On The Third Day Of Craft-Mas

On the third day of Craft-mas the crafting gods gave to me, garland, kind of fancy:

So I was completely inspired to do this project/craft after drooling over the fancy Pottery Barn Christmas garland.  I had to throw away my Pottery Barn Christmas catalog because it was a little water logged.  Anyway, it was this lush, green garland with sparkly silver and red ornaments attached to it.  Sooooooo pretty!  But at $59 for a 5′ strand that just wasn’t fitting into my budget.  I knew I could make something similar for much, much cheaper!  I started with a bare staircase…extremely bare because we’re still missing balusters (working on that…but we’re in the middle of a house project moratorium for the Christmas season so it probably won’t be until after the holidays when we update you on that project).

I started recreating the Pottery Barn garland by first wrapping some plain, garland around the railing.  I’ve had the garland for a few years and I think they were only $4 for each 6′ strand.  Then I gathered the shatter proof Christmas ornaments that I also had on hand.  I purchased them from Target, also a few years ago at a post Christmas sale, for only $6 each (that’s $6 for the red and $6 for the silver).

My garland, prettifying tools of the trade were pretty basic.  A pair of scissors and a spool of floral wire (which usually only costs about $2 to $3).

The process of attaching the Christmas ornaments was also pretty easy.  I cut 3-4 inch pieces of wire, then looped the wire through the top of the ornament:

Then looped the wire around the garland and twisted the ends together a few times to secure the ornament to the garland.

I started by putting together groups of 5-6 ornaments every couple of feet, which turned out to be really sparse.  Then I just took it one ornament at a time and one cluster at a time filling out areas that looked bare until it looked more like this:

So pretty.  I love my Pottery Barn inspired garland, even though the stairs are missing balusters.  Goose even likes the new garland:

He REALLY likes retrieving the ornaments after they’ve fallen to the floor during assembly mishaps.  And by retrieving I mean grabbing the ornament, running off to the kitchen expecting you to chase him, and finally dropping the ornament when you offer up a trade for cookies. What that dog won’t do for a cookie…sheesh!

Pssst…Anyone else working on their Christmas crafts?  Any awesome ideas you want to share?  I promise I won’t steal!