I love making my own Christmas decorations. A friend of mine posted a picture of a Christmas decoration that she found online that she wanted to try to recreate. The photo was a stick, with ornaments suspended from pieces of cord in various lengths. I loved the idea, but always like to put my own slant on things and I definitely love to incorporate items from nature into any craft that I make.
I tried searching the internet using the original photo to find directions for how to make it, but I wasn’t able to. I knew I had supplies around the house that I could use to make it and I’m pretty happy with the results.
I’ve always liked to collect sticks so I chose a nice one as the “hanging” branch. In the original photo, the person who made it had used jute to hang the ornaments. I used faux suede craft cord that I had previously purchased for other craft projects. The jute may have been easier to work with, but I wanted to create loose knots that I could insert Christmas ornament hooks through to hang the ornaments.
I began working on the project on a flat surface, just cutting pieces of cord in various lengths and tying them to the branch, and adding knots in random places. That definitely didn’t work out well so I eventually hung it from a hook on the wall to continue working on it,
I put a LOT of pieces of cord and since I used larger ornaments than the original project, I really ended up with too many. If I were doing it again, I would use fewer cords and space them farther apart.
Once I had the cords tied to the branch, I started adding decorations and ornaments. I love owls, so I added a lot of those. And I added ornaments that were gifts from special friends or that had belonged to my mother, and were a part of my childhood Christmases. I added the ornaments by using regular Christmas decoration hooks and slipping them through the knots that I had tied in the cords.
The whole project was more complicated than I anticipated it to be. I’m not a perfectionist, by any means, and I could have kept moving things around and adding more but I have learned that sometimes it is better to just call something “finished” and move on to the next project.
For me, Christmas is always a time for being crafty in some way!
This is a copy of the original photo that my friend posted online. If you know the source of the original, please let me know so I can include that info in this post. 
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