Hello all!  I’m thrilled to have Erica from Fabric Glue and Thread here today to share three of her fantastic holiday projects.

Hi!  I am so honored and excited that Amanda has asked me to write a guest post on her amazing blog!  I am blessed to be a stay at home mom to my three, young children.  Before I was a mom, I was a fourth and fifth grade teacher.  However, I have always had an interest in interior design.  When I was in college, my friends would often make fun of me for choosing to stay in my dorm room and watch HGTV on Saturday night, rather than accompanying them to the bars.  I love looking at design magazines and design blogs on the Internet.  I also love to tour model homes for inspiration, and I could spend all day perusing the aisles of Home Goods.  I enjoy decorating my home with items that I purchase, as well items that I create or repurpose myself.  My amazingly talented husband, Wes is often the one who turns my design dreams into a reality.

My husband and I purchased our home almost six years ago just months before our second child was born,  Slowly, we have remodeled just about every room in our home.  Even though our house is only ten years old, many of the finishes were builder grade, and we have painted walls, changed the flooring, added trim and upgraded lighting and plumbing fixtures in almost every room.  I created my blog in the hope that it will become a source of design inspiration to readers, just as I have been inspired by others in blogland. I hope that you will visit my blog, and will leave me a message if you enjoy what you see.  I love to meet new people and make new blog friends!

David Stark’s collection for West Elm

This Holiday season, I fell in love with the items that David Stark created for West Elm.  I love the simplicity and artistic quality of the collection.  I think I was most drawn to the neutral colors and the understated materials that he used.  I decided to replicate David’s look in my home this Holiday season by creating my own items using the same color palette and materials that he used.  Some of the items that I created are loosely based on his items and others, like my Nutcracker are direct interpretations of things that he created.

Martha Stewart’s snowflake garland

On my mantle, I created a snowflake garland out of hand cut paper snowflakes.  My garland was inspired by the garland shown above, that I saw on Martha Stewart’s website.  In keeping with the color palette and materials used in David Stark’s collection, I chose to create my snowflakes out of book pages. I loved all the items that David Stark created with book pages.  I attached the snowflakes to some beautiful, gray, satin ribbon that I had leftover from my Thanksgiving place settings.  I used mini glue dots from the craft store to adhere the snowflakes to the ribbon.

My Holiday 2010 mantle

Making paper snowflakes brought back childhood memories of all the Holiday craft projects that we used to make when we were children out of simple materials.  I remembered creating red and green paper chains out of construction paper and cutting paper snowflakes out of coffee filters.  These snowflakes are just as easy to make as the ones that we made as children, and they are just as fun to make as well.  Even though I used my snowflakes to create a garland, they could easily be used to decorate Christmas presents or be hung with ribbon from a chandelier.

You can create your own paper snowflakes by following my tutorial:)

1.  Find a hardback book that you have already read:)
Gently rip out one page.

3.  Cut off the excess paper.

4.  Unfold the paper and you will be left with a square.

5.  Refold the paper diagonally making the same fold that you made in step 2.

6.  Fold the paper diagonally again.  Making a smaller triangle.

7.  Fold the paper diagonally a third time to create an even smaller triangle.

8.  Now, fold the corner indicated in the photo below in the direction indicated in the photo below:)

9.  You will be left with this.

10.  Cut off the excess paper at the widest end.  You can choose to make this cut any way that you want.  This cut will determine the shape of the outside edge of your snowflake.

11.  I chose to make a scalloped, shaped cut, so as to create a scalloped edged snowflake.

12.  For the smaller, more intricate cuts, I chose to use cuticle scissors.  I did not follow any sort of pattern.  I just made random cuts in a variety of shapes and sizes.

13. When I was finished making my cuts, I was left with this.

14.  Now for the exciting part.  The unveiling!  Gently unfold your snowflake.

15.  You are finished!

Nutcrackers from West Elm

I adored the large, white Nutcracker that David Stark designed for West Elm.  I even considered purchasing it.  However, I decided that I would attempt to make one myself, and if I failed, I would buy the $60 version from West Elm.  I found a pair of nutcrackers on sale at my local craft store.  The large Nutcracker at West Elm measures 23 inches.  The Nutcracker I found at the craft store measures about 18 inches.  Ironically, I think that the one that I created is better suited to the dimensions of my mantle.  The West Elm version would have actually been too large.  The smaller Nutcracker at West Elm measures 12 inches.  The smaller Nutcracker that I purchased from the craft store is only six inches tall.

Replicating the Nutcracker from West Elm actually proved to be even easier than I had anticipated.  I stripped off all of the layers of faux fur and rhinestone.  Then, my husband helped me sand off the glitter and glue residue.  When we were finished stripping off all of the adornments, my husband spray painted the Nutcrackers with a coat of primer and approximately four coats of white spray paint.  I love the Nutcracker that I created, and by creating it myself I was able to save a lot of money with minimal effort.

We have an amazing locally owned landscape/garden center in our town that I love to browse for design inspiration.  At Christmas time, they have a have a large indoor space that is transformed into a Christmas store.  I could spend hours in the store looking at all of the beautiful decorations.  This year I discovered an entire display of vintage, bottle brush trees in many colors and sizes.  I was quickly drawn to these miniature trees filled with beautiful, Mercury glass ornaments.  Despite my love for the garden center, the store tends to be overpriced.  They were selling each of these tiny trees for about $30.00 a piece.  Unwilling to spend that much on a single, Holiday decoration, I decided to try to make my own bottle brush trees.

I purchased a bag of dark green, plastic trees intended to be used with Christmas villages for $11.00 at Lowes.  The bag contained a dozen trees of various sizes.  My husband placed them upside down in a bucket of water and approximately a 1/2 cup of bleach overnight.  In the morning, I was left with these adorable off white, faux bottle brush trees.  I read online that if you want to, you can dye them any color of your choice with Rit dye.  However, I liked the off white trees, so I left them as is.  I purchased some decorating picks from the craft store intended to be used to create floral arrangements and wreaths.  I used wire cutters to cut the decorations off of the picks, and I hot glued the “ornaments” to the trees.  I think they are really cute.