My Christmas Mantel

I just decorated our mantel for Christmas.  Crazy, I know, but I needed to take photos of some crafts for a contest.

At the Blogpodium conference Tonic Living had a great contest to win $100 to spend on fabric. The rules of the contest were simple:  choose two pieces of fabric and make them into something ... anything creative and inventive.   How fun is that?

The first big decision was which of their gorgeous fabrics to choose.  You can see all the choices in the photo below.

photo by Anna with Love, official photographer of Blogpodium

(was that my fabric the photographer happened to catch in the photo above at Blogpodium?)

I decided to make something Christmassy so chose red and green fabric.  My thought was that I could not only use the item for the contest, but also get a head-start on Christmas decorating.  

I used a thrift store tree-shaped baking pan and glued the green fabric on to it using spray glue to keep the fabric smooth.  I used paperclips along the sides to hold the fabric in place while the glue dried. 

Then I cut out the letters to spell "Noel" from bristol board and glued them on to the back of the red fabric and cut the letters out.

Now it was time to decorate the mantel for Christmas!  It felt funny to be digging out showy wreaths and snowflakes when it isn't even Hallowe'en yet, but a blogger has to do what a blogger has to do.

So there you have it - the story of why I decorated our mantel for Christmas at the beginning of October.  

P.S., Rest assured, I put all the Fall decorations back as soon as I finished taking the photos!