Hydrangea Christmas Tree

This tree sprang from a 90% off sale at Joanne's in the fall of 2004. I walked into the store one October day and they had these huge blue hydrangeas that were $5.99 each for 59 cents each. I immediately thought of a Christmas tree and grabbed all they had. There were also three Burgundy colored and I grabbed those along with numerous smaller branches for filler.

My cart was overflowing and the checkout person asked me what I was going to make with them. "Oh, really?" she said when I told her. I could tell she would never have dreamed to put them on a tree.

This tree has two kinds of gold sparkle ribbon twisted through, huge gold balls, silver beaded apples, and a few little foil-wrapped gift packages. The white hanging beads came from bead garland that I just cut into little pieces so they could "drip" down (most of them are held on with twisted paper clips! I have to get creative on my low decorating budget.). The ends of about 16 branches boast Burgundy-sparkled twisted icicles.

You can see there a few clusters of berries and quite a few sprigs of sparkley beads and spikey liatris flowers that go on last and stick out all over the tree. These are difficult to see in the pictures.
That, by the way, is one of the secrets of doing a nice tree. You must have something -- beads, twigs, flower spikes, etc.--that stick out in all directions to add another layer of texture. The tree just looks flat without it.

At least in my somewhat humble opinion.