Holiday Decor
Holiday Pinterest DecorationsBY CAMERON TEANEY ON DECEMBER 19, 2013
December is generally the time of year characterized by Christmas trees, lights, candelabra and other decorations. Many people strive to make the decor for their homes and holiday parties as festive as possible. Pinterest has proved to be a guide through the madness of decorating for the holiday season by helping people discover creative ways to adorn their homes and make their parties all the more merry.
Wanting to spice up the Christmas decor around my own home, but not having any good ideas of my own, I was determined to find a practical and easy, but cute decoration to make from Pinterest. However, not an avid Pinterest user myself, the task of finding cute ideas for holiday decorations was slightly difficult. Many of the creations I saw at first seemed complicated and hard to execute well. I kept searching and eventually found two decoration ideas that seemed fun and simple. The first idea I came across was a snowflake made out of popsicle sticks, which is used as a wreath. I began by hot gluing together three sets of six popsicle sticks in a line. I then crossed and hot glued the lines to look like six spokes of a wheel. Next, I glued two sticks together to form the shape of a V. I glued the Vs towards the end of the lines (or spokes) that I had just glued together and also glued Vs towards the center of the flake to connect the lines (spokes). After this was done, I noticed a slight issue. The snowflake was warped and the spokes did not have equal space between them, making the snowflake look stretched and less round. I solved the problem by adding another spoke, which also helped fix some of the warped sticks. 48 popsicles sticks later, the snowflake was finished. Overall, I would give this decoration a five out of ten. It came together faster than I had expected and looked a lot better than I had anticipated. However, it was hard to know if I was going about it correctly because the website to which it was linked provided no instructions; I had to make it based off of the picture. It also looks a little tacky, although when using popsicle sticks, tackiness is hard to avoid. The next decoration idea I found while browsing Pinterest was a candy Christmas tree. The trees can be made of gumdrops, peppermints, or a marshmallow and cherry combination. I have actually made a gumdrop tree before seeing it on Pinterest, but was not familiar with the other types of candy trees. First, I got a styrofoam cone (which come in various sizes) and placed the candy in patterned rows wrapping around the cone, beginning at the base. The instructions on the website suggest hot gluing on the candies, but I found it easier (when making the gumdrop trees) to place a toothpick halfway through the fatter end of the gumdrop then stick it into the cone. Although I have not yet tried it myself, this method will probably also work better for the marshmallow and cherry tree, but I would stick to hot gluing the peppermints when making the peppermint tree. After applying the candy to the trees, I placed a yellow gumdrop on top, although the website suggests sticking a lollipop with a bow tied around it through the top of the cone. I give these candied Christmas trees an eight out of ten. They make adorable decorations for anywhere around the house (especially when placed in clusters of different sizes), but are most commonly used as table centerpieces. They are also an easy decoration to make and fun to make with kids and at (or for) Christmas parties. My only complaint is that it takes around three hours just to just make one tree. Whether you make popsicle snowflake wreaths, candy tree centerpieces or anything else that suits your fancy, I suggest checking Pinterest, at least as a start. You never know how creative your decorations can get, so good luck. HTML Comment Box is loading comments...
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