Flocking a Christmas Tree & The Woodland Creatures

"Flocking" a Christmas Tree

&

The Woodland Creatures

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week! I know I did! We spent it with family and great friends and really that is about all you need in this life! Am I right? We ate and ate some more, went to see "The Peanuts" movie, iceskating, celebrated my son's 20th birthday and did some good ole' fashion relaxing around the house! The kids had a hard time going back to school on Monday! But remembering that there were only a few weeks left until Christmas break made it a little bit easier. While everyone else was back at work and school it was time for me to finish some projects around the house as well as decorate for the holidays!

A few weeks ago you may remember me talking about the Holiday Open House @ Daisies & Olives Antique Mall, where we have our booth space. It was so spectacular! I was really blown away by the production that is the: "Holiday Open House". My friend and booth neighbor Lara from "Pretty Quirky" wrote a blog about Open House and took some amazing pictures. If you would like to read all about it and see some of her amazing photos click here to get to her blog!

While working at the Open House, it really got me into the Christmas spirit! I decided that I wanted to turn my artificial Christmas tree into a white flocked tree (and no that isn't a bad word, :D). It's when your tree looks all white and snowy. I wanted to do a woodland creature theme for my decorations this year with deer, foxes, rabbits, bears, birds, and owls. Oh yeah, and moose as well, to match my moose pillow that my mom in law made me this year. It's so cool!

Anyway, I took my regular green tree and flocked it myself. Doesn't it sound like I beat it to death? I guess there is a word for beating that sounds similar called flogging, but I digress! LOL!

Here are the pictures and the process:

Flocking a Christmas Tree

I set the tree up in my garage, and notice that the door is cracked for ventilation. Fresh air is good people! :) Trust me on this one!

I took a can of white spray paint and spraying in a downward motion (like how snow would fall). I lightly pumped the spray on the ends of branches about 12 inches from up above the area I wanted to get, so that it would hit a wider spray surface area. After the paint dried, about 30 minutes to an hour depending on your room temperature, I used a can of wall texture to add volume and texture to the tree. This is the stuff that literally adds texture to dry wall. It dries quickly and doesn't flake as much as other things I have used. You could probably just use white spray paint without the wall texture, but it will look flat. The wall texture comes in a can that you shake and spray. I used the same technique by spraying downward like snow falling. I believe for a 7 ft tree you would have enough. Unfortunately, the spray can clogged on me. It might have clogged due to the cold temperature outside, but I decided that it was good enough. Here is a closer look at what (almost) one can of texture will do.

Now, the texture will come off some as you are moving it around and putting on lights and ornaments, but I found it pretty minimal compared to the snow in a can that I used last year for some big outdoor wreaths. Man, that was a real mess! I didn't really want my tree to look totally white but rather a light snow so that you could still see some green. That's why I didn't spray inside the tree braches because snow would realistically only gather on the branches that are exposed that extend way out from the center of the tree. I feel like the "Happy Painter" talking about snowy trees! Did anyone else ever watch Bob Ross on the PBS channel like I did? He was fascinating to watch and that was his nickname; in case you have never heard of him. Anywho! Now back to our snowy tree! I'm loving it! Next came the really fun part of decorating it!

Flocking a Christmas Tree-Maison Designs Home

As I mentioned earlier, I got inspired from the Holiday Open House and one of the peeps who inspired the "Woodland Creature" theme was Joni from Daisies & Olives. Joni is a friend and vendor like me and she made the most amazing deer ornaments for Open House.

I ordered six silver ones from her that day as well as 10 wood circles I used to make other ornaments.

One of the great things about DIY is using what you already have and changing it or repurposing it. My mom in law dropped off some red and gold ornaments, tree trimming pieces, baskets, pine cones, red berry twigs that I used this year. All the red ornaments, berries, and twigs I reused by spray painting them with paint that I already had. I used Rustoleum's Oil Rubbed Bronze, Satin Nickel, and Aged Copper. I added white to some of the berries and twigs, a purpley gray velvet material for the tree skirt, some gray velvet ribbon and a purple gray satin ribbon to dress up the pine cones and add some more sparkle.

The 10 round wood cut pieces, I painted the center with black chalkpaint; leaving some of the natural wood on the outer edge. I then cut out fox, bear, rabbitt, moose and squirrel silhouettes that I found online, traced them with pencil on the wood pieces and then used a white chalk marker to fill in the silouette! Cute huh?

I had a few extra that I hand painted the words, "Joy, Peace & Love". I also found 6 white snow flakes to add for $1 at Dollar General. I found the linen birds and owls at Hobby Lobby. They came in groups of two to three for $3.99. The rest of the ornaments you see were ones I already had or were given to me and I spray painted them to match.

Once the tree was decorated, I spray painted a basket gray and filled it with pine cones. Don't you love their shape?

I also made these "snowballs" and filled a bucket that I already had to add some whimsy to the base of the tree for decoration.

I wrapped my presents in a brown paper wrap and used some fresh evergreen sprigs from the yard, pinecones and the same gray ribbon I used on the tree. I placed Emily's ice skates underneath to complete the tree for a woodland snow theme.

Woodland Christmas Theme Maison Designs Home

While I was doing my photo shoot, my puppy "Chewy" decided that he wanted his picture taken too! (He does this a lot!) But seriously, how cute is he?

I decorated the entire open concept portion of our living, dining and kitchen. I think by the time I was done with all the pics I had a total of 188! Wowza, that's a lot of pictures! Even after I narrowed down the ones that I liked and wanted to use, their were still 85!

So.......I will share the other decorations with you in the next post early next week for the "Holiday Home Tour". I can't wait for you to see them! In the mean time, I wanted to share one of my favorite pics of my son Gram, since he turned 20 this week.

I did spend some time this week reminiscing about where in the world the time has gone and looking at old photos. (This one is actually 2 years ago when he graduated from high school). I'm thinking how could this be? I still feel like I am in my 30's!!!! But alas,.....not so much in reality. He is my first born and I had him when I was 24, so I will let you do the math! :)