12 Days of Christmas - Day Nine

It's day 9 already! Can you believe there are only 5 more days  'til Christmas? Oh, my goodness! I am almost done with my gifts, which is a miracle, because I'm always working right up until the last moment. I still have a monkey to make a head for and some more snowballs to cut, but that's it! Oh, and my daughter asked me YESTERDAY to make a scripture carrier for my grandson, who is getting baptized TOMORROW!!!! I told her I would do my best, but maybe not by Christmas. I really will do my best, though. It's taken him a year to decide he wants to be baptized, and I am so very proud of him, so by gum, that carrier will be done if there's any way!

OK, enough of that. Today's project is ribbon poinsettias. This project has plagued me, because nothing has gone right with it from the very start. First, I couldn't find the ribbon I needed, so I had to get pink instead of red (which is okay, I guess, because it's one of "the colors" of today), then I couldn't get it in the really wide size I wanted, then I couldn't find the gold beads in the right size! Oh well, punt, right? So my poinsettias, instead of going into a nice big arrangement, became adornments for pine cone ornaments.

 

Start with floral ribbon, which is that kind of ribbon florists use that is not fabric and will tear down the length if you need it to. Mine is a lovely shade of bright pink. Cut diamonds from the ribbon by cutting at a slant. You will need 8 diamonds for each poinsettia.

 

 

Take a diamond between your thumb and forefinger and gather it up. Place another diamond next to it and gather it up too. Make sure they are not on top of each other but side by side. Do this until you have 4 diamonds all gathered up, then wrap twice with a piece of wire about 6" long and twist like a bread tie. Cut another piece of wire about 12" long, gather up your 4 other diamonds and wrap and twist. Spread the wires on both bunches of petals. Spread the petals on the short-wired bunch at the halfway mark and slip the long wires in the spaces and twist again.

 

 

This will give you w flower with two layers of petals. Twist the short wires around the other layer also, because this will help make your flower more stable.

 

 

 

Now you're going to take the long wires, which I should have said at the beginning should be gold, (ooops!) and wind them around something small, like a skewer, to form two small "springs".

 

 

Stretch the springs a little and curve them into a circle. Press the end of one spring over the end of the other to make them attach to each other. Voila! A poinsettia! When my mother made her large ones, she used the gold beads like you can get on a string for decoration and cut them apart and glued them in the middle, but I couldn't find any gold beads small enough, so we have "springs" instead. And they look just fine. It's hard to tell from the picture, but I put some sparkly glitter on the ends of the pine cone "leaves." If you want to make an arrangment, you can use floral tape to wrap the short wires to a skewer or piece of heavy wire for a stem.

 

A small pine cone with one poinsettia on the top.

A larger pine cone with two poinsettias back to back.

 

And there we have it.....ribbon poinsettias. I forgot to tell you - mom also made them look almost real when made out of velvet ribbon! Really beautiful.

 

Well, now I have to go write a talk on baptism for tomorrow.  This is going to be a special day, for him and for his family.

 

See you next time.