Last minute Kitschmas crafty: Vintage ornament scenes on … just about anything

Santa’s big day is getting very close and all my decorations are up, but I got an itch to have more fun with my hot glue gun, so I made this fairly easy Kitchmas craft. It’s a little snowman diorama or assemblage or scene of sorts built on a roll of vintage velvet Christmas ribbon as the base. I think that I learned from Georgia Peachez that you can build little Christmas scenes on — or in — or popping out of — most anything! Of course, my goal is to make as much of it from vintage as possible — I love that patina!

Here’s the bird’s eye view, so that you can see how I massed the items. I used teardrop-shaped ornaments for the “trees,” which give the piece height. You could also use little bottlebrush trees, but I have lots of these teardrop shaped ornaments and think that, glued on my their hanger-end with the point up, they make for beautiful colorful shiny Christmas trees on scenes like this — and on putz houses too.

This is the bottom of the ribbon — it was made by C.M. Offray & Son, Inc., of New York.

I arranged the pieces on top to retain some of the text of the ribbon… the history. I glued strings of Shiny Brite style Christmas beads around the edges and covered any ugly hot glue showing with pipe cleaners, glitter and/or sprinkle snow. Ummm, I didn’t get the beads on “straight” — I have some ideas on how to do better next time (string them on floral wire to add rigidity before I commit to the glue) — but meanwhile, I’m kind of happy with the imperfection.

Note: I also used Elmer’s regular white glue (rather than hot glue) to adhere various materials, as appropriate.

The snowman is ceramic, from a pair of salt and pepper shakers. I have lots of vintage Christmas odds and ends picked up from estate sales. The idea was to have them on hand for my wreaths. But, my stash is now so big I have plenty to go around.

It was fun to put its and bits together into this colorful little scene. I am going to make more!