Hello everyone, have you decorated for Christmas yet? Things around here have been just plain crazy so I am just getting around to decorating for Christmas myself. One of the places that I tackled earlier this week is my mantle and I want to show you how it turned out and give you some tips as to how to decorate a Christmas mantle yourself.

Disclosure: I am part of the Cricut Blogger Program and I receive products/compensation in exchange for craft ideas. But all opinions are 100% my own. Some of the links used here are affiliate read my full disclosure HERE. Tip #1 is to choose a theme. I ended up with a bit of a rustic theme with all the wood, and traditional colors (brown, red, green). Tip #2 is more of advice, if you feel overwhelmed but still want to decorate then go simple. Only because you choose the simple route doesn’t mean that it won’t still look nice. Tip #3 is to add personalization to your Christmas mantle. The way I did that was by using my Cricut Maker, I used my machine to cut out my sons names from kraft board and then I hot glued their names to the stockings.  Tip #4 is don’t worry if you can’t make a big beautiful bow out of ribbon. The Cricut Maker can help you cut bows out of cardstock like the ones I did. But it can also help you make them out of fabric, which is an amazing feature the Cricut Maker has.Tip #5, take inspiration from the Christmas decor in stores like I did with these 3D houses. I have seen these type of houses in Target as well as other stores but I chose to make them myself with my Cricut Maker and Kraft board. They were so easy to make and I have a tutorial for them towards the end of this post. 

Tip #6 is to fill up any mini baskets you use on your mantle or in my case this mini sleigh that I got last year at Target with cinnamon scented pine cones. They will give your house a beautiful holiday scent. That’s it, 6 easy to follow tips to decorate a Christmas mantle.

Now to share a super simple tutorial with you, as I mentioned earlier I was inspired by these 3D houses I saw in store to make my very own. The first thing I did was gather my supplies:

• Cricut Maker
• Cricut Kraft Board
• Cricut Standard Grip Mat
• Rotary Blade
• Fine Tip Blade
• Hot Glue

Next I opened Cricut Design Space and started a new project. Then I searched “3D house” in the image library, I chose the one I liked.  I then clicked “Make It” and ended up cutting out four of the same type of house but you can mix and match with the other designs available. For this design I used the scoring blade to help score where I would be folding.Once your image is cut out remove any unnecessary pieces of kraft board.Now you will just need to fold along the lines that your Cricut Maker made for you and then just hot glue the tabs in order to have the 3D effect.Here you have the completes houses. Didn’t they turn out so cute? I left them with the kraft color but if you choose I am sure you would be able to paint them another color.

I hope I was able to inspire you to break out that Cricut Maker machine and craft up some fun projects for your very own mantle.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.