A little Fall-ness

Since blogland is in full-out throw-those-Fall-goodies-up-on-that-mantel-and-on-that-front-door-and-craft-some-Fall-ish-stuff-NOW mode, I thought I'd throw together a little post about some Fall goodies that I made.

Last year.

And the year before.

Because I'm currently in the midst of a 3-jobs-at-once type situation, and while I'd love to be craftin' up a storm with the rest of you, the only storm I'm seeing seems to have just passed through my house. As in, parts of it are a wreck.

Blargh.

Anywho- here are a few posts from the past to hopefully get your juices flowing and your hot glue a-meltin'...

(just click the title to go straight to the post)

Fall is in the air and on the Mantel

Fall is in the air and on the front door

Halloween decor 2011



How to make an easy-shmeezy Fall wreath

***

Don't forget to come and see me tomorrow from 9-1 in the gym of Holt High School for an amazing craft fair with tons of vendors and lots of handmade goodies!

Food too.

Lots of food.

mmmmmm...

Happy weekend to ya!

Fall is in the air and on the front door

Not to be confused with its prequel,

"Fall is in the air and on the mantel".

A few weekends ago, when I crafted the wreath out of kazoos, I also put together a Fall-ish slash Halloween-ish wreath for the front door.

Two wreaths in one day?

Absobloominlutely.

Here she blows:

Okay, so a little more Halloween-ish than Fall-ish, but not all that

 scary spooky-ish either.

A Falloween wreath, if you will.

What did I use to make this Falloween wreath?

I'm so glad you asked...

An extra large grapevine wreath salvaged from our hob lob,

2 floral stems + 2 berry twigs from Michael's,

2 black birds from the Dollar Tree,

1 1/2 packages of black creepy cloth, also from Dollar Tree,

1 roll of purty orange ribbon from Hancock,

and 1 extremely fake looking spider from the dollar spot at Target

And if you haven't met yet, allow me to introduce you to creepy cloth-

This stuff is amazeballs.

See?

Creepy Cloth will most definitely be making an appearance in my Halloween decor.

Sorry.

Back to the wreath.

I wrapped the creepy cloth around the wreath, and, .....well,

that was it.

No glue.

No tape.

No nuthin'.

The twigs of the wreath were perfect for 'pinning' the cloth in place.

Love me some lazy craftin'.

As for the birds,

they had these brilliant little built-in wires.

Thanks Dollar Tree.

Thanks for selling such awesomesauce goods.

All I had to do was stick them in place where I wanted and twist.

After cutting a bit of stem off the florals, I secured them with the last little bit of picture-hanging-wire from the toolbox

Forgot to mention that earlier.

I used a bit of picture-hanging-wire.

And then covered the wire with my purty orange ribbon-

And since you know I loves my monogram, I thought I'd stick an 'M' in the creepy cloth, along with Mr. Dollar Spot Spider.

Interesting side note about this particular M-

it's actually another bit of tornado debris.

While it's entirely possible that it blew from another sign, I'd like to believe that it came from the marquee of my church building since that's where my mum found it.

hello little birdies

And since no Falloween entryway would be complete without a punkin',

I went a step further

and put

TWO

on my front steps.

So there ya have it.

A Falloween wreath, with a couple of cute punkin' on the side.

I'm linking with:

 

The Pink Hippo Party at Pinkopotamus,

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday at Coastal Charm,

Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party,

Categorically Crafting at Someday Crafts,

heart wreath from junk I found at home

When I heard about Nester's

"You made a wreath out of WHAT?!"

party, I had to join in.

Some of you may remember my crazy newspaper, electrical tape, wire, & burlap wreath, but if you're new here, well,

I think it bears repeating...

so...if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know how much I love to make wreaths.

(see some examples HERE)

I heart pretty wreaths BIG time, so it was natural to make one just for the big V-day that's around the corner.

I wanted a heart wreath, but the only heart wreath forms I found were too small-

the hob lob had a foam wreath form that was only about 8 inches wide (I didn't want a baby wreath, I wanted a big mama wreath)

and Michael's only had a small twig heart wreath.

So-
I made the actual wreath form on my own.
Out of odds and ends I found at the house.

here's a pic of the finished product-

and here's how I made it-

In my brain, I had this grand scheme all planned for how I would make a larger, thicker heart shape than the forms I'd found in the stores.

Newsprint.

Yep.

Newsprint.

I went home after that fab trip to Michael's and found my newsprint sketchbook from an art class I took in college.

(don't worry- I didn't use any paper that I'd drawn on, but believe me- some of my work from college is, umm, special. Perhaps I'll post pics of what was in that sketchbook later on...)

I started wadding up blank pages like this-

and figured I could secure pieces together with masking tape until I had a heart shape.

Okay...masking tape,

masking tape.

Couldn't find any masking tape, BUT, I found black electrical tape. That works the same, right?

so I crumpled and taped,

crumpled and taped,

(see the heart starting to form? Fascinating, right?)

I had trouble getting the middle to stay dipped, ya know, to make the heart shape at the top.

No worries-

we had picture-hanging wire in the ole' toolbox.

Now it dippity-dips up there and stays put.

After a few more wraps of newsprint to beef it up a little, I had this-

Ready for burlap now!

I cut my burlap (from the remnant section at the hob lob, of course) into strips like this

and just started wrapping...

when I made it all the way around, I secured the end with hot glue

and ta-dah, my friends.

a heart wreath made from newsprint, electrical tape, wire, and burlap that stays together when held up like this and everything.

Now to make it pretty...

I went back to my remnant supply and pulled out some V-day appropriate colors

I was really digging the red fleece and the red/white stripes, so I got to cutting some circles. I always use one of our M coasters that were a wedding gift from my friend Kara when I make felt or fabric flowers and it works great. Of course, if you don't have M coasters, you could always use the peanut butter jar lid. They may or may not me the same size. (trust me though, they are) 

I take each circle, fold it in half, and then fold it in half again until it looks like this. Then I secured the tips to the center of a felt circle until it was covered.

With the fleece circles, I did a lil something different:

I still folded them in half twice, but cut a heart shape in the top like this, so that when opened, it looked like this:

(oooooooooo, aaaahhhhhhhhh)

hot glue the tips of those babies onto another felt circle, and you get this:

B-E-A-utiful, aint it?

next I snagged some red berry twigs from a vase I had sitting on my desk and stuck them into the burlap. No glueing. Just jammed them down in there.

attached some pink tulle and my flowers, and that was all she wrote folks.

Done.

And thar she blows, just a hanging on our Narnia door.

(that door in our foyer leads to a hallway that leads to the back of the house. We've called it the Narnia door since we moved in because, well...because it's cool, ya know?)

So...any one out there make any crafts using slightly unconventional methods with stuff you found lying around?

I'd love to hear about it.

Seriously- it would make me feel less crazy.