Christmas Wreath Craft

Last night was craft night... yaaay!!
I love craft night (or craft afternoon, or craft morning... you get the point)

The thing that separates craft night from any other crafting session is that husband and I are both working on crafts. He makes these amazing dioramas (mostly of Star Wars  scenes.... MAN we're sounding cooler and cooler...)
Anyway, it's fun because we're spending time together that doesn't involve tv or video games, and we can show each other how we're doing with our projects - just like little kids - "Look what I made!!!"

Last night I made a Christmas wreath - it was the cheapest, easiest thing EVER! (like under $10.00 cheap!!)

Here's how I did it...

Supplies:

Pair of scissors

Glue gun

Duct tape

(pretty easy so far right? No fancy supplies needed - just stuff that pretty much everyone has around the house)

I bought all of this stuff from the Dollar Store.

Christmas bells $1.25
Silver acorns $1.00
Silver bird $1.00
Blue ribbon $1.00
Silver ribbon $1.00 (I didn't even end up using the silver ribbon)
Dollar Store total: $5.25 + tax

Foam insulation stuff from Kent Building Supplies
$0.35

Also from Kent, fake greenery stuff (please don't be intimidated by my technical terms.. just 'try' to follow along.. hehe!)

I used two of these, they were $1.99 each

Kent total: $4.33 + tax




Grand Total (drum roll please): $9.58 + tax
Ok, so it ended up being a little more than $10.00 after taxes BUT I didn't need the silver ribbon, so I think it will even out if you decide to make this. :)

 Step 1. 
Use the duct tape to secure the ends of the foam.
 I got this tip from Pinterest, (MAN I love Pinterest!! You should all join, and if you follow my boards, I'll follow yours! :) 
It's sooo much cheaper to buy this stuff than it is to buy Styrofoam wreath things from craft stores.

 Step 2.
Wrap the greenery around the frame.

Literally just wrap it, you don't have to be fussy and you don't have to fasten it or anything.
I just tucked the end under the wrapped wire next to it.

 I used 2 packs of greenery, and again, I just tucked the end under the wire next to it.
Super easy - only takes about 10 or 15 minutes (depending on how many cats you have and how intent they are on playing with, catching, and eating the greenery - if you don't have cats... this will take under 5 minutes...)

Once you're finished wrapping, just fluff it up a bit.
Cover any gaps there might be & arrange the branches.
I did mine so that it was flat-ish on the bottom & so that there weren't many going towards the middle because it's kind of a small hole in the middle so I didn't want to make it look any smaller.

 Step 3.
Make a bow
I used pretty much the whole spool of ribbon (not a whole lot comes on the spool anyway.

I did save a little bit of it to hang the wreath though, it only has to be as long as half of one of the bow ends.

 If you want to have 'fancy' ends on your bow
Fold the ribbon (lengthwise) and cut from the bottom corner of he open side, on an angle towards the closed side.
Like so.

OooOoohhh fancy!

Step 4.
Glue the bow on with the glue gun.

I also glued the ends of the ribbon, so that they "look" like they're hanging naturally-ish, but they're not hanging straight down.
(I should clarify - by 'ends' of the ribbon, I mean the parts that aren't the bow... I don't mean that I actually glued the bottom that we cut. I glued somewhere closer to the middle)

 Step 5.
Add the pretty, silver, dollar store bird.  lol

 Just pop it in there and glue it where every you want.

I chose the bottom inside of the wreath, so it looks as though it's perching there.

 Step 6.
Glue everything else.

You don't have to use it all.
Just keep placing and gluing until you're happy with the look.

 Step 7.
Add a piece of ribbon to hang it with.

I just used some left over ribbon from the bow & tied each end around the foam at the top then rearranged the branches to cover the small knots.

TaDum!
Ok, it's not the best picture - but I have a bad camera, bad lighting and no photographic skill to speak of. So this is the best I could come up with. LOL
It's simple, but I think it's pretty and it's CHEAP so that makes it so much better! lol
I think I'll try another one with red & gold.



Hope this inspired you to make some inexpensive crafts of your own, and if anyone tries this out, I'd love to see some pics of your version!

Happy crafting!! :)

You love me because I'm quirky...

Poor husband... he came home from work one day last year and I met him at the door and said "remember... you love me because I'm quirky..."

LOL

He's a trooper though, so he went along, "okaaaay... what did you do?"
So I took him by the hand and led him to our bedroom... wait a second.. it's not THAT kind of blog!!!  heh!
I wanted to show him what I had done while he was at work that day.

I had made our headboard the day before, it was super easy.
I just got a big piece of wood, stapled some cotton batting and fabric on it and voila! Headboard!

Anyway, I decided that before I could hang the headboard, I needed to paint the wall.
And I needed to have a tree on that wall.

I wasn't sure how I was going to do it, I'm not much of an artist and I didn't have a handy projector around to trace an image, so I had to be creative.

Here's the 10 step plan I came up with:

Step 1.  Scour the internet for a picture of a tree

Step 2.  Save tree picture in paint, erase everything else in picture except outline of tree

Step 3.  Print off tree picture

Step 4. Glue tree picture onto piece of cereal box

Step 5. Cut out shape of tree

Step 6. Prop up cardboard cut out of tree (you may have to be creative with this, I used a wine cork with a slit in it, propped up on some milk crates)

Step 7. Prop flashlight behind tree cut out, adjust flashlight until the shadow is where you want it on the wall (I propped the flashlight up with a cushion)

Step 8. Trace shadow lightly on wall with a pencil

Step 9. Paint around image you've traced

Step 10. Break the news to your partner that you've painted a tree on the wall...

Fortunately, husband is an easy going kind of person ... so he said "hey, cool, great job"

Here are some pics of the final product, it's not for everyone, but I'm happy with it.

Since I've taken these pictures, I've added some blue pillow cases and another throw cushion or two.

I ended up doing some of the tree free hand, it was pretty fun & way less stressful than I thought it would be! lol

Like I said above, the headboard is really simple, but effective I think.

Trees make me happy... bed makes me happy...

Now I have to go finish *watching* the hockey game... cause that's what I've been doing this whole time... 

Wanna- be DIY'er

I love DIY projects... I'll never have my own tv show about it or make any money doing it, but it makes me happy AND it saves me money (sometimes... lol)

Here's the first DIY project I completed after husband and I moved into our apartment, he brought a dresser into the relationship that I HATED (I had been using milk crates to put my clothes in... so really.. who am I to complain? I mean, it didn't stop me from complaining, but at least I acknowledged that I had no right... lol)

My mom loved this dresser as it was, and was very worried about what I would do to it (I went through a phase in my teens where everything needed to be as bright as possible, check out my room from jr. high

I chose the colours for the walls and mum tried to "bring it all together" by making some throw pillows, curtains and buying that bed spread. There's a great picture (somewhere) of my dad painting the first wall yellow wearing sunglasses...haha

But, I digress...

Back to the dresser.
So my mom was very worried about what I would do to it (now you understand why) so she really wanted me to leave it as it was, we have very different tastes. Leaving it like that would have been *almost* as bad as hanging on to the milk crates. lol

Just to drive home my point, here's a close up of the gold flower part.

I don't have any pictures of the steps (cause who knew I'd be blogging about it!!)

Step 1. I put down some garbage bags - *tip* splurge on a tarp, trust me.

Step 2. I sanded the crap out it. Not with a fancy sanding machine... but with actual sand paper...that's right, I'm hardcore!

Step 3. After waiting for the dust to settle and wiping it down with a damp cloth, I stained it black (classic black satin to be precise). I was super impressed with the stain, it only took one coat and I still have over half of the can left!! (946 mL can!!)  Maybe it's because I don't know much about painting that I'm so impressed about that. LOL
It cost about $15.00 for the can of stain.

Step 4. I replaced the hardware, we bought 2 packs because I plan on buying another dresser on kijiji and matching it to this one.
It was about $40.00 for both packs.

Here's the finished product.

The flower is still there, just not as gold... lol

It was super easy to do, so much cheaper than buying a new dresser and prettier than milk crates.

The one downfall was that I spilled paint on the carpet... whoops... so let's add $20.00 on to the final cost for the mat we had to buy to cover the black spot on the carpet. (but yay for a new mat... haha)

It took me the whole day to do it (you'll notice how much darker it is in the second set of pictures).
I love doing projects like that, because at the end of the day you can say "hey, look what I did!" and that makes me happy.