Playing Card Garland

  I saw this ideas for Playing Card Garland on Pintrest (where else) and thought "Wow that looks easy and I would be a cute way to decorate for Valentines day!

  So off to Walmart I went to find playing cards (they were $1.99 a pack there). I also bought a pack of quilting fabric to cut the ribbons out of, and I got some white ribbon to hang them on.  In the tutorial I linked above she used ribbon not fabric but the fabric was cheaper and what I could find so I went with that.

  I punched holes in the cards and strung them on the ribbon, I especially liked the way the face cards looked so I tried to space them out along the garland.

  I just cut the ribbon to length and tied loops at each end to hang over the tacks I put up. I bought three decks of cards, made five different strands, and put them up in different rooms in our house!

  The lighting in our bathroom is terrible for pictures but this is on the bathroom window!

  I did a strand across my crate shelves, the pictures doesn't do it justice - its really cute! (Might be my favorite one)!

  Then in the kitchen I did a strand across the bookcase!

 And one at the kitchen window, again the lighting is so bad that I had to use Sepia in my editing software so that you can see it! Note the beautiful snowstorm we are having!

  The largest strand I did was across my server mantel!

  I just had some fun taking different shots of that garland and editing and cropping them!

  Playing card garland is quick and easy and looks really cute for Valentine's Day!

Love Story Pallet Sign and Valentines Mantel

  Putting away my Christmas decorations and wondering what to do next with my mantel is what got me started on this pallet sign. I just started by doing a Pintrest search for "Valentines mantels" to get ideas and I came across this saying "Every Love Story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite." I thought that would be a fun saying to do as the centerpiece of my mantel. So, that lead me to do a search for "Love" pallet signs and these two were my favorites (Link 1) , (Link 2)

   Andrew disassembled an entire pallet for me and let me pick out the amount of boards I wanted.

  I pick these four, one was wider (and turned out to be a different kind of wood) then the other three but I like the way it looked.

  I loved the fact this board had a heart shaped knot on/in it so I had to have it for my "Love sign".

  Andrew put the sign together for me and then I tried the vinegar and steel wool stain idea. It would have been really cute, but because I chose two different size boards that turned out to be two different kinds of woods, the stain turned them different colors. Three boards were more of a tan color and the other was grey. The grey I liked but the tan not so much. Andrew kindly sanded it down again for me and I started again, this time without staining.

  Picking out stencils turned into quite a challenge - finding the right sizes was difficult. I end up finding them at AC Moore Crafts and getting 3 inch New Times Roman and 5 inch Scroll letters. They were all capitals so that changed my sign a bit too. I ended up just using the 5 inch letters on the L, S and O from the words Love, Story and Ours.

  I sketched out the saying first starting from right to left making sure that I had enough room for everything! Then I mixed up some grey paint from some white, off white and black paints I had on hand and started painting. I attached each stencil with photo splits (I use them for scrap-booking) and tape, then painted. Once it was dry (which didn't take long) I'd move to the next letter in the word. It took a few days to finish all the letters but then I do have an almost 2 year old to take care of too!

  Then it was just a matter of adding it to my mantel and getting it centered! I think it turned out pretty nice!

A close up!

  Our whole fireplace and mantel! Side note, this mantel didn't cost me anything! The wreath I made a few years back from roses Andrew has given me over the years. It used to hang in our apartment but since we bought our house I haven't found the right place for it! The heart garland I made last year from scrap-booking paper. The tulle was leftover from a wedding I'd helped with and we brought it home - Andrew had found the bag while cleaning the garage and put it with my stuff and I was looking for something to finish off the mantel and the tulle looked good with it! The candles were free from my grandmother... well since taking these pictures I've replaced them with maroon once that I found at Savers (of all places) so I did spend money on those. Grandma's candles were too glittery for this mantel - I'm sure I'll use them for something else. I put the candles on some birch wood cookies - a friend of mine was given a bunch of birch logs and asked if I wanted some to use for crafts or decorating and this was the first idea I had to use them.

  Happy Valentine's day to all!