Crafting handmade decorations and gifts can be budget friendly but time consuming! With Christmas right around the corner, I finally got to my basement craft room this weekend. I love to craft and create, especially for the holidays. First I made some paper medallion ornaments out of a December 1954 edition of Better Homes & Garden. The color Christmas themed ads were perfect but the paper is very fragile. After carefully folding for a few hours I was finished with 4 paper medallions. Next, I decided to string together some dried orange slices and cranberries. I dried the orange slices last summer. Even with my nice dehydrator, it took about 4 days for the slices to fully dry. Once I was finished stringing the orange slices, I had about 1.5 feet of garland. Then came the cranberries. Half of the bag was no good, and mushy. The remaining, firm cranberries got strung together on a thin copper wire, and added silk ribbon to the end. I have like one foot of a cranberry garland. Lastly, I tied tiny bows out of some small velvet ribbon I have. Each bow took way more time than I thought it would, and there was no muscle memory, or regular memory, so each bow felt like I was figuring it out each time. But it kept me crafting and enjoying using my many craft supplies. So while you may see cute crafted decorations, it takes a lot of dedicated time. So don’t feel bad if you only have time for store bought.
