12 Weeks of Christmas- Week Five

OK. This was another dream. It turned out better then the whole hot-glue, glitter dream fiasco of earlier in the 12 week challenge. Sigh.

My idea came from the three criteria I am trying to use in all of my Christmas thoughts this year - re-use, re-cycle, use it up!

Now I have to say before I start showing my pictures that I could not get my old Christmas cards down...they are on a too high shelf and my husband was super busy today so I did use printed out clip-art. But my idea here is to use old Christmas cards with coordinating card stock for the backs.

And now...with no further ado! I give you TEA TASSELS!

Tassels seem to be the rage this year. So I decided to make something that would be a Christmas card and a little Christmas gift/decoration AND cheap to mail and disposable when the recipient was finished.

So do you want to know how to do it?

I know you do.

And here we go!

You will need:

1. An old Christmas card or clip-art image approximately 4 - 5 1/2" wide and 4 - 5 1/2" tall and a similar sized image for the back or card stock cut to the same size
2. Some curling ribbon
3. A stapler
4. Tea bags
5. Ummmm.... glitter? OK, you don't NEED the glitter. I just like the glitter!

The first thing you need to do is cut around your image(s) and your card stock to make them the same size. I think it would be cute to use a different image on the front and the back of the project. Next you will pick coordinating curling ribbon. Wrap the curling ribbon around your hand to your elbow to make loops. I made 15 loops and that was about right. And if you think I'm going to show you a picture of my bat arms waving in the breeze while I did this...trust me....ain't happening. You know how to do this, though. And if you don't, e-mail me. I'm still not gonna show you my bat arms but I'll try to explain it a little better!

Gather one side of the looped ribbons together and tie a little short length of curling ribbon tightly around them. Smoosh (yes, that is so a word) all the ribbons together and then tie a second small piece of ribbon about an inch or so down from the first tie. Center the ribbon against the back of the back with the 1 inch section sticking out of the top. Then place the top picture on top of the ribbon. Like a little picture sandwich with ribbon filling. Staple at each corner joining the front and the back together. Now staple all the way around the top and both sides. Staple close to the little pokey-outy ribbon thing. DON'T STAPLE ACROSS THE BOTTOM! Cut the loop on the curling ribbon so all the ribbon dangles loose. Curl as many or as a few as you wish. Whatever looks nice to you!
Now take some tea bags and randomly staple them to various dangling ribbons. Put some glitter or rick-rack or whatever looks good to you around the edge. Or don't. It is your tea tassel.

And voila! C'est magnifique! OK, well maybe it's not, technially, magnificent, but I think it's cute. And it meets every single one of my Holiday criteria this year. And here's another one I made.
You could modify this idea and do it with hot cocoa packets or even individually wrapped candies. Those would be sparkly and pretty in the ribbon (but I don't have anything here but dum-dum suckers and those wouldn't be excessively pretty I suspect.) You could use color-themed ribbon or lace or satin ribbon you have laying around. You could put 25 little things dangling and let the recipients take one off for a Christmas count-down!

So that's my idea for week five of the 12 weeks of Christmas.

And can I just say I am exhausted.

Exhausted and covered in glitter.

So please be gentle with your comments after you finish reading this.

Sigh.