Home remedies, recipes, and VooDoo.

What you need

hooded top  |  red felt  |  scissors  |  paper or card for template  |  needle and red thread  |  iron  |  pins

Step-by-step

:: Copy and cut-out triangle template (adjusting the size if you’d prefer larger or smaller spines). 

:: Fold your felt in half and place template against the fold to cut out.

(Measure the length of your hoodie, from the front of the hood all the way round and down the back, to work out how many triangles you’ll need. Mine - size 3/4 and 6/7 yrs - used eleven each.)

:: Fold the hooded top exactly in half (along the hood and back) and iron the fold down firmly to mark the stitching line for your triangles.

:: Open out one of the felt diamond shapes, and pin it to the top of the hood, lining up the fold line on the felt to the fold line on the hood. 

:: Stitch the triangle in place.

:: Add a second felt piece in the same way, so it sits snugly alongside the first one without overlapping.

:: Repeat until the whole of the hoodie ‘spine’ is lined with felt shapes.

:: Carefully iron each diamond shape in half again to form a row of triangles.

:: Sew neatly along the open edges of each one to hold in place. 

:: Iron the whole thing - hoodie and felt spines - before wearing.

Supplies to make two:

• 20 candy canes
• 2 taper candles
• hot glue gun
• scissors

I started by cutting off the plastic wrapper on just the two ends of the candy cane, leaving the remaining wrapper in tact. You could leave your ends on, by mine were pretty long and buggin’ me.

Next I took the wrapper off, leaving about six inches on the bottom.  To measure how far you want to go down, just hold a candy cane to the candle, you want to wrapper to be below the candle.

Then run a thin strip of glue along the candy cane and press onto the candle, with the hook on the bottom.  I will warn you, you can’t play much with the candy cane once it is on, it dries fast!  I worked the rest of the way around by holding the candle in my hand by the hook (so the candle was upside down), and found that to give me the best control when placing on the canes.

Continue gluing the canes on, trying to keep the same angle of placement, and the base of the hooks at the same level.  Let dry and you’re done!  So so easy.  On one of mine I did not have much room for the last candy cane, so it sticks out a bit, but I figure I am the only one that will notice.

I do think they look cutest with a little bow tied on, but I only had enough ribbon to squeak out one bow, yet another trip to the craft store…dang it.  For the candle at the top of the post I used a grosgrain ribbon and tried to keep it small.  Go to big and you might just overwhelm it.

What you’ll need:

1 1/2 cups ground cinnamon

1 cup applesauce

1/4 cup white school glue (like Elmer’s)

Bowl

Plastic food wrap

Rolling pin

Wax paper

Cookie cutters or a knife

Ribbon or yarn for hanging

Straw

How to make it:

Mix cinnamon, applesauce, and glue together in a bowl. The dough should be as thick as cookie dough. Add a bit of water if the dough is too stiff. Remove from bowl and knead. Put it back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for at least a half hour. Remove the dough, knead again to make sure it’s smooth. Flatten/roll the dough between waxed paper until it’s between 1/4” thick and 1/8” thick. Cut out desired shapes, use a straw to punch a hole for the ribbon to hang. The circle of dough will pull out with the straw. Gently place the shapes on a piece of clean wax paper. They will take 3-5 days to dry, and you will need to turn them over a couple of times a day for them to dry evenly and flat. Don’t be surprised to see that the ornaments get smaller during the drying process. Keep this in mind when you pick out the cookie cutters for your designs. You will also notice that if you do not turn the ornaments over often enough while they are drying, the edges of the ornaments will curl. When dry, thread a piece of ribbon or yarn through the hole to hang.

 I cut it into quarter inch strips.  It cut apart pretty accurately without having to snip extra off, and I was able to pull off the key details in the slices. 

 I rolled it around a pen.  The invitation was pretty thick, but it turned out OK. 

 I then took a glass ornament, and I inserted the curled strips into the ornament.  I love that the times, names, locations etc can be glimpsed throughout the ornament. 

 I grabbed a charm that went along with the beach wedding.  I thought about doing the wedding colors, but I decided to just stick with the cream.  I don’t know if her tree has a particular color theme, but I figured cream was safest.  This could easily done with birth announcements etc as a time capsule of sorts. 

¾ cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 ¼ -2 ½ cups flour

6-8 drops red food coloring

1 tsp peppermint extract

crushed red hots or candy cane

Mix first five ingredients and divide in half. Add red food coloring, peppermint, and crushed red hot to 1 half only and mix well. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Roll each color into a tube shape, twist the two colors, and shape into a candy cane. Repeat until all dough is used. Bake 12-15 minutes at 350°.

Before you start:

Be sure to evenly distribute the sizes of tubes.  This will make all the difference.

Take measurements if necessary to ensure that the wreath remains about the same size all the way around.

A table saw or box saw are important here as they will help to maintain a level edge.

If one end of the tube gets messed up during cutting place it bad end up in your arrangement.  It won’t be seen in the finished product.

Don’t skip any joints if possible.  Each bond makes the wreath a little stronger overall.

Apply adhesive liberally.

Make sure you use the adhesive in a well-ventilated area.

The materials:

• PVC pipes in a variety of diameters – the example is made of 5 foot lengths right from the hardware store shelf.
• PVC cement (16 oz can)
• Spray paint
• Sandpaper

The steps:

1. Cut the pipes into 5 inch pieces with a table saw or a box saw.
2. Peel off any stickers, lightly sand edges as needed, and wipe off dirt with a damp cloth.
3. On a flat surface, lay the pipe pieces out in a pattern with the sizes evenly distributed around the wreath.  Use a round object in the center as your guide such as a mixing bowl.
4. When you are satisfied with your layout gently move all but the innermost circle back just a few inches.
5. Apply PVC cement to the both sides of two of the tubes where they are to be joined.  Hold together for 30 seconds.  Release.
6. Repeat this process all the way around the circle.
7. Begin adding the remaining pieces by applying adhesive to both surfaces where any and every joint will be made.
8. Allow proper drying time (about 2 hours) before continuing.
9. Turn wreath over and clean the front of your wreath before painting.
10. Spray paint the wreath following the paint manufacturer’s instructions.

The Supplies

• a 17″ steamer rack from a restaurant supply store
• about 5 feet of lightweight jack chain
• a small carabiner
• 100 basic ornament hooks
• one roll, 500 feet, monofilament jewelry string (not the stretchy sort)
• 200 jewelry crimp beads or tubes
• jewelry crimping tool
• 100 lanyard hooks
• 100 ornaments

Note: In the photo above I show earring wire instead of ornament hooks. I changed that later as I found ornament hooks made it far easier to move ornaments around after they’d been hung. Also, my supplies are based on a 4 foot tall mobile using almost 100 ornaments, you’ll need to adjust amounts if you make one larger or smaller.

Creating the Mobile Frame

Creating the frame for my ornament tree mobile turned out to be fairly simple. I used a lot of hooks to allow for easy adjustment and additions as the mobile was being assembled. I gathered materials from a restaurant supply store, a hardware store and the jewelry section of a craft store.

For the top of the mobile I needed something that would allow me to easily secure a lot of hanging points without them sliding around too much. The perfect thing turned out to be a 17-inch steamer rack bought for about $6 from a restaurant supply store (I found mine at Encore Restaurant Equipment in the SODO neighborhood of Seattle). The rack comes with folding feet attached that were easy to pop out with a little bending.

Turn the rack upside down and the spots where the legs were secured neatly become four hanging points.

I bought some inexpensive jack chain to use for hanging. You can open and close the links in the chain with needle nose pliers so there isn’t any need for heavy duty wire cutters. I separated four lengths of chain, attached them to the points using lanyard hooks found in the jewelry supply section of a craft store.

I joined the chains using another lanyard hook, and put that on a little carabiner which hung from the hook in the ceiling.

Notes: Why so many hooks and bits? Because it makes it is simple to adjust and shorten the chain and can later be disassembled and reassembled with very little effort and without needing tools. I kept the same thing in mind when creating the lines that the ornaments were suspended from. This added a bit of visual clutter but made the entire thing mobile easy to adjust and reuse in another year.

Suspending the Ornaments

I used jewelry monofilament secured with crimp tubes to hold the ornaments. I simply created loops at both ends. I made a bunch of different lengths (details on that below). I secured each line to points in the rack grid using lanyard hooks, and hung a basic wire ornament hook at the bottom ends. The lanyard hooks at the top are strong enough to hold heavier ornaments, and because they close they won’t fall off if the mobile is bumped. The basic ornament hooks allow one to easily move ornaments around from one spot to another. My tip to you: Keep the lines as separate as possible while you’re working with them. I spent more time untangling clear threads than doing anything else on this project. It was maddening. After I discovered just how maddening I started hanging them in groups by length from a curtain rod and weighing them down with an ornament to keep them separated, doing this made the hanging of the ornaments go quickly.

Notes: The use of ornament hooks allows for ornaments to easily be moved around. It does add visual clutter, though. If you want to create a mobile that would only be used once securing the monofilament line directly to the ornaments would look much tidier. I initially planned to use earring wire hooks that closed to hang the ornaments but quickly found that they were frustrating to fiddle with every time I wanted to move an ornament from one spot to another. They were prettier, though, and because those close as well would hold ornaments more securely if the mobile is moved around. (Which I don’t suggest as it tangles the lines horribly. So horribly.) Crimp tools come in three sizes Micro, Regular and Mighty (large). I used the regular size. I did try to use nylon sewing thread but found that the crimps didn’t secure it well enough. I did consider using nylon sewing thread with micro crimp beads and the micro crimping tool but think one would need a lot of patience and really great lighting to get all that done. The monofilament jewelry string is pretty stiff and easy to work with.

Determining Placement and Lengths

Figuring out where to put the hanging points on the rack involved a bit of math, most all of which I abandoned. I’ll do my best to describe what I did.

I decided to create rings on the rack, with the longer threads hanging on the outside rings to create the cone tree shape. Actually it creates tiers, think a tall skinny wedding cake. I figured that my ornaments were usually about 2 or 3 inches in diameter so I needed to space the rings a little more than 1 inch apart so that the ornaments would have room to hang without being crowded by the longer threads around them. I spaced the rings about 1.5 inches apart. This gave me a center point and 6 rings to work with, with the last ring being the outer edge of the rack, like so:

I determined I wanted my tree to be about four feet in total height from the top ornament to the bottom. I made the first ornament, the center point, hang 3.5 inches, and added length from there. For my needs, each set of string needed to be 1.75 inches longer than the last. Each ring on the hanging rack held for different lengths of string. I added 2 inches to the length of string I actually cut to allow for the loops.

To figure out how many ornaments per ring I, well, completely made it up. I decided the first ring should hold seven ornaments and went up by four from there. So the number of ornaments went: 1, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27. I divided the four lengths of string between those, giving the longest length more ornaments to help the triangle effect. Whew. So I cut this many at these lengths for these rings:

• For the Center Point: 5.5″
• For Ring 1: one at 7.25″, one at 9.0″, two at 10.75″, three at 12.5″
• For Ring 2: two at 14.25″, two at 16.0″, three at 17.75″, four at 19.5″
• For Ring 3: three at 21.25″, three at 23.0″, four at 24.75″, five at 26.5″
• For Ring 4: four at 28.25″, four at 30.0″, five at 31.75″, six at 33.5″
• For Ring 5: five at 35.25″, five at 37.0″, six at 38.75″, seven at 40.5″
• For Ring 6: six at 42.25″, six at 44.0″, seven at 45.75″, eight at 47.5″

In order to make the measuring a cutting go as quickly as possible I taped a cloth measuring tape to a tabletop and marked each length with the number I needed to cut with sticky notes. So all it took was to stretch some string out and clip at the needed point. Keep these in groups at this point forward, it will make it far easier later. I looped and crimped the ends, then hung them in groups on a curtain rod weighted down by an ornament.

To figure out where my rings would fall on the rack I tied a cotton string to my center point and marked it at 1.5 inch intervals. Then I swung the string around and put as many hooks as I needed on each given ring. I usually put them on the X and Y axis first, then filled in the quadrants. It went faster than it sounds, promise. I spaced the hooks, aka the hanging points, like so:

Looking up at the mobile from below you can sort of see the rings emerging:

And after this I attached a hook into my ceiling and hung the rack. I found the best way to hang everything is to work from the center out, hang each set of lengths of monofilament string spacing it around it’s designated ring as evenly as possible, then hang ornaments before moving on to the next set of lengths of string. By weighing the strings down as you go along it will help them from getting tangled as you work. You can add or move string, and move ornaments around if needed. I didn’t worry too much about getting everything just perfect and I think it worked to my advantage, the slightly controlled randomness gives it a nicely organic look. At least I hope so.

If I were to do it again I would make my tree taller and more dramatic. I think I would try to squeeze in one more ring and stagger the ornaments with even more lengths of string, maybe in increments by the inch. As it was I found that there are lots of spots where two of the same length are side by side. If I had more money to devote I would buy glass ornaments that don’t have a metal cap, just a glass loop at the top, and would skip the ornament hooks to make it look tidier.

2 sticks butter softened

6 Tbs powdered sugar

2 cups flour

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup walnuts

Mix first four ingredients well. Add walnuts. Roll into balls. Bake 15 minutes at 375°. Roll in powdered sugar.

Supplies Needed:

A mix of round Christmas ornaments in 4 different sizes –for one tree you will need about 20 balls.  At least 4 of each size.

Knitting Needle – 14 inches long (tall tree)  Spray paint the needles if needed to match your ornaments.

Optional: Christmas tree peak topper or a star ornament, ribbon spool, spray paint, scrapbook paper, glue, spray paint, paper cutter

To make the ribbon spool tree stand: Spray the spool with spray paint to coordinate with your ornaments.  Cut scrapbook paper the width of the spool. You could use ribbon, but I like the more finished look of the paper on the spool.

Attach the paper with glue. I used Aleene’s Tacky Line Roll Adhesive.

Attach to the spool.

Thread the knitting needle up through the bottom of the spool.

If the spool has a large hole – you can stuff it with pieces of STYROFOAM to make sure the needle stays straight.

String four large Christmas ball ornaments (about 4” diameter) onto the needle, slipping the metal loops on the balls over the point of the needle. These four balls will form the base of the tree.  If you do not want to use the spool tree stand  and want to make the basic tree – the four balls when placed  squarely on a table will hold the needle upright.

Next string onto the needle four balls of a slightly smaller size. Each one will fit between two of the larger ones.  Then string on another four, slightly smaller, and finally four more again, slightly smaller, so that your tree has sixteen Christmas ball ornaments in all.  You can add more or less depending on the size of your balls.

The tip will look like this.

On top of the needle place a Christmas star ornament.  I found this one at Michaels.  It had a “spring” style attachment that I removed.  I used that existing hole to place the star on the top of the knitting needle.  I used an awl to make the hole a bit larger so it fit over the tip of the needle.

This wreath might be too tempting to remain intact for long. To make it, you’ll need 2 pounds of hard candy in twisted wrappers, an 8-foot length of embroidery thread, and a round wire wreath form that is 8 inches in diameter. First, tie the center of the thread to the form, leaving two ends of equal length. Hold the form between your knees (as shown), and make a loose knot on the outside of the form. Place ends of three wrappers through loop; cinch the knot, and knot again. Tie another knot to the form, thus securing the candies to it, then gently position them side by side. Tie three candies to the inside of the wreath form, completing the first ring. Once candies are tied all around the form, hang it from a ribbon.

I made a ton of these Santa Jars last year to give Oreo truffles in so I just made another big ol’ one.

You can’t really mess this up, red body, white paint for fur, black belt and a silver buckle, last year the buckles were gold. This year, gold was not in my stash, which actually worked out because I used red and silver ornaments.

Fate I tell you. ;)

Now take your foam ball and heat up your glue gun. Put a rim of glue around each neck of the ornaments then stick them in place. I used mini ornaments to fill in the gaps.

Looking back on this project I would most definitely spray paint the ball first, you can still kind of see green, oh well live and learn.

Glue the top and bottom of the dowel and stick it in the foam ball and the foam blocks and stick it in your pot. Throw some left over fake snow from your mantel project in the pot to hide the the dusty devil green floral foam. Done and done!