My First Ornament Wreath

December 15, 2017December 14, 20171 Comment

Hello everyone! Before we begin, I want to apologize for this post being short and not having as many pictures as I wanted. I literally started this project with the intention of taking more pictures to add. But I got so excited to get started that I forgot to take picture. Sorry.

So I have wanted to make an ornament wreath for quite some time now. And I finally felt like I had enough ornaments to make the wreath. Mom and I had been collecting them for a while from yard sales and thrift stores. So now that the time was right, I finally bought my wreath.

The first thing I did was wrap the whole thing in ribbon. I used one spool and then realized I greatly underestimated how much ribbon I needed. So off to the store I went to buy two more…

I then pulled out the ornaments and started gluing!

Yeah…I had a lot. Enough to fill the entire box. But I had a variety of pink ornaments along with some silver and gold. I started hot gluing the ornaments down and filled in where needed.

And here’s the finished product!

I know it’s not exactly circular anymore, but I really like it! And for it being my very first one I am very proud of myself. I wish I took more pictures while I was doing it, but I was so excited to finish that I forgot… And what’s even worse is that I still have enough ornaments that I can make a whole second wreath!

And even though I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures, I did still have time to take this one!

Festive Paper Christmas Tree Garland

December 11, 2017December 10, 20174 Comments

Good morning!

I have another craft for you today. I made this one a while back and I am just getting it posted. I see all kinds of garlands out there today, but this is definitely one of a kind!

Here’s what you need:

scrapbook paper
buttons
string, twine or ribbon

I started out by picking out some scrapbook paper that I liked and ones that coordinated together. I have quite a bit on hand, but there are so many pretty ones to choose from at the craft stores. You can make a garland in any color combination you like.

I drew some trees freehand, but didn’t really like how wonky they turned out, so I ended up tracing some others from a pattern I found online. I made 2 trees from 7 different papers, for a total of 14 trees.

These look a little more normal! 🙂

After cutting them all out, I used a hole punch near the top. Then I went through my buttons and picked the ones that I thought looked best with each color tree. The buttons with the shanks on the back worked best.

I placed the shank of the button through the hole and then threaded the gold wire through the button. I twisted the wire so the button wouldn’t slip out. I left a couple of inches between each tree until I had the garland as long as I wanted.

I did end up using the wonky trees too. I had enough star buttons to use one on each tree and hung it on the headboard in the guest room.

I used the other trees on the foot-board in the master bedroom. I like how it adds just a little touch of Christmas to the room.

I used it this year in my guest room too! Here’s the post if you want to take a look!

Thanks for stopping by today!

Wooden Buoy Ornament

December 4, 2017December 3, 2017Leave a comment

Good morning! We are in December! Can you believe it? This time of year goes by so fast! Do you have parties to go to, or family get-togethers? Or maybe your hosting this year. There is so much to do! I love to create some new ornaments this time of year too. I came up with a simple beach/ocean ornament for my tree. I made bigger ones of these earlier this year, and I thought little ones would be so cute!

I had my husband cut out some little pieces from some scrap wood we had. The tallest one is 4 1/2 inches tall and the smallest is 1 3/4 inches tall. The tops were cut in on each side and then a small hole drilled in it. I used some Waverly chalk paint to paint 2 of them ‘Mineral’ and 2 of them ‘White.’

I taped off different areas of the buoy to add the colored stripes. I used orange, turquoise and black. After the paint was dry, I added a piece of twine through the top.

Here are the finished pieces! I hung them on a little faux tree I have on my front porch.

I found the wooden bobbers this past summer at an estate sale and freshened them up with some turquoise paint.

I love the mixture of the ornaments, the rope garland and the starfish on top.

I have been busy decorating the other room in my house and hope to have tours up real soon! Have a great week!

Here are some other posts you might enjoy:

2017 ORNAMENT EXCHANGE-FROM URCHIN TO JELLY-FISH

November 16, 2017November 16, 201713 Comments

Welcome to the 2017 Ornament Exchange & Blog Hop! This year, there are 47 amazing bloggers participating in the exchange. The rules of the challenge were simple: be partnered with a fellow blogger, create a handmade ornament for $15 or under, create a tutorial, and ship the ornament off to a new home!

My partner this year is Terri Steffes. She has been married for 40 years! She has one daughter and two dogs (she would love to have a cat). I was excited to find out that she is a retired school principal who started out as a preschool teacher, just like me! She loves to read, write, decorate, travel, cook and entertain. We have a lot in common! She actually has 2 blogs, ChristmasTreeLane.blogspot.com and terristeffes.com. I can barely keep up with one! She also likes coastal decor for her Christmas tree like I do, so this was an easy one for me!

You can find all the participants and links to their blogs below. Also, if you would like to join the link-up, there is a button at the bottom to join in the fun!

Meet the 2017 Ornament Exchange Hosts

Erlene ⋅ My Pinterventures Kim · Made In A Day Amanda · Domestically Creative

Shirley · Intelligent Domesticatons Michelle · Our Crafty Mom

Beverly · Across the Blvd. Christene · Key to Inspiration Pili ⋅ My Sweet Things

Nicki · Sweet Parrish Place Megan · C’mon Get Crafty

Hilary · Raising Fairies and Knights Emily · Two Purple Couches

Tina · One Crafty Mess Marie · The Inspiration Vault Debra · Shoppe No. 5

Trisha · Rosewood and Grace Jeanie · Create and Babble Katrin ⋅ Kreativ K

Terri · Christmas Tree Lane Maureen · Red Cottage Chronicles

Toni ⋅ Small Home Soul Ula ⋅ Lulu & Celeste Sue ⋅ A Purdy Little House

Pamela · Home On The Corner Lorelai ⋅ Life with Lorelai Cindy ⋅ DIY Beautify

Debbie ⋅ Tweak and Style Stephanie ⋅ Swoodson Says Chelc ⋅ Inside the Fox Den

Susan ⋅ Super Mom – No Cape! Molly ⋅ Just a Little Creativity

Roseann ⋅ This Autoimmune Life Angela ⋅ Simply Beautiful by Angela

Vicki and Jenn ⋅ 2 Bees in a Pod Joanne ⋅ Our Unschooling Journey

Tylynn ⋅ Bitterroot DIY Sam ⋅ Raggedy Bits Mary ⋅ The Boondocks Blog

Cyn ⋅ Creative Cynchronicity Dione ⋅ Clever Chameleon Quilting

Erica ⋅ Erica Ever After Chelsea ⋅ Love Paper Crafts Evija ⋅ From Evija with Love

Samantha ⋅ Little Bits of Home Hope ⋅ Hopes Crafty Niche Anne ⋅ Orange Bettie

Pam · P.S. I Love You Crafts

When I found out that Terri liked coastal decorations like I do, I was very excited! I had an idea for some ornaments I wanted to make and now I could make them for someone else too! I love creating special gifts for others. I already had the sea urchins and I found the embellishments at Michaels. They were on clearance, so I was able to create these very reasonably. I did find sea urchin for sale on Amazon and Etsy and online at Jo-Ann’s. There were even some pink ones, which would look very cool too.

Since my sea urchins came from the California coast, I made sure they were clean before starting. 🙂

I took a small piece of white ribbon, folded it and hot glued it into the small hole on top of the urchin.

I put the ribbon on before the glitter, so that I would have something to hold onto while gluing and glittering. I brushed regular Elmer’s glue all over the urchin and sprinkled on the glitter. I used in iridescent glitter, but you could use other colors too. I made sure to rub it all over the shell. I had a hard time showing you how glittery they are, but they look so nice.

I love the purple one!

Here are the embellishments I found. I didn’t end up using everything, mainly just the different ribbons. I did add some small beads to some of them with some beads I already had on hand.

I cut each type of ribbon into small lengths and then hot-glued them, in the middle, on top of each other, one at a time. Now I had 6 ends hanging down. I made two sets for each urchin.

Once the pieces were glued together, I hot-glued them into the bottom of the urchin, pushing them way up inside using a pencil so I didn’t burn my fingers.

Ready to hang on the tree!

You can see some of the turquoise beads I used on this one.

I also glued some individual beads onto the white ribbon.

I love how the tails turned sea urchins into jelly-fish!

I’m so glad I had the opportunity to make these for my new blogger friend, Terri! Thanks to Erlene, from My Pinterventures, for hosting another year of Ornament Exchange! Remember to check out all the other ornaments below! Have fun creating!

FIND ALL 47 HANDMADE ORNAMENT TUTORIALS BELOW AND SHARE YOURS TOO! Use Hashtag #2017OrnamentExchange so we can see your creations on social media.

An InLinkz Link-up

How to make your own Envelopes

September 29, 2017September 28, 2017Leave a comment

It’s Friday! Friday! Gotta get down on Friday! Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend! Weekend! (Bonus points if you sang the unfortunate tune of Rebecca Black’s song)

How was everyone’s week? Anything out of the ordinary happen that you want to talk about?

This week I had a day off and was working on my stuff for Premier Designs. If you didn’t know, I do sell the jewelry and love doing it! But, something that happened recently was they got rid of the hostess envelopes. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I immediately knew I had to do something when I went to give a new hostess her information and some of the info didn’t make it to her. I had put it all in the catalog that I gave her, but business cards fell out and it just didn’t feel right to just hand over the catalog without a proper envelope.

So I sat down to try and discover how to make my own envelope out of old catalog pages. You can do this with catalogs or magazines or even large book pages. Here are the supplies you will need.

Supplies

2 pages. They need to be the full pages, not just one side. So you will need to take the staples out of the catalog to get the full page.

A Ruler

Pencil

Glue stick

Scissors

Step 1. Decide which sides you want to use for your front and back. You are going to have 4 sides to choose from, so choose wisely!

Step 2. Fold the top of the short side of the page you decided would be the back. I measured it to be 1 1/2 inches. It needs to be folded to the inside, so I found it easier to mark the side you want on the outside and follow that line to fold. Glue it down.

Step 3. Fold the bottom of the short side of the page you decided would be the back. I measured it to be 3/4 of an inch. This needs to be folded on the outside and glued down. I then glued the other page to the fold and folded it again. Now the two pages are attached.

Step 4. Fold the long sides to seal the envelope. I measured it to be 3/4 of an inch. They get folded to the back side of the envelope. I also folded the bottom corner in a small triangle to make the corner more even.

Step 5. Cut the fold on the top. If you don’t cut this, you won’t be able to fold the top properly to seal the envelope.

Step 6. Fold the corners on the top flap so they are even with the first fold you made. This will help make the top flap easier to fold over.

And Taadaa! You are complete! Though it may seem a little confusing, I promise that it will turn into a fun, cute envelope!

If you have any questions on how to put the envelope together, please feel free to ask. I hope that you can use this information to make your own cute envelopes! Let me know if you make any cute envelopes!