Crafty Stuff: sequin tree ornaments

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The tree is up! And all of the branches now have working lights! And it has only taken me two weeks! For crying out loud. Still no tree skirt, but there's no need to rush things, right?

We have a new tree this year. Well, new to us anyway--it's well over 10 years old. It's the tree we used in the house where I grew up, where there were huge tall cathedral ceilings in the living room that called for a great big tree to fill up all that space. Ten years ago we moved to the house where my parents live now which has standard 8" ceilings, a problem when you have an 8" Christmas tree. So after a few years of putting up the tree without the top layer, my folks bought a new (shorter) tree and retired the Jolly Green Giant to the shed, where it's been resting until my dad brought it out to me this past summer.

It's worth noting that this is the first time since we got married that we've had a normal-sized GREEN tree. The first two years we used a tiny little green thing that the apartment office gave to The Mister as a "we're sorry" gift after the upstairs toilet in his apartment leaked and flooded the main floor, while he was blissfully unawares on deployment to Saudi Arabia. Once we moved here six years ago, we finally had the space for me to put up my beautiful, beloved vintage aluminum pom-pom tree and bedeck it with my growing collection of fabulous vintage ornaments.

As much as I adore my sparkly silver tree, this year it was time for a change. I've been itching to try something a bit different anyway, and Porter + fragile vintage anything = a recipe for surefire heartache. So this year my lovely silver tree and most of my vintage pretties will have to stay in the basement, safe from the marauding chubby fingers of the Wee Master of Disaster.

Last week I showed you the button ornaments that Maren and I made. A few of you requested a photo of the toadstool ornament, so here you go:

Awww, cute, right?
For the next ornament project, I turned to a vintage-style craft I've wanted to try for a while using a few of my favorite vintage-type crafting materials: styrofoam and sequins. I've had this photo in my inspiration files for several years but never have gotten around to trying my own.

Sequin trees from Sis Boom

Before Halloween I bought a package of small styrofoam cones to do some glittery candy corn project that never happened, so I decided that Maren and I could use the cones to make our own mini sequin trees. I thought I had some thrifted vintage sequins kicking around but I think I actually sold them, so I did have to break my self-imposed rule and buy some at the craft store.

I also bought a packet of sequin pins, though I did find a vintage package I had stashed away. It's a good thing, because we used a lot more pins that I thought we would need. Even though the cones are only about 4" tall, it took an awful lot of sequins to cover them! Really, it go to the point where I wasn't having fun anymore and just wanted to be done. Now I can't imagine making one of those huge Sis Boom-style trees!

Part of the problem was that I didn't love the mix of sequins that I bought, because many of them were in strange shapes like baby bottles and bibles and were really more like confetti because they didn't even have holes. If I were to do this again, I'd just purchase the big multipack of round sequins in various sizes and colors instead. I actually had a few styrofoam balls kicking around that I thought I would use when the cones were gone but I never made it to those--we didn't even use all of the cones before we lost interest.

Here are our final products. Maren and I had fun and enjoyed crafting together, but I can't say that I'll be for sure keeping these when we take down the tree after Christmas; they're pretty cheesy! Oh well, they add sparkle to the tree and now at least I've got that craft out of my system and I can move on to something else!