The Mantel Challenge: Submission

So here it is, my holiday "mantel."  Actually, it's the top of my quilt rack because my fireplace looks like this:

There's just no room for more decoration, even at Christmas time!  Which is not to say there's no Christmas involved in my fireplace.  It has this Santa mug built in:

But, I digress.  We're here to talk about my challenge mantel.  I decided to decorate an entire mantel and I made one new craft to be included.  Let's start with the new craft:

This was a super simple craft.  Here's what I started with:

I've been seeing these bead garlands for years and have always thought that I should be able to do something clever with them.  This year, it finally hit me what I could do.  I simply glued (with a glue gun) the garland in a spiral winding around a styrofoam cone.  I think they turned out darn cute for something so easy.

I pulled out a couple of the things I made last year for Christmas to add the mantel including the bottlebrush tree and glitter deer in this photo:

And this miniature village:

So there it is!  Time to get ready for Christmas and time to vote!