The Big Reveal!

As Promised I am going to reveal just what I was making 2 weeks ago....

*insert drum roll*

Sequin Christmas Trees!

OK so Its probably not THAT big of a reveal but I am going to give you some tips on this craft. First off Dont do it. Just say no. Like to drugs in the 90's. Not so much now though. You don't hear a lot of 'Just say no to drugs' going around these days. So yea, don't do it. Boucliar Home has some lovely solid colour sequin cones this year, for less than $10. Go with that, because THIS craft will take you longer, cost more and hurt your fingers. 

Still not deterred? Well if like me you decided to take this on before finding beautiful ones at boucliar, or if you simply must have stripped, certain coloured,  multi coloured or some other excuse to make these here are some tips.

Tip 1) For the Stripped Cone you need to set some lines. My Stripped Cone needed guide lines all around it to ensure I was keeping my lines evenish. One little mistake at the bottom quickly adds up to wavy lines. unless you want wavy lines then just go for it all higgily squiggly and don't worry about it. Though even with that there is a chance you will end up with straight lines or something. that's just the way the world works it seems. 

To make my guidelines I used a marker held flat on a surface and rotated the cone around. I used the marker straight on the table, stacked on some books, on top of a short glass, on top of a short glass on books, on top of a large glass... you get the picture, in order to get parallel lines all up the cone. 

Tip 2) But LOTS of glitter, short pins and clear seed beads. You are going to take 1 pin put on a bead, put on a sequin and repeat. About 1300 times. Literally. The Stripped cone took aprox 1300 pins and the black and white one a little less. 

Tip 3) Get a thimble. Pretty self explanatory but I didn't have one so my fingers hurt. 

Tip 4) Don't do pink at the top of a randomly placed black and white cone. I was kinda going for a star look but to me it looks more like blood, or a volcano, which isn't to festive to me so I would stay away from this. Ill probably end up changing mine once I can feel my fingers properly again. 

Tip 5) Set aside lots of time. I probably did an hour to two hours every day for a week on the striped one. The randomly placed smaller black and white was easier because I didnt have to care if they were in a line, or what colour I grabbed and could start and stop wherever. With Stripes there is a stop and a start place so you are constantly working around in a circle. 

Tip 6) Seriously go out and buy something cheaper! 

Having said that I still love my cones. They are cute and I can say I made them myself. But if I could turn back time. I would not do this. I probably spent $50 on supplies to make these two cones, though I have left over beads and a wack of sequins. My sequins came from the dollar store and had 8 different colours in one pack  like 8 different pinks,  8 different purples, etc. So I had to buy 3-4 packages of each colour to have enough of each colour. Beads came from dollar store and pins came from the dollar store at first, but ended up being cheaper at Walmart. All this added up on the cheap side because my initial large cone came from Value Village in a bag of craft stuff for $2 that I bought in the summer. The cone alone would set back another $10-15.

Live and Learn

Pin It