Little Itty Bitty Hedgehog

I have had a request to knit a miniature hedgehog... here is the result!

Christmas Bling Tree

On Saturday (27th September 2014) I meet up with some friends from my Miniaturists Club to make a Christmas Bling Tree. This was however not a miniature project, and it was actually fun not having to worry about the scale of what we were making!

Jackie has made a number of these trees, from small framed ones made of sequins, to a very large one made with lots of clear 'diamond' coloured jewellery. We were there to attempt a large one!

We arrived at Jackie's where she had set up her living room full of trestle tables,  and our preordered board made by her husband. 

We had known since last Christmas that we were going to be doing this workshop,  so we had been keeping an eye out for broken jewellery and cheap sparkly jewellery since then.
Still, I knew I didn't have anywhere near enough to fill a full sized board,  so I had asked for a half size - 12 x18 inches.

We covered the board in black felt, cut out the shape of the tree and star, painted the background black. (Then stopped for a fantastic pot luck lunch!)

We then started filling in the tree with our 'bling'. I had intended to make a blue and 'diamond' coloured tree as all my Christmas decorations have a blue & silver theme. However I had taken along all my broken jewellery too. Lucky I did, as a broken hair tie with silver filigree and pink stones fitted the base of the tree perfectly.  Change of plan.... silver, blue AND pink became my design!

This actually worked in my favour, as a few people had pink items they weren't using,  so gave them to me - thanks ladies!

Home time, and I knew I'd have to go shopping again... oh well!

I purchased a lot more items from Riccarton (sorry, Westfield) Mall on Monday, and have spent the week gluing them on. It's kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle without the box!

If you would like to try to make one if these very cool trees, check out pinterest and here are a few tips I picked up:

1. Check out markets, car boot sales, op shops (a number of ladies bought tops just to cut the bling off them!), $1 & $2 shops.
2. Use sequins, and the small decorations for decorating nails (eg micro beads etc) to fill in the small spaces.
3. Collect more bling than you think you'll need.... you need a lot!
4. Enjoy the process, everyone will love the result.

PS. I'm now into week two... only have little gaps to fill. Will hopefully be finished in a few more days!