A Nice and Inexpensive Christmas Craft Project...

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving with friends and/or family.  My family headed to my folks, along with all of my siblings and their families.  We had a great time together!  I wanted to share this great Christmas or Holiday Craft project that my Mom came up with!  The finished project can be used as beautiful table centerpieces for the holidays!

First, my Mom saved all her Kleen-Ex boxes (the cube shaped).  I know I've thought to myself a million times..."I should do something with this beautiful empty box", because the boxes come in all sorts of great designs.  But I've never done anything with them.  My Mom took it one step further and came up with an easy project for the kids to do this Thanksgiving using these pretty Kleen-Ex boxes.  Here are the steps to follow:

YOU WILL NEED:

Empty Kleen-ex Boxes

Some newspaper or filler for each box

A small jar or jars that will fit inside the box 

Evergreen clippings such as pine branches, sprigs of holly etc..., other greenery or flowers

(you could also use the artificial stuff if you don't have access to fresh)

Wide decorative ribbon with a holiday theme or colors...

HOW TO:

1.  Take your newspaper and crumple it up, place it inside the box around the sides with enough space left to fit the jar into the center.  You could also try putting the jar in first and stuffing the paper in around it.  This step is just to stabilize the jar and keep it from sliding around if the arrangement is going to be moved around at all.

2.  Fill the jar about halfway with water and place inside the box so that it remains centered with the hole in the Kleen-ex box.

3.  Arrange your greens and other Holiday themed things inside the jar.  Make sure your arrangement is full enough so that when it's finished you don't see any of the hole in the box.

4.  Finish it off with a nice wide ribbon tied around the box.

These really were beautiful and smelled wonderful because of the fresh greens.  I had some other ideas that you could do with this same idea.

You could do several of these to place along a mantle, shelf or table and on each box decorate with a letter of a word, such as "Peace", "Noel" etc...

You could use the boxes as a base for those small Christmas trees and decorate accordingly...

You could use the boxes and with a hand crafted doll coming out of the center, make a cute little "Jack in the Box" like decoration.

You could wrap each box or just use ribbon and make them look like wrapped gifts to put along a mantle or shelf.

I'm sure there are a million ways you could use these pretty little boxes for all sorts of craft projects.  If you have any ideas to add,  please leave a comment and tell us about them!

Well, it's official....the holiday season is upon us, so happy creating everyone!