JINGLE BELL HOP!!

WELCOME TO THE JINGLE BELL HOP FOR CH{ALL}ENGE MASTERS!!!
I hope you have enjoyed your journey so far. If your just starting the Jingle Bell Hop you will need to start out at The Ch{all}enge Masters Blog at 9am and then follow the link to the next blog, and the next and leave a comment for each blog you visit to be entered into a drawing for the grand prize from Ch{all}enge Masters!! The Blog Hop starts at 9am today and ends at midnight on Sunday Dec. 6th. At the end of this post you will find the link to the next blog you need to vist. Hope you have fun and there will be a chance to win a small little goodie from me if you leave a comment! I will randomly draw a name from all the blog hoppers on Monday! Once you are done the Blog Hop you must go back to The Ch{all}enge Masters Blog and leave a comment that you visited all of blogs in The Jingle Bell Hop to be eligable to win the grand prize! Now, on to the good stuff!

Christmas time is such a magical time of year and brings us back to our childhoods with memories of the anticipation of Santa coming down the chimney with tons of gifts! My mother worked hard to make Christmas a very magical time with all the gorgeous decorations, beautifully wrapped gifts and all the fun things we got to do to celebrate the season.

Below you will find a project that I thought symbolized all those magical memories from when I was a child. and was just the sort of project my mother and I would do during this time of year. I hope you enjoy it and try it in some fashion yourself! If you do, please send me a link so I can see it! Love this!!!

I saw a show on Martha Stewart where she made a wreath completely with fresh cranberries. I so love cranberries and just had to do a project with them myself. To me, cranberries is a big symbol of the season and I have them everywhere you look!

You will need a foam shape of some sort, wether it's a wreath, ball, cone etc. A pack of toothpicks, fresh cranberries, ribbon, hot glue gun, & any other decoration you would like to use like flowers, buttons, or you can just use the cranberries by themselves.

I chose to do cranberry ball hanging from ribbon. You can hang these on your tree, porch or anywhere really and they should last about 2 weeks, at least that's what Martha says ;}

First, paint the ball a Christmas color of your choice.Take a toothpick and insert it into the stem end of the cranberry and then insert into the styrofoam ball. Continue to do thia all the way around to cover the entire ball. It may be better to add some hot glue and then put them into the ball to add some strength. I had to do this on some as they would come lose and fall out on a couple of them.



Then, cut a long length of ribbon and hot glue the center of the ribbon to the top of your ball. Be sure to leave a bit of room at the top without any cranberries to do this. Then add your cranberries to cover the glued ribbon at the top.



This is what it looks like completed. Sorry, I didn't have time to take another pic of the construction for you, but you can clearly see what was added and how.I tied the ribbon into a bow at the top and added Making Memories flowers, with gold brads in the centers, around the ball. I also added a gold glittered star from Making Memories at the top.You could leave it plain with just cranberries or add buttons or other types of embellishments, it just depends on your style. The picture below shows what it looks like hanging on the tree without any lights on.



Below is what it looks like with lights on and it's quite pretty. You could hang this under the fireplace too, or on a door.







This what it would looh like on the door.



If you leave me a comment you will be entered into a drawing to win an awesome bag of Ki Memories Ribbons! There are at least 28, it was hard to count them all jumbled up in the bag and I didn't want to open them, different ribbons all 1 yard each! This is a great little gift for yourself or someone on your list! I will ship these anywhere in the US or Canada. Sorry I can not ship elsewhere internationally. I will randomly draw a name to win the ribbon on Monday December 7th so be sure to stop back and see who won!! I hope you enjoyed my blog and I would love it if you followed me :} Have fun hopping!!



Now you need to go over a visit Lisa's Blog! Have fun!