Jingle Belles - More Christmas Goodies and My Specialty Trees

Yikes, I was so busy writing a different post I lost track of time and almost missed getting this in for the Thank You Santa Jingle Belle challenge.  This time my Santa was my blogging friend Sabrina who gifted me with this cool LeCrea Design Doodle Tree Stamp.  She even wrote in her note to me that this would come in handy for a Jingle Belle challenge someday!

The stamp is an outline with sections to doodle.

And doodle I did!  Then I colored in the sections with some watercolor pencils.  I couldn't find my Crystal Effects but did find a small bottle of glossy Mod Podge on my work table (which I've been trying to organize yet again).  I had the strongest olfactory memory using that to give my image a coat.  When I first got married, my Table 7 girlfriends and I used to make some crafts and sell them at craft shows - this was back in the late 70's/early 80's, and one of the things that we did was to mod podge gift wrap motifs onto plain white ceramic tiles, cover them with clear glitter, and add a velvet ribbon with a drapery ring to them so they could be hung.  They were simple to make and we sold a lot of them.  Funny what an odor can make you remember.

Anyhoo, this is my doodled tree that I added to some tie-dyed scrap paper.  I used some die cut letters over that piece of rainbow striped paper for my sentiment.  This card is supposed to be a mini slimline size which would be perfect not only for a card, but also for a money/check holder.

Before I go on, let me remind you that you can check out the other challenge entries at the Jingle Belles by clicking here.

Besides this fun stamp, we had a couple of additional decorated trees this year.  I had to move my lemon tree to another location temporarily so I used the beautiful handmade garland I received from Nanette (that post is coming) on it along with the origami ornaments I had stashed away that were light enough to put on this delicate tree. (Yes, we have an old door hanging on the wall.)  

I have about a dozen of these that I made from folded wrapping paper, metallic floss, and beads.

And the other tree is a new tree that first needed a base.  I saw something posted that someone had made using a dollar store basket, ribbon, and roping.  I picked out a red basket and the buffalo checked ribbon.  You can see my indecision in the store also caused me to buy another ribbon with black and white on the edges and burlap in the middle.  

I decided to use them both.  First I had to cut a hole in the bottom of the basket with an exacto knife.  Then I wove the lengths of ribbon through the sides of the basket alternating the weave on each row.  (It was nice that the ribbon was wide enough to fill two spaces and that there was an even amount of rows.  The roping, as you can see was just coiled around what was now the top - secured in place with hot glue.

To which we added our pencil thin bird tree.  We had accumulated so many bird ornaments over the years that we thought it would be nice to have this tree in front of the sliding glass doors out to the backyard.  

A different angle.

And a little closer top and bottom.

I got the battery operated (with remote) fairy lights from Amazon.

Someone suggested leaving this up but as pretty as it is, I don't want it to get dusty.  HWNSNBP inadvertently tossed the box for the tree so, if there is enough space for it in the storage area, we'll just  undecorate it and cover it with a plastic contractor's bag until next year.  I don't want to move it with the glass ornaments on - that would be asking for trouble.  I will be missing it being up, but the lemon tree will move back to it's home until it's warm enough for it to go outside again.  Maybe I'll put the fairy lights on it just for fun.