Is It Too Early?

Hey everyone! I have been seeing some really great Christmas decorations, cards and tags lately. I keep telling myself *it's not too early to 'make' Christmas themed items, as long as I don't display them until after Thanksgiving.
So here is my first Christmas themed project for the season:

This is a wall hanging/wreath type decoration. I was inspired by the ornament made by Lolly (she gives an amazing tutorial for it HERE) Lolly's is ornament sized but I made mine slightly larger using 3" squares for the cones and a 5" circle for the center(which I sprayed with Snow Queen glimmer mist, one of the new winter colors) . The completed size of it is about 9". For the entire project I used only 3 sheets of double sided paper, 2 of the "Snow Day" and 1 "Winter Wisp" Both available at Your Memories Here with lots of other fabulous double sided papers.
I used thick chipboard letters to spell out the word "JOY". I painted the edges of each letter with purple acrylic paint first, then glued the patterned paper to the front. I added a coating of Mod Podge to each letter to make sure the paper doesn't lift up. Then I inked all the edges in dusty concord distress ink and added some icicle Stickles around all the edges too for a frosty ice look.

The letter "J" is embellished with some tiny jingle bells strung on light blue fibers, wrapped around the letter. I used a little dab of hot glue to keep each little bell in place.

The letter "O" has a few purple and aqua rhinestones embellishing it.

And finally for the letter "Y" I used some snowflake shaped brads, cut the prongs off then I smooshed (yes, that's a technical term) them into an embossing ink pad to get them well coated and sprinkled them with a light purple (Thistle from American Crafts) embossing powder and heated carefully with my heat gun. I used some hot glue to attach each one.

To attach the letters to my cone wreath base, I used the hot glue again. It seems to be holding up pretty good. Since the letters are made of chipboard they're pretty lightweight.

When it was all finished I proudly showed Kevin and he asked "Is that for someone named Joy?" Gosh he can be such a smart arse sometimes!

I hope to be back later this week with some Fall themed projects that I've been working on in my head :) I just got to get them out and onto paper!