diy upcycled holiday garland

I have been meaning to make this garland for more than five years! I'm not sure why I never got around to it as it is silly easy to do and super sweet to look at. It's a happy little bit of a memory boost as well since I made it from the holiday cards friends and family sent last year. Every year happy holiday cards arrive in the mail and once the holiday is over I fret over what to do with them. My cloudy middle-aged memory brings up a wee me creating a placemat with my dear Aunt Kathy using mod podge and happy hippy cards from the 70s and well who needs more place mats? One day as I was taking the cards down from the door of the tiny casa I thought, I should turn these into a happy garland to use to decorate next year! So I saved said cards only to not be able to find them the following year and then that year I saved those cards only to misplace them as well, and so on and so on. Of course, now that I had saved last year's cards in a place where I could find them (with the decorations, of course) I seem to have fallen of a great number of holiday mailing lists. But still, in a burst of creative energy, ridiculously stoked to find the sewing machine not only plugged in but also all threaded up with room on the craft table I got to it!

Here's what ya do...gather up your holiday cards and separate the fronts from the backs. Most cards do not print on the back so all you need is the happy printed front. Use an assortment of paper punches or one circle punch to punch out happy bits of color. If you have a stockpile of photo cards, punch out those smiling faces, if you have cards with embellishments on them, remove the embellishment in lieu of a circle (see the owl?). Gather up your punched pieces into a bowl, basket, or tray and bring 'em to your sewing machine. Set your stitch length to the longest there is and keep it on a straight stitch. Place your first shape under the foot of your machine and stitch a little forward and back to lock it in. Continue stitching at a slow enough pace to feed your other shapes under the foot with a little space between them. Don't let too much space happen unless you are all scientific-like and know how/why to adjust your tension (I am not and do not) or else your thread might jump and get all tangled causing you to abandon your project in search of a cup of hot tea or a pinterest perusal before you realize the light is fading and you should finish your project now before you abandon it for another year. Ahem. Stitch out a back and forth on your last circle and liberate from your machine!

 

Hang in a happy place perhaps over (or under) the mantel or on your tree. Another nifty idea would be to use one card per garland and use that garland to wrap up a gift for the person who sent you the card in the first place. This would be especially fun for those photo cards! Drats! Now I wish I did that! Sigh. There's always next year!

**the painted and stitched newspaper garland is also easy to make. I wrote up a diy for you back in 2010 and we still bring it out each Holiday season! 

scrumdilly diy: 4th of july pom pom wreath

Like I have mentioned before I'm think in the frenzy of pom pom making. I'm having too much fun and am making quite the mess. I decided to turn my compulsion into something pretty for July and thus the pom pom wreath was born.

 

I used a particle-board type base found in the floral department at my local Michael's. It was larger, sturdier and less expensive than an embroidery hoop or foam form of the same size. I also like it because it is flat and has hole drilled in it. It's multi-useful! A couple of coats of white paint on my wreath form just in case any part if it shows through and I was ready to go.

 

 

I created a happy pile of independence day-festive poms and popped them into an egg carton for storage.

 

 

 

I began by wrapping red yarn around the wreath-to-be in the style of weaving a dream-catcher. When I was happy with the wrapping, I flipped over the form and added a blob of glue and a clothespin anchor to keep it all in place. To ensure the yarn remained where I wrapped it, I added additional blobs of glue for good measure.

 

To anchor the poms to the form, I used healthy amounts of tacky glue. I find that yarn needs a bit more glue to stick to things and I never have good luck with hot melt glue (my poor poor army of love lost a few troops). My poms were on the larger, shaggier side so needed a bit more glue than usual otherwise the weight of the poms would dangle from the form instead of staying put.

I entertained the idea of layering more poms on one side to whimsy it up a bit, or maybe even adding a bow but I really liked the simplicity of using just poms and red yarn.

Here it is haging on our front door...

and here over the bed...

sweet november: squash and succulents

Welcome to Day 4 of sweet november! I have to admit that I have a thing for pumpkins. I love them! All the different shapes and sizes make me swoon with fall happy. Here is a simple project you can do in a day that can pretty up your holiday table and/or act as sweet take home gifts for friends, family and neighbors. 

I used mini pumpkins from a local pumpkin farm. You can use any small gourd or squash as well. If you wish to decorate the outside of the pumpkin by etching a design, letter or word, do so before removing the top and seeds. 

A small cookie cutter gently hammered into the flesh of the pumpkin creates an easy outline to follow for carving a simple shape. A curved carving tool will do to remove a shallow top layer of the squash. to create the initial, i used a pencil to sketch out the letter then carved it out with the carving tool.

 Use a serrated knife to cut out the top of each mini pumpkin. If the top proves to be too stubborn to remove, you can use a spoon to scoop it off. Use the same spoon to scrape out the smaller seeds and save for roasting or your compost pile. 

 

Spoon in a small mixture of damp potting soil before adding your succulent. My succulents were a smidge root bound so I gently removed a good portion of the potting soil by squeezing my hand around the roots. After removing a bit of the potting soil from the pumpkins I was able to replant my succulents into their new (temporary) homes.

While quite pretty, these mini pumpkin planters will not last much longer than three days. If you give these as gifts please include a small note regarding replanting. I picked up my plants form a local garden store, purchasing a small pack for less than $5. Bought separately, these plants were $4 each and up. I now have a happy garden of succulents planted into vintage pottery, jars and tins. Happy November! 

day of the dead door decor

I went a wee bit old school for this project using newspaper and party streamers to create all the bits. All you ned is a large piece of foam core or cardboard, painted paper and/or party streamers, white glue, and a pencil.

Mister rescued a bunch of plastic-ish corrugated signs from the dumpster and so I drew my sugar skull on the blank side with a black sharpie, details and all. 

Mister used a blade to carefully cut out the shape while I painted a couple of sheets of newspaper with white acrylic. 

Once the paint dried, I cut the paper up into strips and then cut the strips into small squares about an inch and a half wide. I added a pile of cut crepe paper streamers as well and went to work on the details first.

Pick up a square and wrap it around the eraser end of a pencil. Dip that into a bit of white glue and press down onto your cardboard. Repeat with as many squares as needed in your chosen colors until all the details are all flashy flashy on your cardboard.

My surface was a bit slippery so I could only work in small bits to keep my squares from slipping every-which-way. I did the details first and then filled in with the newspaper. Once everything was dry, I added a wire to the back using a hefty dose of packing tape and stuck it on my door! How delightful!