I know, I know, Christmas is months and months away so I should be thinking about other things. But, that's just it, when the season rolls around again, I probably will get so busy yet again . Then, once again, I will have trouble finding the time to take care of jobs like sorting through my boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations and finding those that need some time spent on making repairs. It's just so much more fun to get the tree up and immediately start to decorate it! So, while digging out the summer fans in the storage closet, and before it gets too sweltering hot, I also decided to pull out the boxes of Christmas decorations and do a bit of re-organizing. I was aiming for finding the ones that need a bit of work on them and thinning out those that don't quite match the woodsy-foresty theme I'll be going for next Christmas, especially if they were being used more for their child-friendly unbreakable aspects than anything else. By next Christmas, at nearly 6 and 9, the grand-kids will hopefully be old enough to enjoy a few more fragile things on the tree without too great of a temptation... Hmm.... We'll see how that goes, but that's the hope for now.
Now that the Christmas tree no longer needs to be quarantined off into the coldest upstairs room, away from toddlers, last year I packed away all of the snowmen and most of the snowflake ornaments that I'd been collecting and using for a few decades. Our backyard Japanese maple trees have matured to the point that they are the focus of attention when the leaves turn and the Christmas tree will now return to the living room to sit in front of the outdoor view! But, our climate is such that from Thanksgiving up to Christmas, our autumn leaves are at their peak and with the stunning reds and orange hues, snowmen just seemed silly. So, I invested in some new decorations and created many more that should be unbreakable and embrace what's actually happening in our local climate during the holiday season. For starters, I bought a new tree topper. It's a Gisela Graham creation and just is so delicate and charming! It looks perfect with the outdoors scenery.
Anyway, in the process of re-organizing, I came across this 3-pack of plastic onion-shaped bulbs. Festive holiday colors, right? Ah, but the "gold" was just so brassy and CHEAP looking up close. It clashed with everything hanging around it. In places, the paint was scratched and chipping off too. So, I did an experiment and gave them a watercolor paint job of orange-yellow; then a layer of Mod Podge; next a layer of varnish which dried a bit sticky; so finally another layer of matte Mod Podge. I tried out a new top to the ornaments with shabby red ribbon but ended up picking it off later after it had dried. The look of these 3 ornaments is softer, with a nod toward autumn, and hopefully it will work with the other things on the tree when the season rolls around again.
One with the first coat of orangy-yellow watercolor and one as it originally was.
Finally, dried and ready for repacking until Christmas!
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