It’s the holiday season full of joy, cheer and long Christmas songs playlists. For my family the holiday season kicks off the week before Thanksgiving with the birthday of my eldest daughter. That involves a lot of party planning, birthday shopping and birthday celebrations. After a long and exhausting week of birthday festivities comes the next big holiday – Thanksgiving and black Friday. However, it seems like the right time to dive into some crafty DIY eco-friendly Christmas décor.
I didn’t know anything about it before I came to live in the USA and because I didn’t have family of my own, my parents live far away from me, I never really felt any real connection to this holiday. Now years later I use the long weekend to spend time with my own family and decorate our house for Christmas. I generally avoid shopping on weekends especially the madness on Black Friday.
I like to live a sustainable life and do my small contribution by minimizing waste, avoid consumption of extra goods, recycle, reuse, upcycle, driving electric car, no disposable products and have an eco-friendly home décor.
This year I probably spent $40 on Christmas décor and I still feel a bit guilty about it because I could have easily upcycled some of the little things, I purchased from Dollar store for my projects. Time was a key factor this year. Participating in One Room Challenge which ended right on my daughter’s Birthday and a week before Thanksgiving, put me on a very tight schedule. Didn’t leave me much room to prepare for my Christmas décor projects so I had to do a lot of improvisations.
Here is what I came up with:
AFTER
BEFORE
The Styrofoam I used for the tiered display of the village and for snow on the roofs of the houses.
Cut out windows and doors in the house boxes, outlined them with craft sticks, covered the roofs with craft sticks too, added some Styrofoam for snow and some paint. Did 7 houses of different size and neutral colors. Made fences to some of them from driftwood or craft sticks. Added upcycled trees of different kinds.
The Mountain peaks wall art wasn’t planned but there was something missing in the space between the two displays. I decided to connect both sides of the village with mountains and a bridge wall art. Firstly, I drew the peaks on cardboard and cut them out to size. Needles to say, it was really easy. Had to connect the cardboard pieces together with stapler. Secondly, on the back I did the same using floor mat tiles. This provided a little space from the wall for tape lights. My biggest score in this project was finding some left over spider web from Halloween and dressing up the mountain peaks with it. The result was incredible. I would never think of it if I didn’t randomly see it in the kids toy bin and decided to give it a try.
It would have been much easier to do if the bridge was a straight line however I went for an arched shape. I made my life more complicated just because I wanted to follow the curves of the big arches. Used my favorite craft sticks to cover it in wood and added some Styrofoam for dimension. Finally, I glued on some of the cardboard trees, drew a few more straight on the artwork and pained all in dark brown for contrast. Now I have a really magical, unique, eco-friendly and pocket friendly Christmas décor.
Every time we make something with our own hands, we give it a piece of our heart and energy. This piece become alive and have a lot of stories to tell for many years ahead.
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