I apologise for my complete lack of presence on this blog in the last two months, particularly because this is my favourite time of year and now, with only 3 more days to Christmas (!!!), I kind of want to cram in as many Christmassy, festive posts as possible! Okay, so this one is another DIY sort of post- basically I was bored around the house and have been spending ample time on Pinterest looking at so many christmas decoration ideas, crafts, table settings, all of it, and decided to do up our table and make a cool little centrepiece for a big Christmas dinner we are having at our place tomorrow. I didn't want to go too overboard (well some would argue I kind of have anyway, but I didn't want anything too extravagant), so wanted a rustic sort of vibe and despite the fact that I'm not always the best DIY person around and generally lack the patience for crafts, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, so thought I'd share it with you in case any of you are looking to spice up your Christmas tables this season!
Here's what you'll need:
You'll need some scissors, a serrated knife, glue, sticky tape, prestic, crhsitmassy washi tape, a chopping board, silver spray paint (or any colour you want), coloured card, lots of different patterned and christmas coloured ribbon, brown craft string, tea light candles, pine cones and pine needles (we basically just went for a walk in the forrest and gathered a bunch of foliage), fake spray snow, a large 2m piece of driftwood, lots of different size candles and a bunch of mason jars. Obviously none of these are essential, you can pretty much just do what you want with this, but that is what I used.
Okay so the first thing I did was decorated the tea lights by just wrapping a strip of really cool christmas washi tape around the metal holder of the candle, and then because the tape was a bit thicker than the candle, I just tripped the edges.
The next thing I did was fill some mason jars with green foliage and pine needles. You can pretty much put whatever inside, but this was all I could find, although I saw some pretty cool ones on Pinterest with holly and red berries and ribbons and stuff inside, so you can go to town with this. I then tied a thin ribbon round it into a bow as well as a second bow in some craft string too. I haven't done it yet as the dinner party isn't till tomorrow and I don't want to kill the plants or make them soggy, but you then just fill the jars up with water and float some tea lights on top of the water, and it looks super pretty.
The next thing I did was make these really cute little cutlery holders that you can slip each person's knife, fork, spoon and serviette into and place it onto their side plate, or however you wish to position it. I used a template I found online which had this really lovely little quote about being grateful on it. I know this was actually meant for a thanksgiving table setting but seeing as we don't celebrate that here and to me Christmas is still a time to be with family and friends and give thanks, so I really liked these.
To make these, you just print the template, I printed it onto red paper to stick with the Christmas theme. Once printed you follow the dotted line to cut it in half, and then glue down the two edges, about 1cm on each side, to make a little envelope. Here is the template if you want to use it.
With some more jars I had, I then just used a whole variety of different sized, coloured and patterned ribbons as well as the washi tape to tie around the jars at different levels and layering them basically just to make them look pretty. You can really just do whatever you like, but I think they turn out to look really lovely and are super simple! The jars I used are actually these solar jars which light up, you obviously don't need these, I just used them because we had them, but they look quite cool lit up as well.
Next, I used one of these jars to make a rustic sort of wood-lined jar. I had seen these done with cinnamon sticks too, but I just used actual sticks I had found lying around in the forrest as the jar was too tall for the cinnamon. I just used the knife to cut/break the sticks into the correct length and then used prestic to attach them all around the circumference. One done, I just tied some ribbon around the sticks and then sprayed the whole thing with a light dusting of fake snow spray.
Similarly again to the jars, I tied a bunch of ribbon around several candles of different sizes.
Next I spray painted some pine cones silver so that I could dot them around the table too. I also spray painted some of the pine needles and sticks from earlier silver too so that I could put them in bunches around the pine cones. Make sure when you spray paint to put down a covering first and give them a few minutes to dry before you put them on the table.
And then all that was left was assembling it. I put on a white table cloth with a red runner down the middle. On top of the runner I put a large, probably about 1,5-2m piece of wood along the runner, just to that the centrepiece could be a bit raised from the table. I first sprayed the wood with the fake snow just to give it a white dusty look. Then I basically just distributed the various decorated jars, candles and tea lights all over the wood. On the side of the wood I then made little bundles of the silver pine cones and foliage and that was pretty much it. I haven't yet put down place mats or used the utensil holders I made as the dinner party isn't till tomorrow, but you can really just set the rest of the table however you please.
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| Apologies for the really crap panorama hahah, I couldn't keep still enough to stop it from coming out squiggly. |
And that's it- I hope this maybe gave some of you a few ideas for the table this Christmas, everything is really simple and easy to do and none of the things you need are particularly expensive and can mainly just be found in the park or around the house.
