SNOW JAR CHRISTMAS TREE - CHRISTMAS IN JULY

Since it's Christmas in July in the blog world, I'm sharing this project that I did for my friend Natalie at NorthShore Days.
Natalie was my first blog friend and her encouragement, emails and kind comments kept me going in those first scary days of puttin myself out there in the blog world.  She has a heart as big as Christmas itself!  If you are lucky enough to have Natalie as a friend, you really don't need anything else for Christmas!  If you have a friend like Natalie though, you might want to make them something like this for Christmas.......

 Every time I see the beachy blue colors (and I'm seeing them a lot this holiday season) I'm reminded of my good friend Natalie and her love of the beach in her home of New Zealand.  
This project started out way back last summer when I bought an old outdoor brass porch light at Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store.  Those things are awesome and have a ton of cool parts.  For this project, I used the top cover and spray painted it silver.

 Then I gathered a few supplies and went to work.

 What you'll need:
Glass jar with a lid, bottle brush tree, wire cutters, artificial snow, beads, some kind of base (I used the lamp part mentioned above) and glue. (I forgot to get the glue in the picture....oops.)
The first thing I did, was trim my little tree to fit inside the bottle.  I had to use some wire cutters to cut the stem down and then some scissors to trim and shape the branches at the bottom.

Using a toothpick and some glue, I put the beads on the tree.

When it was dry, I stood it up and glued the base to the inside of the jar lid.

I put a little artificial snow in the jar.  (It doesn't take much!) 

 Then I carefully slid the tree into the jar, screwed the lid on and tapped it until most of the snow fell to the bottom.  I decided to tie a little blue ribbon on it and then just set it on the base that I had spray painted.  

If you don't have a lamp base that you just happened to have spray painted last summer laying around, it looks pretty cute without one too!

 Whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year, I wish you the best!  I also want to remind you to reach out in the blog world and make some friends.  If you're lucky like I was...you may find someone who becomes a life-long friend who is dear to you even outside of blogland.  I love ya Nat!
Linking up to:

    

Linking up: