Festive Garlands: Part Six

The blizzard's still a-raging at my house! Once we started the snowflakes falling in the dining room, we kept on going right into the living room. The high vaulted ceiling gave us lots of airspace to fill with flurries; we used more Command hooks, more fishing line and billions more paper snowflakes to show global warming who's boss. 

There was a bit of method to our madness. We decided upon a basic framework or grid of lines that we wanted to criss and cross across the room. Thinking in three dimensions, our plan was to keep each line fairly level but to layer the lines over one another to create a sense of depth.  Once we got the first few hooks in place, we strung the lines and began taping up the snowflakes to see how much the lines drooped when we added the drag of the snowflakes' weight . Then we adjusted the tension on the lines and added another set of hooks to hang lines above the first set. Our process started out with a heavy trial-and-error vibe but became more refined and less up-and-down-the-ladder-to-see-how-it-looks intensive as we gained experience.

Lessons learned:

• As you evaluate your work-in-progress, be sure to check from both the perspective of a person entering the room, and someone seated within the room. 
• Yes, the kittens can reach the lines from the tallest pieces of furniture, just as we feared. But after swatting down a few flakes, they got bored and moved on.
• The more space between the layers, the better. 
• You cannot have too many snowflakes. Next year, we will make lots more.

Coming up soon...the seventh and final installment of the Festive Garland series. Look carefully at the top pic  below for a sneak peek. Woot!