Christmas Decorating Tip

For this tip, I had 2 things going for me:
1) I like all of my Christmas decor to match, including the presents under the tree.
2) I don't actually have a lot of people to buy presents for, therefore it's usually pretty bare under the tree.

I found that wrapping my Christmas decoration boxes solved both problems!  I get beautiful gold and blue presents to match the rest of the decorations, and I get enough presents under the tree to make it look like I actually care about people have a lot of people to buy for.

start with this

end up with these!

A couple years ago, I found this great glitter wrapping paper at Walmart.  I haven't seen it there again since, but I'm sure someone makes it or something similar.  I keep all my ornaments in their original boxes, so I know I have a safe place to store them the 11 months of the year that they aren't up.  I slathered those boxes up in elmer's glue and covered them in the glitter paper.  To maintain some sense of order, I did wrap boxes containing blue ornaments or lights in blue paper, and gold ornaments or lights in gold paper. 

A beautiful, perfectly coordinated Christmas Tree!

tl;dr Wrap your ornament boxes in coordinating paper to maximize aesthetics of your Christmas decor!

Modified Tissue Box Cover

Updated 01Feb15

I get a fair amount of traffic to my tissue box cover listings, but sales are not matching up.  And I think part of the reason is the shipping costs.  I agree that they are high for what they are, but that is the lowest price I can find for a 3 dimensional product of this size.  So I'm looking into a new design that will allow me to ship the covers flat, and they will fold open to their cover positions.

I came up with an idea that I think will work, and I'm now entering the testing phase.  I cut out all my pieces and I'm starting to apply the sequins (this will be a solid gold, full length tissue box cover, as those 2 seem to be my most popular combination of items).

Fingers crossed that it works!

Update: Photos of the finished product.  This tissue box cover is listed in my Etsy Store, if anyone is interested in buying it.  I personally am not 100% satisfied with the final result, so i left the shipping as is, with the intent that if anyone wishes to purchase this I will either ship it to them as is with a lower cost shipping option and refund the difference, OR I will finish the edges for free and shipping will be as listed.

Completed cover from the long side

Completed cover from the short side.  Note the seam along the center.  This allows the cover to fold flat for shipping.

Flattened cover for shipping purposes.

Inside view.  Note that the short edges are not attached the the top piece.  This gap is my main problem with this design.

Closeup of the sequins.

Ugly Christmas Sweater

This year, we're having an Ugly Christmas Sweater contest at work (with prizes), and I want to win!  I decided to go all out.  I bought a green sweater at Goodwill, some packages of glitter snowflakes and a garland from Walmart, and a battery operated multi-colored light strand from Amazon.

I started out by sewing the garland around the waist hem.  Easy peasy.  Then I put the lights on.  It took a few tries of pinning/re-pinning to use the full strand without having a big clump somewhere.  I sewed those in place by just tying a knot around the cord between each bulb.  Lastly was the snowflakes.  These were tough because my thread kept getting caught around all the little snowflake arms.  I eventually figured out only to cut enough thread to do one snowflake at a time, and to minimize the attachment points on the snowflakes.

Finally, done!  I'm a little nervous that my sweater will be too awesome to win an ugly contest!  We'll find out tomorrow!

Edit:  I WON!  Yay me!  And my cube-mate got 2nd place...a sales team sweep!

Lights off!

Lights on!