Holiday Snow Village Window

Happy Holidays! I made this winter wonderland for the UCLA Family Commons window, and it was the most fun I've had doing display in a long time!  Scrap ribbon, felt, buttons, shrunken old sweaters, sequins, and odds and ends...oh my! What a great excuse to go digging through all the little bits I've squirreled away all these years.  I'm so glad I'm such a pack rat.  I found awesome trim that I didn't even know I had (made of wood bits and beads... see bottom right blue house).  The houses are made of cardboard templates that I found online.  I cut the roofs out of wood (with a hack saw) and stained them with a rag, then cut a paper template of the front of the house that just wrapped a little around the back (since the back is unseen), and used that as a guide to cut the sweaters the correct size.  (I didn't want to waste my precious shrunken sweaters on the back that wouldn't show...I mean, duh!).  All the trim is hot glued in place.  The buttons I sewed because when it comes to little details I think people actually notice the personal touch, like thread in the button holes.

As for the snowflakes,  I sewed them together with a sewing machine.  It's important to use a machine that has a top-loading thimble when sewing paper so that it doesn't get jammed.  It doesn't take too long once the snowflakes are cut out- there are 20 on a strand, and about 20 strands total, so it took many many snowflakes- but only took a few hours to sew them together.   The window decals are from the Winter Wonderland Cartridge cut with my Cricut.  This machine is so key for all the window decals!