Oh Christmas Tree

This past weekend, I did a show at Madam  Palooza. Afterward I spent the night and next day with my good friend Rita Reade. After a nice walk, coffee and breakfast, we headed to an antique store in temecula. I scored this dilapidated lighted rhinestone Xmas tree. 20 bucks, had to get it and restore it.

Either it was never completed or much of the jewelry fell off. I surmise the prior. 

 Pretty sparse, only the top of the tree was dense with jewelry.

I was going to let it just sit, as I am suppose to be getting ready for The Vintage Marketplace in 2 weeks, but the craft gods had other plans. At Dollar tree I found  a 20 light strand to replace the lights in the tree.

Then today I decided to stop at the Assistancr League thrift store and found this seriously funky frame that had vintage jewelry glued all around it.

Mind you, the above pic was after I ripped the jewelry off half of it.

Oh, best part....3 bucks!  Woohoo!

This is a close up of what I ripped off the frame.

Taking the lights out was a pain, had to cut the wires from behind...

And pull each socket out the front. 

The new sockets were smaller than the old ones, so I thought they would be way easy to pop in...

Problem was, the wire length between each light was shorter than the old light, so I had to untwist all of the new light strand. 

I still barely got them to stretch hole to hole...but it worked. Phew!

A lot more bling now, yay!

Super hard to photograph the lights...

So 30 bucks and three hours worth of work and I have a spiffy new retro junky jewelry Christmas tree. Oh, the random heart....dripped hot glue on the satin. Let it cool. Gently tried to remove it and the satin ripped. That's why we have the hot pink heart. :-/

Best part?  My man came home from work and said he couldn't tell I did anything to it.  Sheesh, men.  Thank goodness for girlfriends! 

Xoxo, Lisa