**Welcome to Crafty Texas Girls! From
July 21-28, I will be joining 7 other bloggers in hosting "Christmas in
July". For those 8 days, I will host 7 different guest bloggers who
will share a new Christmas-themed project with you right here on Crafty
Texas Girls. I hope you enjoy the "Christmas in July event" and find
some great inspiration for your holiday decor. - Samantha**
Hi, this is Korrie from Red Hen Home! This post is DAY 2 of the Christmas in July series.
Christmas in July?? Whose crazy idea was THAT??
(I’m blaming Amanda.)
Honestly, I am not a person who plans that far in advance. My sights are always set on the next thing, so I can’t really concentrate on Christmas until Thanksgiving is over!
So my goal was to create a little Christmas without going to the store! Never-you-mind that Hobby Lobby is already putting out their Christmas stuff—I don’t want to encourage them!
So I decided to tackle a few items that have been swimming around in my head since last Christmas…hope you don’t mind that I’m seven months late (rather than five months early)!
I have a beautiful old buffet that I love to change with the seasons—since I don’t have a mantle! This is what it looked like on a recent hot July day, much to the confusion of my four-year-old daughter!
Last summer I turned some old books into birdhouses, and some commenters mentioned that they had seen book Christmas trees. I decided to give it a shot, and they were super simple to figure out and make on my own.
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Fold the top corner of page to the spine.
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Fold page to spine again.
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Fold up “tail” at bottom of page even with bottom of book.
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Repeat ad nauseum (that means…”until you’re nauseous”)
About 200 pages makes for a nice, fat tree. And I promise I won’t tell if sometimes you fold two pages at once!
Ta-da!
Hmm…they could use a little embellishment, don’t you think? They are supposed to be Christmas trees after all!
This one gets a garland of jingle bells strung on twine, and a book page star for the top…
…the next one gets a garland of cotton string and gold-glittered stars, topped with a book page medallion…
…and the last has a garland of cotton cording and Scrabble letters, topped by a seam-binding flower (yes, it’s my favorite)!
And of course, all of them were embellished with a little glitter along the edges. Everything looks better with glitter!
Last but not least, I had to add a little more typography! I had a 14” x 14” canvas on hand just waiting for some attention from me…
Using two shades of gold acrylic paint, I gave the canvas a nice base coat. I used my Silhouette to design and cut out vinyl “Merry Christmas” greetings in various languages, then I painted over the whole thing, removed the vinyl, and voila!
So there you have it! Put together with a few accessories I already hand on hand, it was a good excuse to take down the 4th of July décor
Happy Summer, everyone!
I hope you will take the time to visit all the blogs participating in our Christmas in July party!
