In my last post, I prepped some foraged material to use in some holiday projects. I really enjoy holiday crafting, and being a new home owner, I have plenty of ground to cover! I used my fall foraging to tackle two basic Christmas crafting projects. First, a mantelpiece swag using my dried osage oranges and clementines. Second, I attempted to paint spruce cones to make them look bleached (spoiler: this one was a fail).
Mantelpiece Swag
I LOVE natural greens for indoor decoration. The look and smell are unmatched. While I’ve done it in the past, I opted for reusable faux greens this year for two reasons: I don’t have access to copious amounts of free greens (my spruce trees are limbed up pretty high) and I’m on a bit of a budget due to a kitchen remodel currently happening. So, I hit up Michaels and Joann’s on Black Friday weekend for some cheap basics!
Materials
I purchased a basic garland, two coils of faux lamb’s ear, and four bunches of berries at Michaels. Next, I went to Joann Fabrics and found a single ply garland rope. Everything was on super-sale so it was a very satisfying trip.
To make the garland look more realistic, it is best to include something that is actually real! I pulled out my dried osage orange and clementine slices from November.
Making the picks
The most labor intensive part of this project was creating bunches of greens out of the single rope of garland I purchased. I cut sections with wire cutters, stripped the needles at the base, and then taped a piece of wire to the base with floral tape. I then taped three pieces together to create an evergreen bunch. I also cut up the lamb’s ear coil into sections about 3-4 leaves long, and deconstructed the berry stems into much smaller pieces.
After gathering all the individual parts, I layered it all together and taped up each pick. I made about ten total, with two of them a bit larger than the others for the center.
I then poked paddle wire through the osage orange and clementine slices to create little ‘ties’. I used these at the end to attach each pick to the garland.
Shaping the garland into a swag
The long piece of faux garland was much too long for my mantel and a little sparse, so I folded it in half and twisted it together. I also shaped it so that the branches were facing the opposite directions on either side starting at the center.
Putting it together
The final step was to place all of the picks evenly throughout the swag. Once I decided on the final placement, I attached the picks to the garland with the paddle wire with citrus slices attached so that each section had some dried fruit as well.
Final Thoughts
The only thing I want to improve on is the lighting! I placed the swag on my mantel, but I either need to add lights to the swag or light the area above the fireplace better. This was a lot of fun and now I will have reusable decorations for next year to give me a head start 🙂
‘Bleached’ Pinecones – Craft Fail!
Materials
This was actually quite an easy craft with only a few materials needed: off-white acrylic paint, diluted (2 parts paint, one part water), parchment paper, and of course pinecones. Emphasis on pine.
Process
My plan was to follow a tutorial from A piece of rainbow. The whitewashed pinecones looked beautiful and I wanted to recreate it with cones from my backyard. However, I think the ultimate reason this failed was the type of cones I have. I believe I have Norway Spruces in my backyard, and their cones are much more delicate and less ‘woody’ than pinecones. They are, therefore, much more sensitive to moisture and close dramatically when wet! They looked great immediately out of the paint mixture, but as they dried I noticed a very serious problem.
Result
When wet with the paint, the cones closed back up! This caused the paint to get squeezed out of the center and lead to the cones being glued shut and unattractive globs of paint developing on the outside. I tried to pop them back into the oven to hasten the drying process and hopefully open them back up but alas, they were a mess. Oh well, you can’t win them all! Next time I’ll try this with woodier cones like pinecones that hopefully won’t close up.
Stay tuned for one last installment of my foraged Christmas crafting adventures!
