A Festive Fruit Christmas Tree

I'm so excited to show you my festive fruit Christmas tree! Some weeks ago when I was at an estate sale- it was the one where I found all the "vintage" Martha Stewart magazines, I discovered a bag full of these miniature millinery fruit. As it happened, one of those Martha mags had a picture of a Christmas tree covered in very similar little fruits!

I wasn't really in love with all that red ribbon on the tree in the picture, but I did really like the bright colors of the fruit ornaments.  I decided I had to do a version of my own.  I took all my little fruit ornaments, and coated them in German glass glitter. (because, glitter makes everything good even better!)

Now, if you'll remember, last year I had TWO Christmas trees, and when we went to the nursery this year, I was almost certain I'd come home with a handful of the smaller trees again.  But to our delight, the nursery this year was brimming with variety!  They had so many different kinds: traditional, bushy, wispy, and...skinny! We fell in love with a skinny tree.  The tree is a good 7-8 feet, but no more than 3 feet across at the very widest, and it was priced like a smaller tree!  We brought it home, and I put it in the big tree stand - which I didn't even use last year.  It's a cheapo green plastic stand I found at a sale years ago, and I had spray painted it white.  I also gave the tree a coat of frosting with some spray snow.

I used two strings of multi-colored mini lights, which I decided would look softer than the LED lights I bought last year. The old incandescent bulbs just give off a nicer glow.  Because this tree has such excellent "shelves," I decided to lay out some patches of snow batting so I could build my little village scenes into the tree. So here's the big reveal!

Ta da!

I loved that there was such a huge gap between all the branches.  Not only could I set up my putz houses, but I also put some vintage bottle brush trees right on the boughs.

My vintage celluloid deer collection got spread out, and I just stuck them right into the snow.  A couple of these were my grandmother's, and the rest I've picked up here and there.

This little vignette is my favorite, I think. It's actually way up at the top of the tree:

I embraced color this year, probably more than ever.  Some of my past trees were very muted and metallic, but this year I included colors that I've never used before for Christmas - especially orange and mint/emerald green.

I made a big set of spun cotton oranges for the tree using 40mm spun cotton balls, and some paper leaves:

 

I also glittered some pine cones using vintage green glitter.

I included some of my spun cotton mushroom picks, which I sell in the shop. These have wire stems, and are just attached by wrapping the wire around the branch tips.

I hung my glittered millinery fruit in clusters near the outside of the tree.  Didn't they turn out great?! I'm pretty excited about them. Will definitely be using them in the years to come.

And that's it!  I hope you're all having fun decorating your trees this year!