 month? Hopefully the following pictures will give you some ideas on using what you already have and just giving it a little tweak for the holidays.

What better way to add some holiday spark than with ribbon.  Here is the pillow that is on my couch most of the time.

Here's the same pillow dressed up for the holidays, wearing a silver bow made with May Arts  (SL60) ribbon.

The color of this pillow is reflected in my latest non traditional (NT) holiday color scheme.
 For three year's my NT tree was a white tree with orange and pink ornaments. You can see it in older posts.
 Well, in an attempt to have a more coordinated look, I changed it to apple green, chocolate brown and my favorite color, yep, turquoise. And you know my love for silver, so there is some silver on this tree.  Not wanting to break the bank on this new color change, I must say this tree is in the "developmental stage".  Of course you know that's secret code for waiting to catch more stuff on sale after the holidays. Check back in a couple of days to see the new NT tree. I thought that I needed to have similar or coordinating colors on my two biggest trees as they are in adjacent rooms. The "Big" tree has, green, fushia, purple and you guessed it, turquoise, lots of turquoise. It is my "Peacock" tree.

Since the mantle is in the same room as the NT tree I decided to forgo the greenery and ornaments of years gone by and go for a new look.  So this year my mantle sports lots ribbon and lots of turquoise.

Notice the turquoise and silver pine cones hanging from the mantle. These are found throughtout my holiday decor.

I have 22 Georgia Pine trees in my back yard. You know what that means? Yea, no grass to cut and no need to buy pine straw but more importantly, it means lots and lots of pine cones.  Now, if you are crafty you understand that every time I look out my kitchen window I start trying to figure out what to make with all those free, yes free pine cones. Pinterest has loads of ideas, and I tried a couple of them.
To make these larger pine cones more versatile  I drilled a small hole in them, screwed in an eye hook so that I can hang them by ribbon just about anywhere.  Maybe next year I'll hang lots of them on ribbon to make a garland for the tree or mantle.

  But this year some adorn my tree wearing a turqouise and green bow ( May Arts XY44 and MKK34)  and some hang on the mantle wearing beautiful bows .( May Arts  354-34; XY44: 350-15-46: 350-15-99 ).

But back to using what you already have.  I spray painted the smallest pine cones ( 1-1.5") silver and gold. These were placed in a large clear vase along with left over silver ornaments and I tied a pretty bow ( SL60 and 354-34) on the vase and put it back  on the hearth.

Another quick and festive idea is to dress up items already hanging on your walls.  I have a great  passion for silver trays repurposed into wall hangings  so  ome vintage silver tray with a mirrored centergot dressed up for the holidays. To give it a festive holiday look i added greenery, miniature mercury glass ornaments, silver pine cones and a turquoise ribbon. After the holidays, the greenery, ornaments and bow ( XY44) come off.

And I carried the colors and common element - silver pine cones into my gift wrapping.

These were just a few ideas for using what I already had to complete my holiday look. I hope it gave you some ideas for maybe a quick last minute fix for a spot in your house that just needs a little something extra.

I hope you enjoyed this post and most of all I hope you have a Merry Christmas and stop by again during the Happiest New Year.

Pinterest Revisited

Just a quick post about one of my favorite sites on the web, Pinterest. If you've spent any time on there you've probably spent a lot of time on there. Time flies when you are pinning. There are just so many great things to see and save. Here's the thing, if you've been on Pinterest for more than 3 months, it's time for you to revisit your pins.  I realized that this is a must do about a week ago.  I was up at the ridiculous hour of 3:00 am ( that D - - insomnia had me in it's grip)  and I was looking for some holiday ideas. For whatever reason (can't remember now) I went to my boards and looked at the Christmas board.  Well, let me tell you there were more than enough ideas pinned on that board.  I had simply forgotten to revisit my boards to see what had caught my eye way back in June, July, you get the picture.  Some of these ideas would have been great to make ( I mean that was why I pinned them in the first place), but there was now , no time.
I find time did make one of these, after all I had to do something with all those ornaments I bought during the summer. Here's the inspiration:

via pinterest

Here's my version:

                           
                   Of course it was in my favorite colors, silver and turquoise.

So I said to myself, "self, you have to make it a new habit to revisit your own boards at least every couple of months." I think that like most of you , I just get caught up in pinning or re-pinning new things and once pinned, forgotten. It also gives you a chance to create new boards, do some editing of existing boards.

It's also funny to see the things you pinned and thought were interesting, cool whatever and now can't imagine what you were thinking.

 Happy pinning!!  An most of all Have a Very Merry Christmas!!

Putting a little Bling onto your holiday table

As I began to think about setting my dining room table for the Christmas holiday I knew I wanted something very different from previous years tables. I am finally growing into my love for very shiny, sparkle, glitzy and,glittery things. I am ready to  have to confess to the world that  I love Bling!! I fell in love with these chargers at Z Gallerie

 But my love quickly faded to a "Sure do like these" once I saw that they cost $139.80 for  4. I later came up with a much quicker version that has endless possibilities. Here's my version of Bling Charger plates.

I started out with (4) old charger plates that were silver. I want a mixture of silver and gold this year ,so I spray painted the silver chargers, gold. You can then spray a clear shiny or mat sealer on the charger.  Alright, alright, I'll admit it, I really was just in too much of a hurry to see what these would look like and forgot to seal them!! Oh, the shame. Anyway,  I bought 3 bags of the glass beads  from the dollar store ( this was for 4 - 13" chargers). I bought mine at the Dollar Tree store . I already had a can of Krylon's  Looking Glass Mirror Like spray paint, I mean, what spray paint fan doesn't have a can of this stuff on the shelf!

The next step is to lay a small square of paper towel in the bottom of a small plastic tray and arrange glass bead in it, flat side up/. My small plastic trays are the empty Caesar Dog Food containers. I save them after I feed Trey and use them for a variety of craft projects. A small styrofoam meat try would work  jusas well. Or even a paper plate, well, you get the idea. The paper towel adsorbs the paint that lands in the tray ( not on a bead) and prevents it from getting on the top of the beads.

These beads have gotten 2 coats of the Mirror glass paint.

In this picture you can see the difference between a bead that has been painted and one that hasn't.

You can see right through the unpainted bead. But wait, here's one of those endless possibilities I mentioned. You might want the color of your charger to show through the bead. If you like that look, skip painting your beads!

 The next step is to simply start gluing the beads around the edge of the charger. It's just that easy. It takes approx. 50 beads per charger ( of course it will depend on the size of your charger and the beads). As the beads are not identical in size or shape ( some are more oval than round), as you get close to finishing, you will need to pick your beads more carefully so that you don't have a gap. I made sure that each bead touched the bead previously glued down. If you want you could add another row of beads.

 Now imagine, painting your charger whatever color you wanted and then adding the bling.  I also thought about gluing the beads first and then painting the charger. It would simply have a great textured edge.

I have since thought about making mirrored chargers by just buying 13 of 14" round mirrors and gluing the beads on those.  As it stands, I spent $3.00 to make 4 of these. I'm pretty satisfied.


What do you think?

Simple thought for today...

Was I the Only one who didn't know?

I just  saw something today that I had never seen before, Pink Pumpkins. Unless you've been living under a rock in the bottom of the ocean, you k now that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You see pink everywhere, the football game ( I  have to admit I like the pink shoes many NFL players are wearing), every store in town, etc. Well I'm sorry, I just didn't know they were growing pink pumpkins. And there they were, right outside of my local Kroger right next to the regular, boring orange ones. So, I pull out my handy dandy camera, currently masquerading as my phone. I'm not to the point that I take my camera everyehere in case there's something cool to take pictures of, the phone will have to do. These were the pumpkins that stopped me in my tracks....

I went right home and didn't even put away my groceries first, well ok, I did put away the Breyers Butter Pecan ( no since in acting completely crazy, I mean you can't mess with the ice cream in my house).
I googled Pink Pumpkins and was amazed. Did you know they were growing pink pumpkins all over the country? Many of the farmers growing these are donating portions of their sales to aid in the fight against breast cancer.  How cool is this! I can't explain it, but I think this is very, very  cool and I love these pumpkins.

via 

 

 

 

What do you think?  Would you buy one?

Palletts are too much!!

Just recently I was cruising through Craigslist's offering  of free stuff. Oh, come on, admit it, you've taken a look there too , at lease once.  It's amazing what people give away free just to get rid of it. I was looking for tables or anything to use for displaying stuff in a yard sale ( that's another story for another time). One of the items that kept showing up on just about every day, were wood pallets. I tried to figure out a way to use those but got lost in imagining all the other possibilities for them.  Well of course my next stop was at Pinterest. Again, come on and admit it, you're addicted to Pinterest too. I found some amazing things that people have made out of discarded wood pallets. I extended my search to a Google image search and found even more.  Here are a few of the one's that I personally love.

via

This looks like a cool cross between a ladder and bookshelf.
                                                                   

                                                                             via
Can't you just see this ( maybe smaller, maybe not) in the craft room of a scrapbook  or paper craft fan.

                                                                     A beach front cottage maybe?

                                   Painted any color and this would be cool.

                   Even if you didn't paint these it takes your gardening to new heights.

                                                                   via

                           I love the glass top.  Makes it more tailored.

                                                                           via

                      Can't you see this with a tall glass of lemonade on a summer evening.

I like the idea, still trying to figure out where to put my feet. Maybe you sit with your legs crossed a la kindergarten. Not too bad if there's a bowl of popcorn close by. 

via

These are just a few of the many ideas you can see online. Major project options... Let's Go!