Pinterest Challenge: Lace Trees

Whoops - this was supposed to get shared in November, but I went on vacation instead! Oh well, it makes more sense in December anyway! 

Ever since lace began taking over my house, I spend one hour a week looking through Pinterest (and the rest of the internet, just in case...) for ideas of what to do with it. It hasn't been particularly fruitful searching, but one of the ideas that turned up early on was a photo linking to this Lace Christmas Tree Forest tutorial at Mitzi's Miscellany.

Edit: Also, apparently I had pinned (and misplaced) these gorgeous trees, which look more like what I attempted than the picture I set out to use as inspiration. 

Inspired by the idea - though admittedly, not following the tutorial at all - I picked up three foam cones and went to town with some of my least favorite pieces of lace and trim, and some glue.

It took about two episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent* to end up with these three happy little trees:

Yes, two of the three are resting on other things while the glue sets up a little more - but I couldn't wait to take photos. And yes, I did use a combination of different cream/ecru tones with white. For the first few pieces I thought the combination of off-white with white wasn't going to work (just like the combination of matte vs. shiny), but I pushed through and in the end I really like the combination.

I think my favorite one is the larger of the three - mostly because I do like the largest single piece of trim passing around the center of it, the one with the long lines of 'droplets' hanging from it. The only reason it wound up in the 'craft/dislike' pile instead of the 'hang on/do like' pile is that this is the only piece I had - not enough to use in any of the usual ways like trimming an outfit, quilt, or bag. I think that sorting worked out though; it looks great on my biggest little tree.

For the moment, all three have little 'crowns' at the top - but after taking another look at the tutorial, I'm toying with finding a little something more to top them off. Two of the trees shown in the tutorial have silver balls at the top, and I really like that finishing touch. I haven't pulled out the rest of the holiday decorations yet, but when I do I am going to see if I still have some little silver bulbs or something else I could use to finish them off just a little more.

I'm going to give them a couple days to dry before I mess with them again (since I used a tacky kind of glue instead of hot glue). I suspect I'll want to come back and give them permanent bases (the canning jar lid is working well, I might just look for a few more spares of those) before calling them finished. I'm also searching the house for the perfect location - fortunately, I have several options to try and a few weeks before I'll be feeling obligated to get some more decor up around here and a couple more days to figure something out...




*The television in the living room gets one channel, so on the rare occasion we have it on, we watch whatever it shows - mostly reruns of lots of other detective/cop type shows. And the same four movies all weekend long, all year long. Not my favorite thing, but I was already gluey fingered before I thought to change over to a movie. Next time I'll be more prepared.