My late friend and club member Josefina presented a great make-it-and-take-it workshop at our then-club's Christmas party one year.

She provided the bottle brush tree already attached to a crackle base, the dried stuff, as well as purchased ornaments (like the little horse below) and hand made ornaments of all kinds. A real bonanza!

We attached the dried greenery (whitery?), applied the little fake lights and roping and began placing ornaments. There were so many we had to finish at home.

Look at the workmanship!

Notice how she used the inexpensive wedding favor doves, leaving some white and painting some red, too.
Despite severe arthritis, Josefina was marvelously adept at making exquisite things, and finished making the last of these ornaments on the plane returning from a trip to Europe the night before our club's party!

Here, my finished Josefina tree is displayed in a glass dome on a bookshelf, along with some gift-filled wagons. The Santa on the right has gifts in his pack, and the little toy box is a Hallmark ornament filled with tiny toys. That lamp is actually very small; it was a gift one Christmas from my young nephew, Andy. (Since these pictures were taken, all these items have appeared in different places throughout our house each holiday season.)

This little wagon is about three inches long, and has been placed in many spots in my living room over the years. It is filled with inexpensive little toys and now parks by the Josefina tree.

As does this more recently filled metal wagon. That tiny pottery piggy bank is from Mexico. Because I have so many wrapped mini packages, I sometimes put a large stack next to these little wagons. They make a good display next to books on a shelf, as shown above with the tree, or on an end table.

Here's the rest of that shelf. The ornaments in that potpourri holder (the odd blobs are from potpourri) are Shiny-Brites; the first decorations my husband and I bought many years ago when we felt we could afford our first Christmas tree. I read somewhere recently that those inexpensive ornaments had become sought-after, and that a famous designer was resurrecting the line. No doubt the new ones will cost much more than the originals! The brass bowl has more of a wonderful smelling potpourri which I will probably never find again.
As an aside: You may notice those Shakespeare books. Well, you can read the story of the eight brown volumes behind the ornament holder, the Greatest Cheap Thrill of my LIFE, here.
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