Christmas Decorating Ideas: Bedroom ♡ Twenty Thirteen

Today, I've put together a few DIYs and Christmas Decorating Ideas for any bedroom! I love using these tips and crafts to really get my room into the holiday spirit. Lezgo.

01. My favorite part of Christmas decorating is....well... Christmas lights! That should be no surprise if you know me well. I actually keep these Christmas lights around my window all year round, but I think they are especially adorable and festive for holiday time. These ones have a dark green cord with plain white bulbs, and are indoor | outdoor lights. I just think they add a gorgeous sparkle to any room and I love the idea of having lights around the "headboard" area of a bed. I don't have a tall headboard, seeing as my bed is right against the window, so I improvised and placed the lights around the window to give myself an almost faux-headboard! I recommend changing these lights about 2-3 times a year if you're going to keep them in your bedroom all year round- the bulbs blow out extremely fast after long time use, so it's good to invest in a few cords per year!

02. My second easiest tip for bedroom Christmas decorating would be to recycle! And when I say recycle, I mean keeping Christmas boxes, stockings, and little items that you may get with a gift for Christmas every year. Here, I have two items that I've received as part of gifts in the past; the first being, the Juicy Couture stocking on the left, and the second, this little Christmas tree box that I keep standing upright from Hershey's. I'm pretty sure I received some kind of candy or small Juicy something in that stocking, and it matched so well with my room that I decided to just hang it on my curtain-back every year. In the Hershey Tree box, I'm pretty sure there was some Christmas-tree shaped chocolate, but I kept the box itself because of the cute pink streamer design. Recycling is honestly the easiest and fastest way to keep up with Christmas decor in your bedroom every year!

03. So this is my little tree guys! Isn't it so freaking adorable?! I have to say though, I really owe this one to my great-grandmother. This is a vintage tree that she made (ummmm vintage DIYing?! YES PLEASE) and I found it in a box in my grandmother's house, so I decided to put it together and keep it in my room. It of course, got a two- Jeffrey Campbell box stand, and here I'm going to show you what my awesome great-grandma Maria did to make this... 

What you need:

01. A tall, thin candle

02. Candle holder

03. Tulle (any color you prefer- my great-grandma used red for this tree)

04. Needle & Thread (any color)

05. Decorations!! 

06. Shoeboxes/ Festive boxes (for the base)

Break down:

01. Okay, so I started with two Jeffrey Campbell boxes because I think they're the cutest and they match my room to a tee. The box on top happens to be slightly smaller than the box on the bottom, to give it some balance. Next, take your candle out and place it in the holder so that it's straight!

02. This second part is the magic part that I didn't do, but it shouldn't be too hard. I would say that she used about a yard of tulle~ and you can do this one of two ways. Either cut the tulle into about eight varying sized circles (large for the bottom, to medium, to small) and poke a hole in the middle of each (big enough for the candle to slide through). OR, the way my great-grandma Maria did it, sew the tulle around in a circle to create the hole, (as seen in step 2) and she did eight of these (again, varying in size.. so bigger on the bottom and smaller on the top!) The measurement of the hole fitting exactly around the candle may be harder using this method.

03. Next, this is the part that I did do!! .... Slide the circles onto the candle in size order, with the biggest on the bottom and the smallest on the top. Remember, this little tree can come apart and be put in a box, which is how I found it~ so as long as you have those tulle circles with holes at the center & the long candle stick, you're basically good to go.

I then lined up each tulle circle so that it looked symmetrical.

Finally, I added some sparkle! The garland and vintage star were found in the box with the parts of the baby tree, so I was sure to add those on. I then popped some ornaments onto the tulle (preferably use glass ornaments like these because they're much lighter... after all, you only have some tulle and a candle holding up the entire tree). And, can we just take a moment to appreciate the rad-ness of that vintage star?! It's literally the coolest..

And finally! You're done. I owe this all to my great-grandma, I've never seen any DIY like this ever so kudos for her awesome sewing skills and crazy creativity. 

04. Finally, I made one last, easy project that literally anyone can do, a DIY Christmas banner. I think it came out simply adorable and I hung it right above my PBTeen Style Tiles... (lol oy vey). Here's how to create this fun- Urban Outfitters-inspired banner...

01. A computer, preferably a laptop or iPad.

02. Some kind of newspaper-like magazine. Here, I'm using Lush's Christmas Catalog

03. Pencil

04. Scissors

05. Tape

06. Pretty yarn, I'm using pink!

07. (Optional) I happened to have this metallic red star cardboard cut out that I'll be using in the banner.

08. A hole-punch (not shown)

01. Okay, so first things first, grab your newspaper-y catalog and open it up to a colorful page. Next, I simply googled "banner letters" and found this site that has print-outs of every letter, you can find the letters I used here! 

02. Next, I do this with a ton of projects, and it doesn't seem to hurt my laptop screen at all, but I basically use the screen as a light-board to trace. That's specifically also why I'm using newspaper- textured paper, because it's a lot thinner and easiest to see through. I basically just flip my laptop (or doing this on an iPad would work too) so that the screen is in my lap and the keyboard is against me. I'm just grabbing my pencil and a colorful sheet from Lush's catalog and tracing the M for my first letter!

03. Finally, once your done tracing, grab a scissor and cut out your letter. I'm like probably the worst at cutting anything, so if I can do it with ease, anyone should be able to. Newspaper is extremely easy to cut, just watch out for it ripping, cause it's super fragile! The trick with getting the letters to look kind of vintage and banner-y is to round out all the corners as your cutting each letter, don't leave any sharp edges!

I went through all the letters in "Merry Christmas" and used very different pages and colors for each letter! This took me about 20 minutes or so.

04. Here's where the fun part starts. So grab your letters and a hole punch, and punch one or two holes at the top of each letter. Try to make sure the hole isn't too close to the edge of letter because you don't want any of the letters to rip off.

05. Next, grab your yarn and start stringing it through the hole punches and put the letters in order. I actually found that the easiest way to do this was to string the letters on backwards (starting with S, A, M, T, S, I, R, H, C... etc). Then to make sure the letters would not rip off, I placed a small piece of tape over each hole with the yarn going through it. 

Keep stringing them together! I also placed the star (which had one hole punch on one of the points) in between "Merry"and "Christmas"!

Knot both ends and tape your banner up to a wall & you're done! This was an incredibly easy, affordable, and adorable DIY to spruce up any bedroom in the holiday season.

Hope you guys enjoyed this post & Happy Decorating!

"Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love."

[Hamlet 2.2]

Cheers, x!