Swirly Designs by Lianne & Paul: January 2014

We had so many things we wanted to share with you during the Christmas season, but time always seems to get away from us, and we never get our posts up. Well until now, so even though this might be a Christmas project you could be crazy like us and display your trees all year round... so this idea is for you now or pin this for Christmas 2014.

We did a mini makeover on this 30" green table top tree we picked up at one of our many visits to Homegoods over the past holiday season.

(btw Homegoods is one of our favorite spots to find all types of holiday trees)

Wish we had a shot of the tree base. Its base was in a brown burlap bag with foe fur wrapped around it...it was oh so UGLY. So we had to look past that and focus on the tree. We liked the color, height and the branches were easy to bend. We have been looking for a natural looking tree to display our mini woodland collection and this one fit the bill and for $14.99 how could we not. At another outing to HG we picked up this pot with bark on it and was saving it for the right tree. Yay!!

How~To: When we removed the burlap from the tree we were left with a small square block of cement in a styrofoam base. We removed the styrofaom and left the cement block. Then we gathered some rocks and a small bucket of quick-setting cement. We added the rocks to bottom of the pot to level the tree. We put tree in the pot then mixed the cement. We found using a plastic spoon made it easy to scoop and pack down.

Once the cement was packed down and smoothed over with the back of the spoon we used a wet paper towel to wipe the pot edges before the cement hardens.

**Suggestion: Once the cement hardens in the pot it became rather heavy. We preferred this since we were using it as a display at the craft show and we wouldn't have to worry about it falling over. But if you are using it for your home decor you might want to add more rocks around the sides, so you use less cement.

The cement should harden in less than a day. We added moss to cover the base and embellished with pine cones and cinnamon sticks to give it that woodland appeal.

See how a simple little make over can turn this little tree into a treasure. We are sure this tree will be hanging around our home well into the spring season. We can already see bunnies and eggs displayed on this beauty.

Share with us your own holiday tree projects or if you have one that needs a little sprucing up, send us a photo and maybe we can help. info@swirlydesigns.com

We are very happy to announce that Sculpey and Swirly will be collaborating on 5 more Holiday How-to projects for 2014!

We really hope you enjoy these creative and fun Holiday themed how-to projects as much as we do creating them. To be notified when the projects are online make sure you like Swirly Designs and Sculpey facebook pages.

Below are the projects we created in 2013

scroll down to see the links for the step by step how-to projects

All projects are for personal, non-commercial use ONLY.