If you were following last year, I took my old ceramic nativity set and made it into a faux mercury glass nativity. This year, I wanted to add some scenery. I've seen some nativity stables, similar to this one, but they're all pretty expensive, like $50-100. Figures.
Well, we were having family pictures taken by my father in law this year, and I was in charge of figuring out all the poses, props, backdrops, etc. This is NOT my forte, so I went to Pinterest and started searching. I kept seeing weathered crates and I LOVED the idea of that for our photos.
So, I went to Michael's and bought one of their unfinished wooden crates that normally run about $14 and I used my 40% off coupon.
I used this stain, some heavy duty kitchen gloves and a sponge (just a regular dish sponge) and spread the stain onto the crate. The nice thing about the sponge is that it let the stain go on fairly lightly, so I could get a more weathered look. Some of the rougher areas were...interesting...to stain, and I pretty much tore up the sponge from rubbing it across so many times. But, I loved the end result.
It looked super cute in our pictures, but after the fact, the crate just sat on the floor next to our piano, waiting to go into the attic. I started pulling out the Christmas stuff and when I pulled out the nativity pieces, I happened to glance at the crate. EUREKA! I set the crate on its side and set the pieces inside. IT WORKED!
To add a little pop of color, I bought some preserved reindeer moss at Walmart for about $3.50 and placed it around the pieces and under some of them.
The final touch was a star for the wall behind it all. I used this star outline, cutting one smaller one out of sheet music-style scrapbook paper, and a bigger one out of plain white textured card stock. I glued them together, then put a little roll of tape on the back and stuck it to the wall.
Et voila! I LOVE when something I already have works in another capacity as well :D
Do you put up nativities at Christmas? How do you display yours?
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