Last week when working on our yard, we trimmed a few of our trees, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw away this branch.
It’s not the first time this happens.
Something about branches, seems to me anyway, often asks to be transformed. Maybe it’s the artist in me, and if not, finding potential and beauty in the raw is a good thing, I think.
An old branch. A little string. A little macrame. A long pothos plant I already had. Some picture hooks, and a branch that was otherwise going to be thrown away, allowed for something so beautiful.
I am so so so in love with how this ornament turned out! Not only is it super easy to do, it’s so personal and such a beautiful way to display your family pictures on your Christmas tree.
Materials you’ll need
Pine Greens ( DIY steps to cover some white here.)
Berries
Sticks
Jingle bells from local craft or dollar store
Glue Gun
Picture you want to use
Begin by cutting your stick into six equal pieces, each about 2″ long, and glue the ends together using a hot glue gun to form hexagon shape.
2. Using a hot glue gun, secure some pine greens to the bottom of shape. I love the contrast of green and white, it makes it look so wintery. To cover your greens in white DIY steps here.
3. Grab some berries and jingle bells, and secure onto the middle of branches.
4. Place your ornament on top of your picture, draw outline and cut out shape. Add glue to edges of paper and glue onto wooden shape, and add string loop to the back for hanging.
I absolutely love how easy, and how beautiful this ornament was to make! If you don’t want to use a picture, another variation you can do is to wrap the shape with some string to form a dream catcher pattern (image below). I didn’t print my picture on super thick paper, so when it’s on the tree, the pictures really shine when back lit by the lights on the tree.
It’s the first of December, and we’re officially in the Christmas month. I normally wouldn’t consider myself a Christmaholic, but this year I was inspired by the children to decorate our home in a different and special way.
Over the past year, the kids and I have gone on so many walks, and they have collected and brought home all sorts of treasures. I’ve been collecting their little findings – sticks, branches, berries- hoping to get an idea of what I could do with them. With Christmas just around the corner, making them into ornaments seemed like the perfect idea.
Inspired by that, I began to play around with materials, and I’ll be sharing what we did to decorate our Christmas tree completely with DIY ornaments. We made them with materials found in nature, or ones that are easy and inexpensive to get.
The theme of our tree this year is very “Back to Basics”, rustic chic, and if that’s your style, you’re really enjoy these.
I love the way the tree turned out. It’s cozy, homey, and it reminds me of the kind of tree I would have had in my childhood too.
Macrame Stars To make these macrame stars you’ll need stir sticks, string, scissors and a hot glue gun.
Cut 5 stir sticks to approximately 2.5/3″, and then cut 5 pieces of string that are 10 times the length of the stick.
Fold the string in half, placing the stick towards the fold, and begin knotting a spiral knot around the stick. How to do a spiral knot here. Consider the stick your middle cord, and the two strands your working cords. Continue your spiral knot until it covers the stick, tie off, and cut off excess at the bottom.
How to start the knot.
Hot to end a knot.
Once you have 5 spiral knot sticks, secure them together using a hot glue gun. Below the order in which I glued the sticks to achieve a nice and even star shape.
Make a small string loop (I used some jute string for contrast in color) and glue to the back of the star for hanging, and you’re done!
The end result are delicate and beautiful little stars to decorate your tree with! I hope you enjoyed this little DIY! If you try them, tag me at @our_everydays on instagram so I can see what you came up with!
