Wednesday 8 October 2014

WOODWARE - Christmas Decorations

At Woodware this week our challenge is to make a Christmas decoration. The decoration I have made was inspired by ones I saw years ago at a craft fair using ribbon. I tried it with strips of folded paper, a polystyrene ball or cone shape and some dressmaker's pins. I was quite pleased with the result.


First I chose some paper. This came from a new Christmas pad by Craftwork Cards. I usually try to pick something with a small pattern as this tends to work best.


I cut some strips of paper in 2 sizes. You need about 12 smaller strips for the top of the cone and the same for the base (2.5 x 5cm). Then for the middle section you need to cut slightly bigger pieces (3 x 6cm). The rule of thumb is that the length is twice the width.

Next you need to fold your strips in half. Then fold the two bottom corner points to the top centre fold. So far so good!!




Now take four smaller pieces to cover the bottom of the polystyrene ball making sure the points of the triangles all meet at the centre of the base of your shaped ball or cone.


See how the pins are placed at the base of each triangle. The next layer is using 8 pieces of the small strips. Think of tiles on a roof, you are overlapping each join of the previous layer. I always pin opposite pieces on both sides then fill in between those with the remaining 4 pieces.


As the circumference of the ball is now getting bigger I switch to the bigger strips for the next few layers. I did four rows this way and then for the last 2 layers I went back to the smaller pieces.


To cover the top I punched a circle of paper and added a loop of ribbon and some punched or die-cut foliage to finish off.


You can add glitter if you wish and I like to spray mine with a Christmas room fragrance for that finishing touch. 
The only difficult thing about making these pine cone baubles is putting the pins in so I use a thimble to save my fingers!!
I hope you are enjoying the inspiration this week on the Woodware blog, I know I am.
Have a good week and enjoy your crafting!!

Siobhan x

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Thank you for taking the time to comment. I really appreciate them.
Siobhan x

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