Winter Ice

Preparations for the upcoming holidays (and a house that needs to be cleaned from top to bottom) (not that I've actually done that) have kept me from posting much, but I'll try to remedy that by including in this post all the Christmas crafts I've been working on (all the non-holiday stuff I've made over the last few months will have to wait for another day).

This year I decided to decorate in mostly green and white and silver. Over the mantle I took out the quilt that is normally there, and hung from the rod various snowflakes:
I tied two or three "snowflakes" to a length of clear beading thread and tied that to the rod. The white lace doilies I bought a few years ago; usually I hang them at different heights in a window (an idea from Martha Stewart). The green snowflakes are another idea from Martha Stewart -- punch out seven snowflakes (or 14, for a double thickness) and glue them into a hexagon, then coat them in fine glitter. There are no close-ups, because it turns out I am shamefully inept at glitter, and there are bald spots that I could not glitter no matter how many times I tried (good thing I followed the magazine's advice and used matching green paper). The bottom center star is an old plastic ornament, which I should probably toss because it is starting to yellow.

The beaded snowflakes I made a number of years ago, from a Martha Stewart kit (I'm not obsessed, it only seems that way). It is just rocaille beads (size 10 maybe) strung on wire and twisted; I think that technique is known as French wire beading. After hanging up the five I made back then, I pulled out the supplies and made the rest of them, to adorn jars of spiced peach preserves for Beadboy1's teacher, therapists, and paras:
(I only used two of the designs, as I remember the third one being annoying.)

For the windows that usually get doilies I put up instead icicles:
Ten of these beaded ones, from, you guessed it, yet another old Martha Stewart kit. (The photo does not do them justice; Beadboy1 used his superpowers to screw up the settings in less than a second.) Only ten of them looked rather sparse, so I made more icicles from chandelier crystals I picked up at Home Depot.

The crystals:
I removed the gold wire and reattached them with silver, then tied sheer ribbon between the two pieces:
White and green for now, but the pink ribbon was so pretty I made a couple with that; maybe I'll put them up for Valentine's Day.

The icicles:
The strand of crystals along the top is vintage, one of three I have. The metal connecting them is cheap cheap cheap, and breaks if you look at it funny, so sometime in my future I will have the enviable task of wiring all those crystals together.