Are you arts and crafty? I’m not. Well, I wasn’t. Until we had a team meeting and we started talking about this years Christmas decorations. We did a red and gold theme last year, and we all agreed it should be different this time. I love the deco feel of metallics and black, so when Rowena suggested it I was keen.
As conversation wound around to what we’d have in terms of motifs, my eye fell upon one of our old diamond-shaped lightbulbs. (Which sadly, never lasted long enough for it to be worth us getting them again)
I’d never been able to part with them- I mean, they’re so pretty, it’s just a shame they’re useless if you want to use them! But as I looked at them, I had an idea.
I could spray paint them gold.
But I didn’t stop there. My mouth carried on before I could even realize what I was suggesting; which was that we do a black and gold home crafted Christmas. And that is exactly what we’ve done- and it’s a lovely, relaxed and festive look.
My favourite elements of the decorations have to be the dishes of dried orange slices- and they are so easy to make! (not to mention wonderful to smell whilest making)
Follow my reasonably foolproof guide below to make them at home.
- Take a bag of oranges.
- Preheat your oven to about 110C
- Slice each orange width ways into slices no thicker than 1cm (otherwise they’ll take FORVER to dry- trust me) Keep the weird end bits and any other odd shapes you end up cutting.
- Arrange on a wire rack that fits into you oven.
- Sprinkle with a weeny bit of sugar. (not vital so don’t panic about this)
- Bake for about 1.5hrs
- Turn
- Bake for another hour or so.
Voila! Done! They will be sticky but will eventually dry out fully.
Next, whether you have sweet little glass dishes like us, ramekins, wine glass, whatever! Put some cinnamon bark or sticks in your chosen vessel, add some dried slices, a bit of star anise, and a few cloves. Finish with gold ribbon that’s curled at the ends…. Et voila!
I also thought that we should make our own snowflakes, both the drawn and the cut out kind. The girls and I had some fun with this! Although to be honest, if I ever draw another snowflake again it might actually be too soon…. To stop it from being too much black, we decided to have some gold and silver stars too. Quite effective!
To do the cut out snowflakes we used a circle template to draw around, then cut out the circle. Next, fold in half a few times so you have a thin flat cone- and cut at will! (Charli got a bit competitive and googled good cutting patterns, so hers are the best.)
To do the drawn snowflakes, I used a hexagon template to cut out shapes, then drew lines from opposite point to point…. And then just freestyled from there!
