Home-made Mistletoe

Ho! Ho! The mistletoe, hung where you can see...

Mistletoe.  How many times have I heard of it in a Christmas song, and yet never used it in decorating my home, and never seen it in real life.  Really, my only reference of what it looks like is Google Images.

But, being the semi-traditionalist that I am, I decided to finally have mistletoe at Christmas. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to get mistletoe. I could look for florists and nurseries that sell it, or buy artificial mistletoe, but it's so much more fun to make it!

You will need: 

- green pipe-cleaners                       - mini, white pom-poms

- green craft felt                               - scissors

- a hot glue gun                                - ribbon

Step 1:

Wrap the ends of a few of the pipe-cleaner's together.

Then, fold the other end back, and then wrap part of the end around its self, making a fork in the pipe-cleaner.

Keep adding pipe-cleaning and forking their ends at various lengths, until you have a cluster of "branches" that you're happy with.

Step 2: 

Time to cut the leaves out of the felt.  You're going to have to cut 4 times as many pipe-cleaners as you have in your cluster (2 fork ends per pipecleaner, and 2 leaves per end).  If you don't feel like doing math, you can jut cut out a whole bunch and hope you have enough. Like I did.

Step 3: 

Using the hot glue gun, glue two leaves at the end of each fork.

Make sure not to use too much glue so you don't burn yourself. The leaves really don't need very much glue to stick, anyway.

Step 4: 

In between each couple of leaves, glue 1 white pom-pom.  These will be the berries.

Step 5: 

Let the glue dry, then tie a bow around the top.

GREAT!  Now, all that's left to do it hang it with a string, somewhere you may pass by a special someone.