More Creative Uses for Vintage Papers

Once I looked at the old vintage papers, I was inspired to continue creating.

I made vintage sheet music pinwheels and added silver and gold German Dresden snowflakes and added a glittered butterfly.



The ornaments look adorable on this lovely little tree made in Western Germany. I couldn't believe I found two of these trees on the shelf at the local thrift store for $3.00.

In among the sheet music was an old church hymnal from 1929. Many hymns were in Latin. I fashioned lovely little angel ornaments from the hymnal pages, folding the skirts and added vintage chenille pipe cleaners for arms. I used German scrap faces and beautiful gold German Dresden halos and wings. I made two sizes. A great place to get the German Dresden trims is Blumchen's. The on-line catalog has many wonderful supplies. When it comes to Christmas I love anything vintage and German. Aren't these angels adorable?


As I was folding paper, I realized I could fashion aprons. I used pages from my grandmother's 1934 cookbook and added some vintage cotton rick rack and ribbon apron strings. These became perfect ornaments for two kitchen trees. I used vintage tin cake pans for the stands, added my perky little apron ornaments on the branches. I had several old spice boxes, so I ran a piece of jute twine under the lid and made a few spice box ornaments. I made the little candy peppermints by cutting 1/2 inch strips of white and colored wool. I put on a little glue to hold the two pieces together and rolled the two pieces and secured the end with some more glue. All that was left was to attach a string hanger and hang these "no-calorie sweets" on the tree. The little "elf" perched on top of the tree is a wool ornament my mother made.



A plate full of the little "wool goodies" my mom created.


I hope to do a little holiday decorating this week. I love Christmas and will share all my holiday decorating ideas with you.

A Leather Case of Vintage Papers

When my children were taking piano lessons, my mom brought me the leather case from my grandmother's house which was filled with sheet music and song books from my mom's and her sister's piano lesson days. As I was looking for inspiration for a Holiday Market I was doing, I decided I would create a line of decorations using the vintage sheet music.

Sheet music was used to make elegant topiary trees in vintage silver containers adorned with heavily glittered black and silver butterflies carefully punched from card stock. I added a little vintage tinsel for sparkle. Everything was repurposed in this project as I used paper packing for the moss in the topiary container. These trees would work with any style decorating because of their simplicity and understated colors.



I used Mod Podge to apply pieces of vintage sheet music to foam cones. For the "stem" I used a 1/2 inch dowel painted black. I secured the topiary into a vintage container using floral foam for silk arrangements and hot glue. All that was left was the addition of the simple black and silver butterflies. I used Martha Stewart's butterfly punch and punched butterflies from card stock. I used white glue and heavily glittered the butterflies on both sides. I scanned a punched butterfly to enlarge it and then I traced and cut the larger butterflies by hand.






Unfortunately the shoppers that day were only lookers so i have my beautiful topiary trees left to use in my holiday decorating.