New Christmas Decorations

The last couple of days I've been working on Christmas decorations. First, I needed a tree skirt. I had bought some cute fabric when it was on clearance last year. I made a square-shaped skirt with patterned fabric on the top, batting in the middle and solid colored fabric on the bottom. I sewed quilt binding around the whole thing. Here's some really bad pics of the whole she-bang (still using camera with no flash, and I took pics at night):

Here's a close-up that shows the back side as well: The fabric has Santas, reindeer and sleighs all over it with the lyrics of jingle bells.

Tree without a skirt: boring! And look at all the cords showing!

Tree with skirt:

Much better! My skirt is a little big for the space, but oh well.

The next project I did is for the outside steps. I found this basket at the thrift store with all the goodies inside it for only $5!

Look at all the good stuff inside!

Red berry picks, fake sugared fruit, and even some red Christmas balls! I ended up only reusing the berry picks for this project, but I did use the sugared fruit elsewhere which I'll show you later.

I took a cheap fake garland from Walmart and coiled it in the basket. Then I added two nicer evergreen picks in the middle to add some height (I got those from Joanne's when they were 50% off) Finally, I stuck in the berry picks for color. Here's what it looks like now:

Here's a close-up of the inside of the basket:

One of the nice evergreen picks has pine cones on it, and the other has crystal snow. I thought together they were a nice balance.

Here's the basket on it's stool on the front steps:

Well, what do you think? Not a bad looking basket for less than $10 and 10 minutes work! Plus, it's not really too Christmassy to leave out all winter long. (Or at least until my hubby gets tired of shoveling around it!) ;)

Got any small projects you've finished lately?

Happy Crafting!

*sharing this at:

The Inspired Room's Holiday Linky Party

A Soft Place To Land's Do it Yourself Day