Handmade Christmas in Remembrance

It's that time of year when the Christmas tree carnage begins to line the streets of New York. I occasionally trip over the nubby ends that poke out onto the sidewalk, but manage to ignore this mild nuisance due to the fact that I get a good whiff of pine (which is my equivalent to an addict sniffing glue).

Christmas 2011 was pretty dang fun. It marked our first year with a real Christmas tree (I know, it's criminal), Jeremy's first real tree ever. Since most of our ornaments are stored in the attic of our house back in Dallas, or were sold before the move, I had free range with new Christmas decorations. My goal was to decorate using my stash as to keep the cost at a minimum, work my way through the crafting stash a little, and give my husband the gift of thriftiness (quite possibly his favorite observed adjective).

I managed to nab an a$$load of free paint swatches from the local hardware store, catching a few funny looks from the employees while doing so. They seem to get suspicious of repeated shifty eyed glances over the shoulder as fist fulls swatches are shoved into a purse. I bought a soda to ease my guilty free loading conscience. These swatches were then cut with dye cutter I had on hand and hot glued back to back with a long string of waste yarn in between, making a pretty adorable, 100% free (relative to this Christmas- I had to buy the other stuff at some point), garland for the tree!







The paint swatch scraps were cut into strips and curled, scrunched, crumpled and folded into clear glass ornaments I brought with us from Texas and have had for years. They looked like frozen little moments of confetti falling. Love!



Going through the fabric stash I knew I wanted to make little stuffed birds. I free handed a little dove on the fabric with a fabric marker and just let it come together as it may. They ended up having felt lined wings and button eyes. The yarn loop had the love doves perching perfectly amongst the branches.



I have to apologize for the less than stellar photos. I couldn't find my camera at the time and took a few shots with my phone during the creating process. I managed to forget to snap a pic of the finished tree before we took it down. Sad face. There's always next year!