Blogmas 2013: Dare to DIY

Alright, another challenge in the Dare to DIY series and the first Christmas one. More specifically, DIY something for my table. Well, unfortunately for me, my dining room table is covered with displaced furniture from my shambles of a living room. I used my breakfast nook table, which works, but isn't anywhere near as impressive.

Here's what now resides on my tiny table.

A snowy scene with two cars with Christmas trees on top! And the best part? It was absolutely free! Let me explain.

Last year, I really wanted to tie tiny trees to some of our model cars. Yes, we have a bunch, hanging out on shelves, we're a car family. However, I was inspired a little too late in the season and couldn't find any tiny trees in town.

In a bit of bad luck for my sister and good luck for me, she tried to buy some tiny trees for a terrarium and accidentally bought snowy ones. She offered them to me and they sat on in cabinet, waiting, for months.

So, with two of those trees and two reasonably sizes models (Yay! Red Volkswagen beetles!), I tied the trees to the roofs with little bits of twine, left over from my Thanksgiving sign.

To create some fake snow, I folded up a bit of scrap white fabric and safety pinned it to itself to hold its shape. The container is my display done I bought at Target last year on clearance. It usually houses some holiday cookies or anything small I don't want the cats to mess with. I think its official title is "Cheese dome", but my dairy ain't that fancy.

I found that the snowy fabric bellows less when the done actually holds down tiny bits of a couple of the edges. It take a couple of go's to make it look good, but eventually, you kind of get the hang of it and it looks less like fabric and more like snowy ground.

Total cost: $0. If you didn't have any of it, the cars would probably be $10, the cheese dome would be $15, the twine and trees would be $2 each, and the fabric maybe a dollar. So, $30. Yikes. Maybe buy just the trees and use what you already have.

For added effect, you could sprinkle the scene with some glitter or sugar for glistening snow. These scene would look great as a center piece, but I am without nice dishes or other tabley things, so the cheese dome stands alone. Ba dum cha!