Make Your Garland More Substantial
We purchased a 36 foot long strand of pre-lit garland from Lowes, hoping to add chunky holiday elegance to our "new" front door. We were greatly disappointed to find out that the the strand was very small in diameter once installed and was barely noticeable from the street during the day. Our intention was to strand around the door and then down our porch railing with the 36 foot strand.
I had already anticipated adding Deco mesh and Christmas balls to the garland, but our Lowes strand was going to be waaaay too fine for that.
Walmart to the rescue. We purchased four 9 foot lengths of fake garland (they were 4 for $10). We strung them together end to end, then folded in half making a thicker strand 18 feet long. Then we folding the lighted Lowes strand in half and twined it into the Walmart strand. Basically combined two 36' lengths folded in half and twined together.
I added green Deco Mesh and 2 different Christmas ribbons as well as some Dollar Store plastic Christmas bobbles and voila... a chunky substantial Christmas garland. I think I will add more bobbles as the weeks progress leading up to Christmas.
From Canadian Tire we bought these cool brick hooks that allow you to hang decorations to brick without having to drill holes. A bit of a recess is needed between your brick and grout in order for them to work. Canadian Tire also had these cool green plastic adjustable strings specifically for hanging garland, kind of like zip ties but they are reusable. Really easy to install and no power tools required.
I have EVEN more exciting news to share. For those of you who know that Sean and I are ambitious project starters, but lack in finishing our projects - all our baseboard trim and quarter round is finally in. In the front hall, the bedroom hallway and ALL of the kitchen. Hurray! It's a Christmas miracle!
For some time now, my daughter and I have been thinking of making Abstract art on canvas. We had some smaller canvases donated by Nana, but were waiting for large ones to go on sale at Michael's.
Here's Boo's project. We first watched some Youtube videos about Fluid Liquid acrylic painting. (example: here.)
Hannah sprayed the paints with a water bottle while they were still wet to create this effect. She used regular craft acrylic paint.
The photos don't do it justice. When you turn it over it resembles a birch forest in front of a lake.
The squares were done with Medium Gesso and a repeating square stencil that was left to dry for 24 hours before adding paint.
