Raise A Racquet - Part 2

It's Thursday already and that means Thrifty Thursday with Leigh @ Tales from Bloggeritaville and Vintage Thingies Thursday with Suzanne @ Coloradolady.  I always enjoy participating in both of these parties and viewing all of the fabulous thrifty and/or vintage items people are finding.  I am also joining The Shabby Chic Cottage for the first time for Transformation Thursday.  Thanks to everyone for hosting these great events.

If you are looking at these first pictures and thinking you've seen this already, bear with me.  I'm not rerunning my post from three weeks ago (found here), I just found a new use for the same item.  So today I thought I would post my second idea using the vintage tennis racquet braces I found at a thrift store for 50 cents apiece. 

  Here's a picture of the unadorned tennis racquet braces:

and here is the BOO sign I made for Halloween:

As I was taking down the Halloween decorations this week, inspiration struck on how I could use these same braces for a Christmas decoration.  I changed out the scrapbook paper, stacked the braces one on top of each other, inserted a dowel rod through the braces to hold them together, added a star to the top, and placed them in a red bucket.

And the completed project....a vintage Christmas tree to decorate my fireplace.

                                                   There are so many ways this tree could be further decorated.  You could add the word JOY in the braces, add some vintage Christmas images or photographs or decorate with some favorite ornaments.  I plan on dressing this up a little more but I wanted to get it posted for today's parties.  Not a bad decoration for under $3.00.

Happy Thursday,

Jane