Help me brainstorm kinds of garland for Christmas trees and decorating.

popcorn-and-cranberry (handstrung)
paper chain garland, with or without messages, pictures, stickers on the paper (handmade)
wired ribbon
gold or silver reflective garland (bought on sale after Christmas the year before)

The funniest, and most thematic, garland I ever saw was on the Science department's Christmas tree at my alma mater. They save up the nylon ropes that are made in all the labs by the freshman who are going through their Gen Eds. They're thick-and-thin-again rubbery white strands and, the student works cover the tree with them. They throw it out after Christmas, and then start saving them up again the next semester.

You can make garlands of hard gingerbread shapes strung on wire, just put a knot on either side to keep them from sliding around.  Tie strips of (re-purposed) fabric along wire to make a garland, too.  Or what about a string of paper snowflakes?

 Hi ... There are ornament recipes for salt dough that can be baked and painted, and cinnamon dough that makes great smelling ornaments.

You could use last year's holiday card pictures to create a new string of picture-garland. What about using family/friend pictures to create a 'faces' garland?

Creating a 'new' reusable garland by taking all the mis-matched and odd-pieces of holiday items, in the bottom of the storage boxes, and attach them with string.

The garland base could start with ribbon, rope, twine, cloth strips ties together, or a combination of them all.

Any old jewerly, beads, small childrens toys (like meal-toys), game pieces, paper money (reminder/teaching giving at the holidays), verses, personal says, poems, prayers, ect ... Hope that gives you a few more ideas to ponder. 

 The only garland I use these day's was made my aunt. She crocheted a chain of "popcorn" , small balls linked together with a short chain stitch. I'm not crocheter my self so I don't know if im being clear. It's really cute and looks like popcorn. I keep it in a zipper bag to keep from discoloration. I've had it for years and it still looks brand new.

cyn

When I interned at City Hall, there was a Christmas tree decorating contest for each office. It was neat to see how the various departments had a themed tree. I thought the most interesting was in the accounting department. They had put up monolopy money as decorations on the tree, but their garland was long chains of paper clips.

I teased that they didn't have anything better to do that string paper clips together. The front desk receptionist just snarled at me--it seems she was put in charge of it, and didn't like it one bit. I still thought it was cute, though.

Another idea is to string together gum wrappers--I don't know how it's done, but I've seen it several times.

Carrying on the crocheted theme, you can use heavy cotton yarn in Christmas colors, or 2 or 3 strands of worsted weight yarn, and using a large hook crochet a long chain.  A variation would be to buy some large inexpensive colored plastic beads, string them on the yarn, then crochet them into a chain.  It doesn't have to be just beads, either, anything small that can be strung onto the yarn ahead of time and worked into the chain would be cute.  Edey

I'm on a tight budget this year, since my husband's hours got cut (from 55-60 hours a week, down to 32). I've been thinking the same thing. Lucky for me, when we bought our house in February, we found a Christmas tree up there! So I'm decorating mine with some pretty wired ribbon I found from the dollar store. I can't remember how many feet it was, but I bought two, and I think that will be enough to cover the tree.

Sounds like it will be beautiful, Laura! We wouldn't have a Christmas tree except for a little desk-top one, but last year we won one in a raffle for $3.00! I consider that one of the best deals ever for household things that I paid for (instead of receiving as gifts or salvaging.)

 Welcome to the Forum!

From another thread came the idea of making beads from magazine pages and stringing them together for colorful, green garland. I think it's a great idea and one I'd like to try.

I have seen fancy trees in magazines decorated with wire ribbons as garlands or instead of garland made into bows.