Christmas Tree 2010 Part 1 - The Ornaments

I'm joining Deck The Halls over at Between Naps On The Porch

Get Your Craft On over at Today's Creative Blog

Whatever Goes Wednesday over at Someday Crafts

Thrifty Thursday over at Tales From Bloggeritaville

Frugal Friday over at The Shabby Nest

Cha Ching On A Shoestring for Beautiful Christmas

My post this week is done in two parts so be sure to check out

Part 2 - The Decorated Tree

Over the 47 years that I've been decorating Christmas trees for my family

I've had a variety of themes from all the mixed primary colors when the

kids were small to themed trees, but for the last 10 years are so I've done

a mixture of traditional ornaments with a flowery slant.

 This was our 2009 tree posted for Met Monday 11/29/09 The lower branches look a little bare because Homer The Cat takes the ornaments off and then hides them all over the house.

Time for a new look! Something lighter, brighter and glittery!

This is our 10' artificial pre-lit tree getting ready for its makeover.  It takes a lot of ornaments to fill up this big boy and I didn't want to buy all new ornaments, so I decided to refurbish a lot of the ornaments already in the Christmas stash. I ended up spending a little under $100 for spray paint, spray adhesive, floral picks, craft ornaments, German glass glitter, and silk fans to get a completely new look for this year's tree. The rest of the items I already had from last year's sales and prior projects.

I'll tell you about the ornament makeovers and then post the

finished tree on Christmas Tree 2010 Part 2 - The Decorated Tree

Christmas Cones

You will need the following supplies:

An old book, the larger the format the better.  Box cutter or X-Acto knife, pencil, scissors, glue, circular pattern (like a plate or bowl), hanging cord or ribbon.

Optional: embellishments like beads, buttons, glitter, etc.

Use your knife to remove pages from the book.

Mark around your circular pattern. 

Cut out the circle shape, then remove a pie

shaped portion of the circle that is approximately 1/3 of the circle

and set it aside. (You can embellish your cones with cutouts from

these pie shaped pieces later on.)

Hold the paper pie in both hands and gently roll it into a cone shape,

rolled loosely or tighter for a smaller/taller cone.  While still holding

the rolled cone, put a little glue on the inside fold of the pointed tip of the cone.

Roll your fingers around the tip and hold for a few seconds until glue sets.

Where the edges touch at the top rim, again add a bit of glue to secure the rim.

That's all there is to it!  So easy and instant gratification.

I love the way these black and white images turned out and the surprise

is that the inside of the cone also has something of interest to see.

Any book will work, the lower cone below was a page from a gardening book.

Now all that's left to do is embellish or not, add a hanging cord or ribbon and onto the tree it goes.

You might have noticed the meat thermometer above ???

I used it to poke a hole on either side below the top rim to string the cord through. :-) You can also add "tails" hanging from the tip of the cone by gluing them inside the tip prior to rolling the cone.

Here's an example of the finished product, see the full effect on

Christmas Tree 2010 Part 2 - The Decorated Tree

Cones alone would not makeover this big tree, so I went to work with some spray paint, spray adhesive and glitter to spruce up a bunch of old ornaments and some craft ornaments to give them a fresh new look.

Paint it, spray with adhesive, add glitter!

I purchased these bells at the after Christmas sales last year for 25¢

Spray paint them, and then glitter or leave plain. Lots of large multi-colored
balls fell victim to the spray paint too!

Rain brought a stop to my painting project, but I was well on my way to

having more than enough "new" ornaments for the tree.

Among the things I purchased at Michael's for 50% off

plus additional coupon discounts, was a box of 18 silk

wedding fans.  Final cost was about $7.50 for the 18 "ornaments."

Same story - spray on adhesive, sprinkle with glitter

and you have glittery stylin'  ornaments!  These could also

be embellished with findings.

Last, but not least I took a box full of those clear plastic ornaments that

I made about 10 years ago. You pour various colors of craft paint into

the ornament, swirl it around and end up with a marbelized result or

faux mercury glass by adding spritzes of water to the process.

I simply added glittery stickers to the outside and they were done!

Thanks so much for coming by to help with my Christmas Tree Makeover!

Please jump on over to the second post to see the fully decorated tree!

Christmas Tree 2010 Part 2 - The Decorated Tree