Time goes fast this year, does it? In less than two months, it’s Christmas 2019! Ho-ho-ho!

Christmas is always one of my favorite holidays because I have SO MANY ornaments stocked in the garage and waiting for the entire year to get unpacked. Decorating the room, enjoying some hot chocolate next to the fireplace, and just chatting and laughing with families and friends. It makes you feel  warm and cozy in winter.

Shopping Christmas decors in T.J.Maxx and World Market is a must-do thing for me. I love the designs of some of their decors. Meanwhile, I like crafting things for Christmas too. So when guests come to visit, I have something to surprise them! (Yep, show-off time too. :p)

Since I dry a lot of flowers, I want to show you 3 crafting ideas with dried flowers this year to decorate your Christmas. They can add more colors to your home and make this Christmas even more special to you!

Christmas Tree with Dried Silver Sage

When shopping Christmas decors, you probably always look for something to decorate a coffee table or a dinning table. This Christmas tree with dried silver sage is about 17.5” tall and perfect to fit into any space.

You can easily get a cone base from any crafting store like Hobby Lobby. Buy a few bunches of silver sage from a flower shop and hang them upside down in the house for a few weeks to dry out. Remember to avoid the direct sun. The silver sage is not the same sage you use for cooking; it’s called mountain sagebrush.

Second, pick some flowers to decorate the tree. You can be creative on this part. I like trying some wild flowers. The yellow ones you see on the picture are dandelions I got from our backyard. They turn out very well like stars! I also use chocolate lace, globe amaranth, safflowers, African daisies, and some hydrangea petals. You can burry them in silica gel for a few days to dehydrate. Once everything gets dried, time to put them together.

Glue the sage first from the bottom of the base to the top piece by piece. You want to use the finest part only to make the shape look the best. Safflowers’ buds are a little big and don’t fit into such a small tree very well. You can use tweezers to pull out the yellow stamen, cut off the bottom part evenly, and glue a little to keep the stamen together before attaching it to the tree.

Just be very gentle when you glue flowers to the sage. They are super fragile once dried and easily damaged. Once you are done, find a small piece of cute Christmas sign and hang it to the tree. You know what the best part is? The smell of the silver sage!! The scent is very herbal and enjoyable, and you will love it more!

Christmas Wreath with Dried Hydrangeas

Blue and white hydrangeas are easily to get in California the entire year. But for those green-reddish ones, you probably can only get them at this time of the year. I found mine from Trader Joes. To make an 18″ wreath, you need at least 3 bunches of hydrangeas. Each bunch comes with 3 stems for $5.99. If you see them in the store, get them right away because they are sold out quickly.

Before burying them in silica gel, cut off the big stems and keep the flower parts only. This will shorten the dehydrating time. Meanwhile, you can dry some star flowers in the room and put them among the hydrangeas later on. For this wreath, I use a metal ring as the base and arrange the flowers with wires. The fact is that it turns out a little hard to shape the wreath because dried flowers are not flexible. You probably want to get a grapevine wreath as the base and glue flowers to it. It should be much easier.

Once you are done, trim the wreath a little to make the circles inside and outside rounder. You can tie a red bowknot in the middle or use some ribbon to give a highlight. I prefer to use something red so it can match to the natural color of the hydrangeas very well.

A Silver Birch Wall Decor

Silver birch is one of my favorite trees for interior decorations. I like their natural white peeling barks and patterns, and the color is perfect for decorating Christmas. Here I’m going to show you how to make a wall decor with it. Making this one needs some techniques. It needs some math skills.

I got my birch from Hobby Lobby and it comes with 3 sticks. Each stick is about 3 foot long and good for making one decor. Before you cut off the wood, measure it first and draw a picture on paper so you calculate the ratios and know where to cut first. You want to make sure the distance between each two pieces is even, and it’s a nice triangle shape once you hang it on the wall.

Once you cut it off, put all pieces on the ground. Get two thin hemp ropes for each side and start tying them up. You need to make sure the ropes are long enough so you can use it from the start to the end. If not, you have to make knots in the middle with another rope, and the decor won’t look clean with knots.

Starting to tie from the bottom piece to the middle and then to the top. Tie the rope to the wood from inside to outside. That way, you can finish it at the left or right end of the wood and then move to the upper piece. Remember to make a dead knot at the end of each piece of the wood to make it stable.

After finishing tying up the birch, you can hang it on the wall and start gluing dried flowers to it. Hanging it to the wall is unnecessary, but it can give a better angle about where you want to glue the flowers and how you want to arrange them. I like using light green moss to fill some space, so the bright color can help the whole piece shine a little more. You can also use some cotton flowers in between. They look like snow, for a lovely white Christmas!