Christmas Tree Geekery

My Christmas tree is up!

Over the years I have collected a lot of Star Wars ornaments (mostly from Hallmark) that I received as gifts. When shopping for Christmas gifts for a nerd it's hard to go wrong with Star Wars ornaments!

I also have a lot of Disney ornaments. When I was a kid my sister and I had a mini Christmas tree that we filled with only Disney ornaments so I have a whole shoebox full of them. My hubby likes to go to Disneyland a lot so I try to get a different ornament for each trip.

I love my Arena Battle Padme ornament because that was my first Star Wars costume I made!

The Looney Tunes ornament actually has working gears with a handle you turn to raise and lower Wile E. Coyote. Cool!

Captain Kirk is my only Star Trek ornament but he looks awesome commanding from his chair near the top of the tree.

And that  little fox is just cute, isn't it?

Christmas Tree Angel

I decided to make a new topper for our new 9-foot Christmas tree! I wanted to make either an angel or a star, and since a star needs to light up and that's really complicated I decided to make an angel out of random stuff in my craft room.

First I took a long strand of raffia string (I decided this looks like rustic angel hair) and folded it back and forth, then stuffed it through a large wooden bead (which sort of looks like an angel's head, if you have an imagination like mine). Then I twisted a piece of gold rope against itself (this is the crown or halo), cut it and hot-glued it on top and trimmed the raffia to look like hair.

For the body I made a cone out of white craft form. For wings I used a pretty piece of ribbon which I threaded through a hole in the back. I then bordered the hole with pieces of the same gold I used for the halo-crown to hide the ugly hole.

Next I got out a bunch of coordinating white and gold trim and lace and decided to figure out how to decorate the body to make a dress. I made a bit of a mess.

I started glueing pieces of lace over the white foam, starting with the bottom piece so the upper pieces would overlap like layers of a skirt. A strand of white "pearls" became a necklace for the angel.

Here is the finished angel, as an ornament. I need a ladder to get her up on top of my tree!