Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Last minute holiday crafting

Yesterday my friend Jessie brought over an early Christmas present for me. Yay me!

The package was beautiful, but Jessie wanted me to open it in front of her. Not wanting to disappoint I ripped right into that bad boy. She got me a package of various fancy sea salts. Right up my alley. I've already got a recipe picked out!

But we're not talking about the sea salts, we're talking about crafting aren't we. That's what the title of the post says. I'm getting to the crafting part.

This is what the package looked like before I ravaged it:

Gorgeous, right?

It was even better in person. The ribbon was so soft and silky and felt like butter. Also, those snowflakes aren't printed on they're velvet. That's not something you just throw in the trash.

I knew I needed to do something with it. I considered making ornaments out of it.

But I already made a couple for our tree this year out of old holiday cards.

So I decided I should make some garland.

I set out to do just that, but about half way through decided it wasn't going to work. The "garland" didn't hang right and it would have driven me crazy.

What now? I was already half way into my craft and it wasn't going to turn out like I'd hoped.

Then I had an inspiration! We're having Christmas dinner here with Andy's family on Christmas eve and I'm planning on using my fancy dishes.

Only problem is that my fancy dishes are silver and white and don't match my holiday table decorations.

See?

Those place mats and utensil mittens are perfect for my every day dishes, but not so much with the silver and white stuff.

What's a girl to do?

I'm really not this dramatic about it. I usually take the decorations off the table and just let the dishes be the decoration.

But not this year. Not anymore!

I rearranged some snowflakes and turned my failed holiday garland into the perfect table runner for our Christmas eve dinner.

I think I'm in love!


I didn't take step-by-step photos. It's really kind of a no-brain-er. I just cut out the snowflakes and backed them with black cardstock to make them sturdier. After I laid them out like I wanted them I used ribbon, glue and metal grommets to hold it all together. Viola!

It was quick, easy and painless. Well, mostly painless. I did cut my finger with a pair of scissors, because I'm totally smooth like that.

Do you like to do holiday crafts? Or are you all retail all the time?