Bead Swap Chistmas Tree

Several months ago I was prowling my local Goodwill store and discovered a tiny artificial Christmas tree is dire need of a new home and a makeover.  I paid the princely sum of $1.99 and carried my treasure home.

Stripped of it's string of ghastly plastic beads

I hunted the web for suitable lights in an appropriate size and found some on Amazon.com. 20 Tiny "globs" of glass strung along a silvery wire.  Just the right size for my purposes.  These were the first things added to my naked little tree.

With 1 strand of LED lights

Not very impressive against the bright light of the patio window but an improvement. During this makeover, I routinely annoyed my sister, Karen, and my best friend, Michele, with texts and emails of my progress.  Not sure they appreciated it but I had fun.  

The next step was to add a strand of 2mm clear glass beads that had been hiding in my sewing trims.  The beads had been crocheted together and obviously intended to be trim for a garment. I also pulled out a length of diamond-cut chain and added it for more sparkle.

Now began the fun part! I wanted to make my own little ornaments for the tree.  I'm a member of a bead swap group (beadswap-USA.com) and over the past year I'd collected a pile of gold colored charms from the swap boxes that came and went. I used every one of these charms (+/- 50 pieces) plus a smattering of my own stash. I had thought to use earring wires for hooks but they proved to be too big for the scale of the tree. I ended up using 1-1/2" eye wires to make my own hooks.

Tiny handcuffcharms!

Now almost every traditional tree has round ball ornaments and while I did have some round gold charms, it just wasn't enough.  I got out my glass pearls and clear glass bead boxes and got to work creating ornaments for the little tree. Just like making drops for earrings!

I really did get carried away with the ornament-making but I had such a good time!

Here's the completed project. I'm going to search for an acrylic box to protect it as I don't relish the prospect of having to dust and clean every tiny ornament.