Pumped Up Christmas Garland

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!

Boo's Art Project

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.

Halloween - Haunted Signage

Using the second of the two sign plaques that my Mother In Law gave me, I painted and sanded it to shabby chic perfection.  I used Halloween rub-on's that are so old, I can't even remember WHEN I bought them on spider web paper scraps from my stash.  I paper stained the edges with Tim Holtz "Old Paper".

The balsam wood "Haunted" is from Michael's, I cut off the House portion from the bottom, painted it black and covered in black Stickles.  

Check out the The "Canicula Embalming Fluid" bottle.  It's REAL.  I know I have shown this bottle before on my previous blog, but it's just so cool.

CANICULA

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PERFECT COSMETIC EFFECT

COMBINED WITH UNSURPASSED

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For ordinary cases use 4 oz to 6 oz

to the half-gallon for first injection.

Use 6 oz to 8 oz to the half-gallon

for second injection.

For extreme cases - after first

injection - use full strength (16 oz to

the half-gallon).  For cavity injection

use concentrated form.

Price $5.00

CANICULA

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TORONTO, CANADA

Dollar Store Feather Boa Wreath

$13.00 Halloween Wreath Tutorial

Everything for this project was purchased from the dollar, except the Styrofoam wreath form.  The form is $ 9.99 @ Michael's, but I used a 40% off coupon.

Wrap the entire wreath form with black Electrical tape or black duct tape if you have it.  I have seen similar wreaths online that were wrapped in black fabric ribbon before adding the feathers.  The electrical tape made this super quick and easy.  It adheres instantly and is very flexible.  Plus it was one less item I had to purchase since I already had it on hand.

The boa is fastened onto the form with metal sewing pins.

Awesome tip: only partially wrap the boa's onto the wreath, leaving a long feather tail. Using the electrical tape, adhere the unsightly section of the wired roses onto the wreath then cover with the reaming boa.

Cost Breakdown: 
1 - Hall Rose Bqt Glit $ 1.25
3 - Feather Boa's $ 1.00 ea.
1 - Black Glitr Crow $ 1.25
1 - Styrofoam Wreath $ 6.00 (with the 40% discount)
Total: $11.50 before taxes

Ignore the glue gun, I didn't end up using it at all in this project.

Thanks to curlymade.blogspot.ca for the super fun hand drawn arrow jpg's, and dafont.com for the Buffied font.

Halloween Deco Mesh Wreath

I finally tried making a Deco Mesh wreath.  I can't believe how easy it was.  Hint, buy the right colour pipe-cleaners. I just used what was on hand.

Deco Mesh YouTube tutorial found here.

Very happy with the results, I may change up some of the elements at another time, but for now I am satisfied.  I have so much mesh left over it's ridiculous.  Anyone want a Halloween Decor Wreath?

Burlap Pumpkins

Here's a few pumpkin crafts I worked up this weekend.

Paint or distress the Styrofoam pumpkin, Mod Podge the burlap strips in place and hot glue ribbon onto the seams.

I also took the paper Decoupage pumpkin I made in a previous post and added ribbon and wrapped twine around the stem.

Fall Decorating

See further down for DIY crafting:

It's that time of year again.  In Canada, Halloween and Thanksgiving are in the same month, so Fall/Thanksgiving decorations are only put up for a very short period of time.  I seem to focus more on Halloween, but decided I needed a Fall crafting blitz.

Here is my Fall fireplace mantel.  Yes, it's a fake fireplace, we didn't inherit a real one with the purchase of this house *sigh*.

Here are the close-ups of the mantel (from left to right:

Dollar store pumpkins/gourds in the Hurricane lamp and the metal bird cage.

 Dollar store foliage garland and Michael's 60% fake mums (5 bunches @ $1.11 ea.) 

This cool rattan or corded raffia pumpkin was a new purchase from HomeSense (similar to the U.S. HomeGoods).  I have been waiting 8 years for a HomeSense to FINALLY open in my town.  It's been 3 weeks and I have been there more then a dozen times.

Now for the DIY bits:

A while back, my mother-in-law purchased two standing plaques at a discount store for me to re-craft. I Mod Podge'd burlap over the base of one and then added cardstock letters which were in the Dollar bin at Michael's.  The Leaf charms are from my card making stash. 

This dollar store pumpkin was covered in pages from an old Dictionary that is used just these kind of crafts.  (I think it was hubby's dictionary in High School - ya, that's definitely not up to date, can you imagine the World Map section *laugh*

I tore the dictionary paper into strips and adhered it to the dollar store plastic pumpkin with Mod Podge.  I tucked the top of the paper under the removable plastic pumpkin stem.

This pumpkin was from the Dollar Store gourd package.  

I tucked the start of the twine under the plastic removable stem and then wrapped the twine along the seems of the pumpkin.  

Tucking and hot gluing the end again under the stem.

I used some left over letters from the above "Fall" signage and glued them to a cork covered piece of 1 x 6 (cut down to 1 x 3) from my wood stash.

Some more Fall decorating:
For more on the pallet pumpkin see the post here.