Last weekend I was watching the episodes of Martha Stewart Crafts that I had Tivo'd on Thanksgiving. Many of the segments were about Christmas crafts. My second favorite was devoted to a cranberry bead wreath (My favorite was making wrapping paper with soap bubbles, but that's another story).

Martha was making the wreath with actress Lorraine Bracco. They made an engaging pair — Lorraine was a nice relaxing counterpart to our tighter-wound hostess.

Anyway, Martha shared a tip that can easily be translated to stringing. Before pinning the glass beads to the Styrofoam wreath base, she stuck all the head pins in a a flat piece of Styrofoam and painted the heads with nail polish to match the crimson beads. Since there were hundreds of head pins used in the wreath my first thought was that she was crazy, but when I looked at how polished (no pun intended) the finished product looked, I realized that (as usual) there was brilliance underneath Martha's crazy.

Assuming you could find nail polish to match your beads, I think disappearing pin heads are a great finishing touch to that piece for which you need to go that extra mile. Check out the wreath project by going to Martha's Web site and searching for "cranberry bead wreath."

PS: Lorraine suggested getting your kids to do the head-pin painting - another brilliant idea.