Since I waited until two weeks before Christmas to attempt this project, all major stores (Target, Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree & Michael’s) were out of the mini ornaments. I did pick up the Styrofoam cone from Dollar Tree, which made me very happy! Since I couldn’t find the mini ornaments, I thought I could use this silver garland instead and make a great substitute. About two seconds in, I realized this was going nowhere and it looked terrible! On to the next idea…
I went back to Michael’s (and sort of hoped the mini ornaments would pop out at me) and got these red jingle bells of all sorts of shapes and sizes instead. I thought this would be such a cute little alternative! The packages had mini, regular and large jingle bells. Perfect! I could start with the biggest and work my way up to the tiny ones.
Ummm…no. There were gaps and holes all over the place and then I thought I had enough room but didn’t have enough room at the top for more and then I tried to put a bow on it but it made it look worse. Serious, serious fail! I was so frustrated and mad by this point. I had put the bells all the way up to the top and then proceeded to rip them all out (which left huge dents in the Styrofoam since I had pushed these in as hard as I could) and just say, well…its actually not blog-land appropriate what I said but lets just say it was a word and my dog ran away because he thought he was in trouble!
Once I ripped off the bells and was left with a bumpy and uneven cone, I threw the torn off bells (note the pieces of hot glue and Styrofoam in the crevices) into a mason jar with some faux snow and called it good. What else can you do?
So, since it had worked time and time again, I got out the jute twine and wrapped it around the form to make a natural, jute Christmas tree. I’ve seen this on several other blogs and thought it was cute plus I already had the twine and it took like five minutes to wrap this around the small form.
It isn’t all blinged-out like I wanted but it works and I think balances out the shiny and glittery little bird on this Hobby Lobby tray on our ottoman. I kept one bell on top just so people would know it is a Christmas tree and not some cone with jute twine on it for no reason. Or at least I hope they will know.
So that is my tale of my two day, Christmas craft fail. At least it was salvageable, right? I hate not being perfect.
The Steen Style 
Well bless your heart….I ~hate~ it when you have a fab idea, you're so excited a/b it and then it doesn't work out like you hoped. As a fellow crafter, maybe you could spray paint the cone first a color/glitter, then glue on bells or whatever. Also, I have made those trees, and from Michael's, get the picks that look like they have "berries" on the ends, cut them off one by one, leave a little "stem" if you will, and glued them into the styrofoam trees. I don't have a pic available right now, but it works, a little tedious, but turns out cute. Good luck! Angie