Nantucket Inspired Wreaths and Holiday Decorations — Continued from page 103
Photo: Joseph Arvay
Votives
Votives make pretty accents on dining room tables, mantels, or in bedrooms and can be filled to reflect the season. They can be used year-round and reused time and time again.
Colorful Flint Corn Votives
Colorful flint and calico corn kernels can be bought and filled in around candles in a clear votives. Choose from multicolored kernels, or focus on orange and red warm tones or deep blues and purples, depending on your style and home décor. For a softer look, you can buy beeswax candles to use in the votives instead of stark white candles. Explore different combinations of colored candles and layer the kernels to create a pattern in the votive.
Cranberry Votives
Filling a votive with ruby red native cranberries will bring a bright pop of color to a room. If the color is too strong, fill the votives with layers of sand and seashells and alternate cranberries between the other objects. Or fill the votive with sand and place cranberries on only the top layer.
As the December holiday season begins, getting the family together to decorate the house or a Christmas tree can be a fun activity for adults and children. If you are spending the holidays on Nantucket, let your little one have the honor of placing a starfish at the top of the tree this year. For more island-themed decorations, here are some suggestions for crafts made from locally sourced objects.
Decorating with Scallops
Family scallop season starts October 1 (commercial season on November 1), but if you don’t want to go scalloping to gather shells, then you can raid the giant scallop shell pile. Once at Jetties Beach, but now moved out to Madaket, the shell pile grows as the scalloping season progresses. It’s a bit smelly, but the pile is a great place to collect shells for holiday crafts. Look for shells roughly the same size, either from what you harvested or what you found on the beaches or in the scallop pile. Clean the shells by dipping them in a mixture of bleach and water or use toothpaste by smearing it over the shell and then scrubbing it off after about five hours. Once the shells are cleaned, you can rub them with mineral oil to give them a pretty shine and bring out their colors. You can also spray them with satin finish polyurethane for added shine; just give the shells plenty of time to dry before using them in crafts.
Scallop Shell Lights
Find a reliable strand of tiny white Christmas tree lights, and test them to make sure all the lights work. Pair two similar sized shells and hot glue them together with a bulb in the middle, forming the shape of a whole scallop. Repeat till all the bulbs are tucked into shells. When the lights are plugged in, the shells will cast off a warm glow. These lights are beautiful strung on a Christmas tree or draped across a mantle.
Scallop Shell Angels
To transform scallop shells into ocean angel ornaments, hold each cleaned and treated shell so the circular, ridged edge is facing down and the flat edge with the two points is at the top. To make the angel, ribbon, wooden beads, and a hot glue gun are needed. Make a large bow from the ribbon and hot glue it behind the two pointed edges of the shell. This becomes the angel’s wings. Glue the round wooden bead on top of the flat edge of the shell, between the two points, to form the head of the angel. Take another piece of ribbon and create a large loop and glue it to the concave, backside of the shell so the angel can hang on a tree for the holidays. For additional details, draw a face on the angel, add glitter or feathers, or twist a piece of shimmering pipe cleaner into a halo.
Photo: Nantucket.net
purchase spray snow in a can and use it to turn the wreath white; then add seashells to bring the feelings of a snowy Nantucket beach into your home.
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