Homemade Christmas

I thrill at an after Christmas sale as much as the next person.  The opportunity to buy a holiday gem at half price and get to decorate with it the following year.  I do let my children choose an ornament each year, but that is probably the only thing we buy during the actual season at full price.

What I love even more than sweet savings, though, is to create my own Christmas crafts.

I have been known to get really crazy, and make wall hangings that take years to complete, but I really enjoy something simple that can be made from start to finish in an evening or less.

Here are my favorites.  Most use simple felt, thread, embroidery floss, ric rac and the occasional button embellishment.  Oh, and a pile of beads and wire, and some serious help from the bead lady.

Santa has special stockings that he puts goodies in for my crew.  They are ones that Mama made special, and sets aside Christmas Eve for him to fill.

Construction is simple enough.

Cut out two pieces of felt in the shape of a stocking.  This took me a few times to get the size just right, so they were big enough to fill with presents or coal.   Decorate the front of the stockings with whatever adorable pictures your imagination can come up with....or in the case of Daddy's stocking, and you are tired and just want to get it done...a Christmas tree and dots.  Embroider a name at the top then whip stitch the front and the back together, and, done!

Back in the days before I had any money to buy Christmas decor at half price, I made my own decorations. Again with felt.  The mittens are just two pieces of felt, blanket stitched together, with a piece of faux fur glued to the top.  The stocking ornaments have ric rac sewn decoratively down the front.  Easy and cute.

Then you graduate from felt and move on to beads.  These are our Christmas spiders.  There's a lovely story behind them: They say an impoverished family had nothing to decorate their tree with one Christmas, and so when they went to bed, a family of spiders spent the entire night, Christmas Eve, weaving and spinning their webs all over it to make it beautiful for them come Christmas morn. Santa came in and knew how hard the spiders had worked, but that the people might not see the beauty of a tree covered in spiders web, so he touched the web and it turned into tinsel.

Everyone, please have a Merry Christmas this year and if you don't celebrate Christmas, please have a wonderful holiday season.  And get out the glue gun and your pile of felt and see what you can come up with. You'll find you love what you've created so much more than anything you've ever bought.

Happy Crafting!

Heather