Creating Some Christmas Fun

This past week I have been busily involved in a craft project that has been a lot of fun.  Let me tell you what I have been up to.

Last spring I purchased this little hand made sunflower at the local Goodwill Store.  Don't you just love it?
It is made from a craft wooden spool, a cinnamon stick, some cotton fabric, and a button - so cute that I had to try to make one.

So this last week I decided to modify the sunflower project so that I could make some Christmas type flowers that I could use for small friendship gifts or party favors.  I like to have such a project every Christmas so that I can give these little thank you gifts to friends - fun enough to say "I love you, friend,"  but small enough not to be reciprocated.

So I used these materials to create my Christmas flower pots.

1 1/2  red polka dotted satin ribbon
Narrow green checked satin ribbon
Black drawing pencils
Old wooden spools of thread that I already had
Old white buttons
Christmas design scrapbooking paper to cover the spools

I gather-stitched the red ribbon to create the round flowers.  Then I glued on the white button in the center of each flower using Quick Grab glue.  I covered each spool top and bottom with round paper discs, and then a strip of scrapbooking paper around the cylinder.  I punched the hole in the paper on top.  I stitched a loop of green ribbon for the leaves.  When all this was finished I used the Quick Grab glue to glue the flower at the top of each pencil with the leaves glued right beneath.  Then I simply stuck each pencil lead point down into the spool flower pots.

Please notice that the pencil/flowers can still be pulled from their pots and used for writing. These can be used on a desk or by the your phone. Since this is true, I created note pads that can be used along side the Christmas pencil.  To create these I used the following materials:

Folded green card stock
Small white note pads
Rubber stamps (Gift box and Merry Christmas)
White ribbon

So the project is finished.  I have made 22 sets.  I hope my friends enjoy them.  And I hope that they make for very festive place settings at our next Christmas luncheon.