Country Baskets Festive Face Off

I had a lovely email from Country Baskets
asking if I’d like to take part in their Festive Face Off with some other
wonderful crafty bloggers. The challenge – to create a Christmas
decoration for the home or garden using the contents of a Country Baskets craft
hamper (and your own supplies too) to be in with the chance of winning Country
Basket vouchers and importantly having all the decorations made given to a
charity of your choice, along with a cash donation. As we support ‘Roundabout’
through my WI, I immediately thought that if I won, they would be my charity of
choice!

As soon as I opened the hamper and saw the supplies I was drawn to the giant bauble – I’ve long been a fan of the smaller versions of these and my brain started working double time to think what I might be able to make with it. Delving deeper I came across some sheets of wood bark, some beautiful snowflakes and some branches of silvery berries and a few pine cones. So after some serious thinking I decided to try and create a woodland scene inside the bauble because I hear woodland is all the rage this Christmas. 


Firstly I took the bark
and drew round the shape of a squirrel, twice, on the back of it, (facing in
opposite directions so that I could stick the two together and just have the
bark on the outside) I glue gunned these together and waited for it to dry. Once
it was all dry, I glue gunned my squirrel to one half of my bauble. 

On the
other side of the bauble I stuck a once fibre optic Christmas tree that I had
in my midst, as close to the join as I could. 

Around the ‘floor’ of the bauble,
at the feet of the tree and the squirrel I hot glued some of the silvery
berries I had pulled off the branches they came on and some small pine cones,
to create a woodland look, and from the ‘sky’ I hung, with fishing wire, some of the pretty snowflakes that were included too. Lastly I threw in a little
‘magic snow’ picked up from the £1 shop for a slightly snow
globe approach to it all.

There were also some really pretty wood
and glitter leaves that I wanted to incorporate too but I ran out of space in
the bauble. I’d have liked to have found a little plastic deer and maybe a
toadstool to add in too but as timing was an issue, I didn’t quite manage that. 

So, what do you think? Not bad for an
evenings work right?