Welcome To My Home: Some Winter Decorations

I can't really stomach calling this project "Christmas decorations" this early, and honestly, they're not for Christmas--they're for winter. I really like those feathered "trees" and wreathes that I've seen at stores the past couple seasons--Michaels, Joanns, even Target. Despite how much I like them, I just couldn't stomach the price these stores wanted. I've seen remakes of the wreath, but I don't recall any of the trees.

One day while browsing at Michaels, I came across some cardboard (Paper mache??) tree forms.

I bought three of them, because we all know to decorate in odd numbers, right?? (also, ignore the mess in the background of that picture.)

I also picked up two bags of white feathers. At first I was thinking maybe I would do three trees all with feathers, maybe of different colors. But then I decided to go in another direction, and do all silvery/white trees. Thus, I also picked up some white glitter and some silver strung beads meant for Christmas trees.

When I got home I gave them a quick spray with white spray paint, just in case the color shows through for some reason.

Making the one with glitter was rather easy: cover that thing in glue and then shake on the glitter!

The next one I tackled was the feathered one. I started at the bottom of the tree and hot glued the feathers around and around, moving up after I've finished a row. As you can see, Franklin was very interested in what I was doing. Or, he thought the feathers were a toy.

The feather tree used a surprising amount of feathers. I used about a bag and a half.

Lastly I tackled the large tree. This one took the longest time and the most hot glue to complete. I simply wrapped the silver beads around, and around, and around, gluing gluing gluing.

As you can see, when I started at the bottom of the tree, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to how the beads were stacking. Part way up I started squishing them together so there was much less white space showing. If I were insane and had tons of free time, I might try to remove all the beads and redo them. This tree took a lot of beads. I used three strings, all of which were about 6 feet long each. But, they are relatively cheap. I got two strings at Ikea, and the third at Target.

All together, I think they look pretty nice. My plan is to use them on my table, with some votive candles around them. Perhaps I will put this whole arrangement on a mirror to reflect the flame and silver even more.