Imagination Is the Key to Decking Your Halls

Every Christmas I have visions of embellishing my home with charming, handmade decorations, maybe punched-tin tree ornaments or a Victorian gingerbread house for the sideboard. But every Christmas I run out of time and hang up the same old store-bought wreath, loop pine roping and pre-made bows up the stairway and clutter the mantel with nutcrackers, snowmen and other predictably festive figures.

I am what might be called a wanna-be crafter, one who saves bits of broken crockery for mosaics that never get made and collects piles of seashells for picture frames that remain bare. Alas, for want of time and inspiration, my glue gun has been holstered for years.

But the impulse to create things by hand for my home puts me in good company, this year in particular. Crafting is a $23-billion-a-year business, according to the Hobby Industry Assn., based in Elmwood Park, N.J. And sales are up sharply since September, says Susan Brandt, association spokeswoman. Crafting, she said, is “a high-touch activity” and a good way to reduce stress. “It makes people feel good, and they connect to other people who craft.”

At Michaels--the nation’s No. 1 specialty-crafts retailer with nearly 700 stores--same-store sales were up 9% in October over last year (www.michaels.com). In November, the company stock reached an all-time high and split 2-for-1. Next week, the company will move from the Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange.

This year, the chances for my getting in on all that cutting and pasting brightened when I snagged the perfect assignment. My editor asked me to accompany Lisa Cherkasky, professional food stylist and all-around handy person, to a Michaels store to watch as she assembled the makings for three holiday displays for a front door, a stairway and a mantel or tabletop. Then she would come to my house a few days later to show me how to put it all together.

It sounded like the best of both worlds: Lisa would come up with the ideas and figure out how to make them work, and the rest of us would be inspired by the results.

By the time I arrived at Michaels one day in late November, Lisa had grabbed a cart and was brimming over with ideas. She’d remembered a potato wreath (St. Patrick’s Day, perhaps?) and decided to extend the root-vegetable idea by using white pearl onions to cover a wreath form. When I reminded her that pearl onions also came in red, you could almost see the gears turning as she pulled a roll of deep-purple velvet ribbon out of her cart (rescued from the discount bin for $3.99); the color would be smashing on a red onion wreath.

She had clever ideas for the other projects too: swagging the stairway with mittens rather than the usual greens, and fashioning a stylized white “tree” from branches and iridescent Twinkle Trim for the mantel or tabletop.

Lisa had drawn up a list of basics--pipe cleaners, red felt, florist’s wire, glue sticks and a foam wreath form--but it soon became clear that wandering the aisles with an open mind was part of the creative process. Crafts stores are a fount of inspiration. Ideas blossom as you find yourself between aisles piled with silvery wedding bells and bins of bright beads. And Lisa has some good advice: If you think something might work, buy it; save the receipts, and you can return whatever you don’t use.

Near the wreath forms, for example, were packets of tiny white doves. “Are these tacky or not?” Lisa asked. “They might look great on the white tree.” Into the cart went a couple of handfuls. Another aisle yielded Twinkle Trim, a glass-free alternative to angel hair; into the cart it went, along with spray snow, white marbles, a galvanized tin bucket and sprays of glittery red and silver berries. In less than 15 minutes, most of the makings of Lisa’s tabletop tree were in hand.

Finding materials for the mitten swag was more focused: squares of felt for the mittens (20 cents each); red gingham ribbon to string them along; gold and silver jingle bells, plus satin cording from which to hang the bells, and raffia to tie the swag to the stairway. All we needed then was something fun to have poking out of each mitten--maybe candy canes or toy blocks. Or how about tiny teddy bears? Sure enough there was a whole shelf devoted to bears, so we grabbed every tiny faux Steiff bear--99 cents each--in stock.

By now we were verging on craft-store overload -- a phenomenon often accompanied by A) losing your cart and B) a craving for Starbucks. So we finished up with glue sticks, a moss-covered foam wreath form, a bit of fake ivy, glitter spray and a dowel for the tree’s main trunk and called it a morning. Lisa’s only other stop would be a supermarket, for six 10-ounce bags of the little red onions.

She set aside a Sunday to turn her creative bits and pieces into finished products. The tree, she said, was fairly easy. After covering the dowel and three crape-myrtle branches with white paint and fake snow, Lisa used pipe cleaners and florists’ wire to fashion them all into a stylized tree. After planting the tree in a bucket full of marbles, she proceeded to embellish the branches: A wire spray of red berries was pulled apart so single berries could be scattered here and there along the branches, and a full spray of berries attached on top. Silver berries sparkled on the ends of each limb, and a flock of the doves settled among the branches. After draping Twinkle Trim along the branches. Lisa pronounced her tree complete. It bears repeating that Lisa is adept at working with her hands.

Time: about 90 minutes. Cost of materials: $67.

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Next, Lisa warmed up her glue gun and moved on to the wreath. The main trick was figuring out how best to secure the onions to the foam form; after that, she assured me, this project became an exercise in repetition.

The best way, she found, was to plunge a toothpick into the wreath form, leaving about a quarter-inch sticking out. She dabbed this tip with a dollop of glue (Lisa used a glue gun, but said any good adhesive would work). Then she impaled an onion, root side down, on top. When the wreath was densely packed with onions, she went back in with bits of fake ivy and berries, gluing them into place here and there. A maroon and gold polka-dot ribbon made a perfect finishing bow.

Time: about two hours. Cost of materials: $35.

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On to the mitten swag, the most labor-intensive of the three projects. Lisa cut out fronts and backs of mittens from the felt squares and sewed them together with a zigzag stitch (If you’re not a sewer, glue works just as well.) The top of each mitten was left open, so a teddy bear could be slipped inside, and finished with small jingle bells hung on the satin cording.

Finally, the mittens were sewn (or glued) at intervals along the gingham ribbon, leaving enough to trail down the newel post.

Time: about 2 hours, 30 minutes. Cost of materials: $32.50.

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When Lisa arrived at my house in her craft-laden station wagon a few days later, we found that putting everything up was remarkable easy.

The onion wreath, a knockout of deep red and rich green, was striking on a green painted door surrounding an antique brass door knocker that my husband had found on one of his many flea-market forays. It weighed close to 4 pounds, though, so we anchored it with ribbon to a brass wreath-hanger that hooks over the top of the door.

The polka-dot ribbon bow was wired into place at the top. We liked the effect so much that we started to worry about the wreath’s longevity, wondering if we should protect it with a favored spot indoors.

The mitten swag went up just as easily with a combination of florist’s wire and raffia. All that remained to do was to tuck in the bears and then add a kitschy oil portrait of Santa to the stairway wall.

We decided to set up the tree on the table in the dining room, where raspberry-red walls provided the colorful backdrop it needed to stand out.

I came away from this exercise with a new-found appreciation for talent at work and a renewed determination to try my hand at something crafty.

I’ll follow Lisa’s lead: make a plan; shop with an open mind; hang on to any receipts (for those inevitable returns); and set aside a stretch of time without interruptions for the actual work.

Oh: And I’ll be sure to have plenty of spray snow on hand. It covers a multitude of sins.