Winter Trees

With Christmas less than six weeks away, my thoughts have turned to holiday crafting...and I've gotten a head start by participating in the "Ho Ho Ho" craft swap on Craftster.  For this swap we were to make one large item and two smalls, based one one of our partner's three themes.  I chose to go with alwaysinmyroom's theme of "trees" (her other themes were "birds"--which was tempting--and "elves", which wasn't speaking to me...)

She said that one thing she would really like is some sort of centerpiece for her table, with room in the middle for a candle.  Here's what I came up with:

It took a lot of thinking to figure out how I was going to make this!  I finally realized the best base would be a 10" wooden embroidery hoop (just the inner piece), with wooden spools glued to it, and dowels for the tree trunks. (I sharpened each dowel in the pencil sharpener to get them to fit into the spools!)

I have a LOT of wool felt, so I was able to use a nice variety of greens for the trees. I drew four different tree shapes, and simply cut out the paper drawings to use as my templates.

I sewed beads or buttons onto both pieces of each tree, then hand-stitched them together, leaving an opening at the bottom for stuffing.

After painting the hoop and spools white, I glued them together, and glued the dowels in place. When everything was dry, I slipped a tree onto each dowel and secured them with glue too.

Don't you think these trees, individually, would make great Christmas ornaments?  If you used red or white felt, they would really pop against the green of a Christmas tree!

I love this winter wonderland!  I hope my partner does too (she should be receiving it today!!)