Patriotic Rag Wreath

It's almost Memorial Day!  I love Memorial Day.  I love the cookouts and the kick-off to summer, of course, but I also really love the flags and parades (I ALWAYS cry when I see the veterans march by - thinking about what they've given to us and what they've been though to keep us free and safe) - just the whole patriotic spirit and sentiment of the holiday - honoring those who serve and keep us safe.  To all the service men and women out there - thank you.  My husband and I have not served ourselves, but we have a long history of warriors in our families, from my husband's grandfather who was a D-Day paratrooper in WWII and my grandfather who served in the Air Force in Korea, all the way back to ancestors in the Civil War (we have ancestors who served for both the North and the South, actually) and Revolutionary War (again, we both have ancestors on both sides - I find that so interesting).

So in the spirit of the holiday, I decided to try my hand at a patriotic rag wreath.  I choose this style because I am trying to be very frugal (we are saving for a trip to the Southwest this summer and a renovation to the outside of our house - looking forward to not being the ugliest house in the neighborhood anymore!) and wanted to use only items I had on hand all ready.  I'm feeling very frugalista.  I didn't have any wreath forms, but I did have an embroidery hoop.  I thought that a rag wreath would really fill out the hoop nicely.

For the rags, I pawed through my fabric bin and found some muslin scraps, a red calico with white hearts, and 2 blue calicos - one royal with a subtle leaf print and the other more of a cadet blue with vines.  I went with both, thinking that the slight differences in tone would add some more visual interest.  I ironed all the fabrics and cut many, many strips of each.  Each strip was about 7 inches long and 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch wide.  I wasn't precise with the cuts.

On a whim, I also pulled out my bin of wooden shapes and was rewarded with the perfect find - several star cut-outs in 2 different sizes.  I used 5 and painted them red, gold, and blue.  I wasn't thrilled with the red and blue, so I tried to do an antique-y layer of gold over top.  I was going for a streaky, weathered look and was only marginally successful.  But hey, it works.

After supplies were assembled, I parked myself on our soon-to-be-demolished-and-replaced-with-a-screened-porch-and-concrete-patio-deck with a frosty glass of iced tea and my rags and went to town.  Each strip was knotted once on the hoop.  I tried to be random with the colors (which is hard to do, btw.  I find myself wanting to make a pattern in spite of myself).  Every few rags, I would smoosh the ties closer together to ensure that the wreath ended up nice and full.  Be careful with the smoosh step - you could get a splinter!  I did and it was not fun.  :(

Once all the rags were tied, the painted stars had dried and I simply hot glued them on.  I used a bit of red-edged cream ribbon tied to the top to serve as the hanger.  This ribbon, incidentally, was saved from an Anthropology gift bag.  When I recycle those sorts of bags, I always save the ribbon handles.  Depression-Era-Chic, baby.  Thanks to my handy ribbon storage system, it's easy to see what I have available and I'm MUCH better about not buying the same colors over and over because I can't remember that I have them.  See that post here.

There you have it - a fun, full, free(!), patriotic rag wreath.

Summery Popsicle Wreath

I love wreaths.  I really, really do.  It makes me so happy to come home to a dressed-up front door.  I had a hankering for a new summery wreath, but wanted something different, so I started thinking about special things that say summer to me.  Flip-flops are cute but I wasn't feeling it.  Flowers - boring.  Butterflies - maybe, but I would need a butterfly punch and I wanted to try to make this from things I all ready had on hand.  I also wanted to use an embroidery hoop as a base rather than buying a new wreath form.  Popsicles?  YES!  We always have craft popsicle sticks around.  I could make them out of felt that I had on hand.  And they would be big enough to cover an embroidery hoop but not too heavy to weigh it down.

Step one was making a pattern for the popsicles.  I folded a piece of card stock in half and trimmed it into a rounded rectangle.

Then I cut out the felt, 2 pieces at a time.  I went with bright, fruity colors - orange, grape, watermelon, mango, lime.  Using a strand of embroidery floss in matching colors, I ran a seam around the sides and top, leaving the bottom open to stuff.

I didn't have batting to stuff them with and give them some dimension, so I filled each with a folded scrap of fleece and it worked nicely.

After stuffing, I inserted a popsicle stick and used it to push the fleece filler up to the top.  Then it was time to seal the bottom with the stick included.  Just another quick seam and done.

The embroidery hoop was wrapped with a colorful strip of fabric.  I didn't fuss about the raw edges - left them as is.

Arranging the popsicles on the hoop was the most challenging part.  I was afraid to commit to gluing until I was sure it was OK.  I ended up overlapping the popsicles slightly, which meant that I had some exposed hoop at the top, but I liked it that way.  I think that if I had filled all the way around, it would have needed some more support to keep the top of the wreath from pulling forward.

Finished with a skinny ribbon bow to hang and voila!  An original, fun, free(!), colorful homage to the cool queen of summertime treats. 

Skylanders Party Planning - Part 6, Flame Arrows

The Skylanders party planning continues!  I made the flame arrows for the Flameslinger Fire Element game mentioned here.  These were super easy, super fast, and I think the kids will LOVE them.

First, I assembled my supplies - 12 Dollar Tree suction-cup arrows and packs of metallic cellophane shreds in gold and red.  Then it was time to fire up the glue gun.  For each arrow, I used 4 gold and 4 red shreds and draped them over my fingers.  I fiddled with the shreds to get it so that they were all different lengths and then pinched in the center and twisted a bit. 

I wedged an arrow between the edge of the counter and my fancy and not at all unsightly "glue gun tray" and dispensed a blob of hot glue onto the arrow near the suction cup. 

Working quickly, I applied the center of the twisted shreds to the glue and wrapped one side over and the other side on top and pulled them taut.  Once the glue sets you are done.

They are stored in a bundle with a plastic bag on top to keep them from getting dusty.  It took me about 10 minutes from start to finish.  Not too shabby!

Rock Climbing Party - Part 2, Favors and Personal Growth

So my daughter's joint-rock-climbing-birthday-party is fast approaching and we're putting the finishing touches on everything.  This has been a lot of fun to plan and also, an unexpectedly good learning / personal growth opportunity for me.  Working with another mom who does not share my over-the-top tendencies has made me realize some things about myself.  Here's the story...

For favors, I was planning:

• Pop Rocks
• Carabineers
• Water Bottles
• Rock Candy
• Pet Rocks
• Custom Artisan Cotton Candy Clouds
• Chocolate Rocks or Boulders
• Rock-Shaped Bouncy Balls
• Gumball Rocks

When I showed the other mom the list, she was agog and said that it seemed like a lot and that the kids would probably be happy with just Pop Rocks and a Carabineer.  This was the thought that popped into my head:  "Who cares?  It goes with the theme!"

This is probably not a healthy line of thinking.  I realized that I have gotten to the point where I am focused more on the theming than the desires of the guests.  Not to say that my favors wouldn't have been well-received - I'm sure that they would have been.  But I'm now trying to make a real effort to scale back on the volume.  Meaning, just because I have several good ideas doesn't mean that they all have to be used.  To that end, favors for this party will be:

• Pop Rocks
• Carabineers
• Water Bottles (which is included in the venue's package)

I think that the kids will love them, they still fit the theme, and they won't break the bank.  To put my own spin on it and to utilize my new found technique of cutting fabric on my Cricut (yes, you can cut fabric on the Cricut - huzzah!), I made personalized muslin pouches for each guest.  It was cheap and easy and didn't even take that long.

Cut your muslin into strips large enough to double over and have seam allowance on the sides and a wider allowance at the top to hold the drawstring.*

Fold in half.  Zip a quick seam up each side.

Iron your seams flat and fold down the top far enough that you will be able to thread your cording through.

Stitch around the folded top almost all the way around - leave a small opening for the cording.  Thread the cording through and knot the ends.

Iron heat bond** to the back of your fabrics to be cut for initials.

Peel off the white paper backing*** and then apply to the Cricut sticky mat.  I put my needle to 5, pressure to highest, speed to lowest.  I used the Classic Font cartridge and did 2" letters.

Once cut, apply letters to muslin pouches and iron on.

*When you decide on the width, think about whether it will be big enough to fit on your sewing machine.  Mine were too small and I had to do the seam around the top by hand.  Not terrible, but not ideal either.

**Be careful with this - it's easy to get confused and iron the heat bond to your ironing board cover or worse - to your iron.  Don't try this if you are tired or distracted. 

***Don't forget this step - you will have a huge mess on your mat if you don't remove the paper.  Also, your letters won't cut well.

Skylanders Party Planning - Part 5, Mod-Podge Woes, Faux Leather Treasure Chest, Neon Balls, and a Portal Punch Possibility

I'm chunking through my Skylanders Party to-do list - whoo hoo!  The party isn't until July, but we have big vacation out West planned for June, so I'm trying to be proactive.  Next up...

Treasure Chest
This chest was a thrift store find.  It was originally cream with grapevines and a bit of a crackle finish.  I just attacked it with some brown spray paint. 

I LOVE that the crackle finish is still visible but now looks like textured, pebbly leather.  I will pretend that I knew all along that this was how to make spray paint look like leather.  It will be our little secret.  Kay?

Next step is to rub the nail heads and clasp with some dull gold glaze.  Once done, this will hold the party favors and the kids will need to do a treasure hunt to find it.  I all ready wrote and printed the clues.  Sample clue:  Find your way to a very tall tree, around the trunk you'll find clue #3. 

I wrote all the clues in verse 

could anything be worse?

Than someone who thinks she's a poet

and doesn't really know it

that she's not?

For the Wrecking Ball Tongue Grab Magic Element Challenge, I found 2 large flat platters at the Dollar Tree.  I thought that these would work to hold the gems to be grabbed and the shallowness of the lip wouldn't interfere with the game.

To make them more fun, I mod-podged on pictures of Wrecking Ball with 2 different catchphrases. 

I'm having a lot of trouble with my mod-podge lately - lots of wrinkling.  I think that I need to switch to card stock instead of regular copy paper.  So be forewarned - these are not perfect.  I just have to accept this with a sigh and move on.

For Trigger Happy's Coin Toss Tech Element Challenge, I found some red and gold bins at Dollar Tree and hit them with some mod-podge as well.

Wrinkled again!  Doh!  The kids won't mind, right?

And finally, I modified and gussied up the Dollar Tree boomerangs originally shown here with some brown paint and mod-podge.  You can see one in the front here:

Meh.  Not my best work.  But I think that the kids will get a kick out of these more so than a plain old tray, bin, or boomerang.  Note that the boomerangs are meant to fly with a helicopter attached, but the kids tested them and they work just as well sans copter.

While I had the drop cloth out for the treasure chest, I also took some time to paint some foam balls found at Dollar Tree (again with the Dollar Tree!).  The idea is to use my frosted glass bottles and make funky centerpieces.  I used bright green, orange, aqua, and purple to turn these plain balls into...

...these bright balls.  Aren't they fun?

I might do this again and make a wreath - I love how colorful they are.

And finally, at a store you might have heard of called Dollar Tree, I found this little foam ring, which doesn't look like much, but will hopefully work for my vision of a Portal Punch. 

The color changing pumpkin light fits PERFECTLY in the middle and my punch bowl will be supported on top.  If this works, if will be fabulous!

Glittery Initials

For my daughter's joint-birthday-rock-climbing-party, I thought that it might be fun to have an initial for each birthday girl to place near her cake on the cake table.  In addition to being a fun design element, it would allow for guests to know which cake is for which birthday girl, provide another opportunity to bring in the party palette of blues and greens (the fave colors of each birthday girl), and would later do double duty as bedroom decor and a fun memento of the event for each girl.

For this project, because I wanted the letters to be free-standing and not too big, I searched high and low for just the right kind.  I went to A.C. Moore and Michael's, but was underwhelmed by their options.  Most of their letters seem meant to grace a wreath or hang on a wall, not stand independently.  I trudged off to Joann's as a last resort and was THRILLED to see that they have a HUGE selection of letters, both hanging and standing styles, in a variety of materials, fonts, and sizes.  I found the perfect sized 3-dimensional cardboard letters for each girl and the price was great as well - with a coupon for one, I ended up paying less than $4 total.

Back at home, prep work involved removing tags and stickers from the letters and then assembling a variety of blue and green acrylic paints from my collection.  I painted each letter using lots of different shades for depth.  I painted all sides of the letters just to be safe.

While the letters dried, I used my paint plate to experiment with glitter and sequins to figure out which route I wanted to take for embellishments.  Sequins were just too much, so scratch that.  I then tried aqua glitter thinking that it would accent both the blue and green hues and bring a little unity to each letter while still letting them be different.  It was OK, but not exactly right.  Whitish-clear glitter didn't have enough oomph.  The blue iridescent flake glitter was the CLEAR winner.  It picked up and enhanced the best of the green and the blue for both hues.  My mama always taught me that you can never go wrong with iridescence and she is right every time!

After drying - I gave them overnight, but they were dry much sooner - each letter received a coat of glossy mod podge and a liberal sprinkling of that gorgeous, flaky iridescent glitter.  I let that sit for a bit and then came the top coat of glossy mod podge to seal the glitter in.  (Nothing worse than errant glitter floating about the house.)  I probably should have let the 1st coat of mod podge sit overnight - while applying the top coat, I did end up shifting a lot of the flake glitter around.  If I do it again, I'll wait longer for the glitter to set.

(Mog podge is not fully dry here - those white streaks are gone in the finished project...)

Making a tissue paper tassel garland

My daughter and a friend are having a joint birthday joint in June at a local rock climbing place.  I'm really looking forward to it overall, but in terms of decor was feeling a bit stymied about how to bring some personality and prettiness into that cavernous space.  Obviously, I can't decorate the whole building, so I decided to focus my efforts on a single table, which will be used for the cakes and favors.

The table will be in the party loft area, which is in the center of the space and is rimmed by a half wall with a top rail made of pipes.  My plan is to use zip ties to vertically mount 3ft. wooden dowels to the pipe rail.  I can then swag a garland from the dowels.  I decided to make tissue tassel garland because I have an overabundance of tissue paper and they looked pretty simple to make.  I am here to tell you that they ARE in fact very simple to make.  This may be the easiest and most impactful decor element I've ever made and they couldn't be cheaper.  I am a tissue tassel convert!

First step - assemble your tissue.  We have a party palette of blues and greens, so I pulled everything from kelly green to teal to powder blue and some white mixed in to boot.  (Disregard the red in there - I didn't use that.  I didn't use the prints either - too distracting.)

For this project, I pulled out my latest craft find - a large rotary cutting mat.  We have a second-hand craft store in town (I know - LUCKY!!!) and I got it for about $2.  Now that I've used it, I wish that I had bought one sooner.  It's so much less wear and tear on my hands and wrists, which are all ready in bad shape from all the computing and pipetting that I do at work (yes, I am a craft geek and an actual science geek as well - I'm an all-purpose geek, really...).  Now that you have your supplies, it's time to dive in.

Pull out a sheet of tissue and spread flat.  Cut it in half.  Go all the way up - I paused here to take the picture.

Take one half and fold in half.

Fold that half in half the other way.

Zip through with your rotary cutter, slicing up to about 1inch from the fold line at the top.

Make your cuts as thin or wide as you like.  They don't have to be perfectly even and it's OK if you get overzealous and slice some off.  You won't miss them in the final product.  Once you've fringed it up, open it flat and start rolling or pleating the un-fringed area.  I've done it both ways and neither is easier or prettier than the other, so your choice.

Do try to shake the fringes out every couple turns or it will get twisted up.  It's harder to untwist the fringes at the end, so be scrupulous about this now.

Once you've rolled/pleated the whole thing, start twisting the unfringed area tightly to compress into a thick ropey line.  Now twist the ropey line into a loop and twist the bottom of the loop closed.

You are now almost done.  All that remains is to seal the loop.  I've seen washi tape, glue, hot glue, string, and my personal choice - tiny hair elastics.  I found 2 kinds at the Dollar Tree - black and an assortment of blues and clears - perfect for my garland.  (I saw all clear ones at Walmart, but they were $3 for 75 - no thanks, Walmart.  I will take my business to the Dollar Tree.)  I'll be keeping my eyes open for a set of clear ones at the Dollar Tree - I'm sure it's just a matter of time... 

I like the elastic approach because it's quick and easy and cheap doesn't require that I sit near a power source for the glue gun or have to wait for drying time and also no burning my hands - yay!  This means that I can twist absentmindedly whilst watching Buffy the Vampie Slayer reruns (yes, I'm that kind of geek as well.  And incidentally - BtVS is probably the best show in the history of the world.  FYI.  I resisted at 1st because - really?  It's called Buffy teh Vampire Slayer?  No thanks.  But a good friend made me watch it and OMG - it's amazing.  Smart, funny, scary, sexy, romantic, devastating, heartbreaking, thought-provoking...  I could go on...  and on...  and on... sorry).  Anyhoo, reagarding the elastics, I could also theoretically reuse them when I trash the garland.  Just pull off and save the elastics for another time.

I'm not going to string the garland until the party is closer (will use either twine or this teal rope that I got from the second-hand craft store - $0.50 for the whole roll!), so for now I'm storing the tassels in bunches threaded on pipe cleaners.  The bunches are hanging on a hook in my basement. 

I did also cut a hole in a shopping bag and drape it over top to avoid dust and fading - tissue paper fades like crazy.