I put away all the Christmas decorations except for one – the Snow and Crystal Tree. The corner will be too empty if I put it away and I love the wintery look of it. The snowflakes remind me of scribbles. Scribble Snowflakes!

The tree is a dried branch cut from a tree in the woods behind our house. I stuck it firmly into Styrofoam in an urn and laid moss around the base.
The crystals are from the old chandelier that used to hang in my parents’ dining room when I was a child. I loved that chandelier so I’m thrilled to have some of the crystals from it.
The snowflakes are made of natural tendrils and curls that I collected from the vines in the backyard in the fall.  My granddaughter helped me look for the curly tendrils and we really enjoyed our time together outdoors.

To make the snowflakes, I broke off the dry twigs and slid the curly tendrils off. Here is a photo I posted on instagram of the twig bits with the tendrils removed.

Each snowflake needed six similar pieces so I grouped the tendrils by size.

Once I had six similar tendrils, I trimmed the ends so they were the same length.

For each snowflake, I made a contoured mat out of foil for gluing. A small bead was glued temporarily on the back of the foil so it would create a small mound on the right side.

On the right side of the foil, on top of the tiny mound, I glued a small bead for the center of the snowflake. All the tendrils will then be glued to this bead using hot glue.

The tendrils were arranged around the center bead in a pleasing manner.

The two straightest tendrils were glued on first, opposite each other, to create the line of symmetry.

The other tendrils were glued on the sides and the hot glue was allowed to harden.

To remove the delicate snowflake, the foil was folded and pinched together under the snowflake. Then the snowflake was gently popped off the foil. One of the snowflakes stuck too much so I used tweezers to pull the foil off and reglue the tendrils that had loosened.


The snowflakes were hung with thin hooks I made from jewelry wire.



The vintage crystals look lovely on the tree.

At the base of the urn is a gilded tea cup filled with little glass ball ornaments.

The little fox ornament I got several years ago finally found a home… at the base of the Snow and Crystal tree.

I don’t know what to put in the corner when this tree comes down.. probably a lamp. But then again, perhaps I’ll make a Snowy Valentine tree…