So I have developed a "thing" for paper garlands this year. After I made the circle and tree garlands I made these extremely cute gingerbread men.
This is made from a free cut file I downloaded from svgcuts.com. The gingerbread man svg cut file can be downloaded here. All the shapes where cut from my Silhouette and glued together. Once assembled, I punched two small holes in each little guy's forehead and thread them onto a piece of dark green yarn. Then I taped the strand up on my fireplace. Having threaded the gingerbread men I was able to move them around on the yarn once hung to space them (more or less) evenly.
It was going so well. But once I got the little guys up on the fireplace and they looked so lonely. They needed friends. Or in other words; they were a good start but the large fireplace mantel needed more.
So this is what I did. It makes me happy looking at it!
First I cut out some red candy canes. Then I painted the white stripes on the candy canes with my daughter's craft paints. Who needs fancy and expensive! Next I added some black emphasis marks with a thin point sharpie. The candy canes looked good but I wanted to add some green to the garland so I cut out some bows with my Silhouette from the bow files that came with my Silhouette.
Once the candy canes were completed I used a simple needle and sewing thread to string them together. Then taped them to the top of my fireplace mantel.
The gingerbread mean and candy canes were looking good together but a third garland was needed to really complete the look. And since I had stumbled into a Christmas sweets theme, I chose to add a strand of peppermint candies. Ok maybe peppermint are not exactly Christmas, but the color and theme was correct. I downloaded the peppermint candy cut files for free from www.wecanbeaoriginal.com here.
So here is the finished fireplace in our lower level.
But that got me looking over the fireplace upstairs with that lonely Christmas tree garland. It too needed more. This is an even bigger fire place! (You can tell from these pictures that we have since done the rest of the Christmas decorating).
My first step was to cut out these super cute Christmas stockings using several different Christmas papers. Then I again used a needle and thread to string them together. The stockings were the Silhouette Store's free shape of the week last week.
Working with the rule of threes I decided the third garland on this fireplace would be a sleigh and reindeer. Aren't these just adorable? The sleigh is a free Silhouette file I downloaded from www.birdcards.com here. The reindeer cut file I downloaded from SVG Shop for free here. The bows are from the bow collection that came with my Silhouette. 
I made two sets of a sleigh with eight reindeer. My daughter wanted the lead reindeer to be Rudolph. I should have made nine reindeer for each set but Rudolph was an after thought. Perhaps Rudolph is filling in for Prancer or Comet.
Here is the finished mantel.
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