Sparkle Clause & the 12 Crafts of Christmas: #1, Oh Christmas Tree Wall Art

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my friends, family and fans out there! In the spirit of the season Sparkle Clause (a.k.a. my Christmas-spirit alter ego) will be doing 12 crafts of Christmas! Between now and the end of December expect to see 12 wonderful Christmas crafts and ideas.

Craft 1:

Oh Christmas Tree!

Here's what you'll need:

- 1 embroidery hoop (painted or not)

- Mini ornaments (dollar section at Target!)

-Fat wire ribbon

- Vinyl letter stickers

- Black paint and paint brush/sponge  

Now this project was not of my own fruition, it was inspired from this little beauty I found on Pinterest by Lil' Luna.  I loved it so much that I had to share my own version with you all!

1. Cut out the negatives of the phrase "Oh Christmas Tree" and place them on your burlap.  If you can find a stencil with that phrase you can use that too, but I already had these stencils to use. Arrange any way you like but leave a large space for the ornaments. 

2. Paint the stenciled letters with the black paint (you can use any color really) with a paintbrush or paint sponge.

Use the embroidery hoop as your size guide by placing it on top.

3. Once the paint is dry insert the burlap into your embroidery hoop, centering your letters.  The hoop comes in 2 pieces: inside and outside. Place the burlap over the inside hoop, then place the outside hoop over that sandwiching it together:

4. Glue on your ornaments!  I placed my ornaments in a tree arrangement first then glued from the outside in. 

Starting to look awesome!

5. Cut the excess burlap off, leaving a half inch. Then glue that excess to the inside of the hoop: sorry it's not pictured, it came out too blurry!

6. The tree trunk: wrap some colored yarn (any color, I used green) around a small piece of cardboard and glue under the ornament tree (see next 2 pictures).

Cardboard cut from paper plate.

String wrapped around one way, then wrapped the other way.

7. Ribbon!  You need to hang this thing some how.  Slip one end of the ribbon under the top hoop and pull through.  Now you can either pull it half way through and tie a bow at the top, or you can glue both raw ends to the back/underside of the inside hoop.  The latter is what I did so that I had a nice seamless ribbon to hang flat (I wanted to show off the pretty ribbon!) 

That's it!  You will get a billion compliments on this beauty for sure.

Merry Crafting!