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!

NOEL Sign - Mantel Decoration

  

  With all the hustle and bustle of getting ready for Christmas the days have been so filled with parties and baking cookies and making gifts that there hasn't been much spare time to blog, but before the new year is up I wanted to write about my NOEL sign for my mantel. I had pinned this Noel sign from once.daily.chic back in the summer thinking it might come in handy with my holiday decorating. After I put up my Christmas garland and lamps I still felt like the mantel was missing something and I remembered the NOEL sign. I showed it to Andrew and asked if he could make the 'N' and the 'L' and I would take care of the rest. He is a sweet husband and did a wonderful job on them!

  I bought the 'E' at Michael's Crafts. I just went into the section in Michael's that has all the wooden letters and picked the biggest one they had. (They had wooden ones as well as white, but the wooden one was damaged so I went with white.)

  The 'O' I got at Michael's as well. I went in their holiday section looking for a cranberry wreath but didn't fine anything so I got two ropes of berry garland and twisted them together. Its not as stiff as a wreath would be so I had to prop it between the 'N' and 'E' but it worked.

  The 'N' and 'L' Andrew made out of two different pallet boards. I love the fact that they look so different from each other. The 'N' is rougher and has bits of bark on the edge of it, where the 'L' is totally just an old board  - it creates a unique look! He nailed the 'N' boards together with short roofing nails, and used pocket holes and screws to connect the two parts of the 'L'. 

   

  It turned out pretty cute if I do say so my self!

  

And here is my completed mantel - garland, lamps, sign and all! Its quite festive!

Note:

The lamps are from Ikea and cost $5 each. I bought them back in early November.

The tree sign (in the corner of the fire place) I didn't make - I got it as part of a Yankee swap. But it looks super easy to make all you need is a 2 x 4 or some pallet boards, a chop saw, paint, paint brushes, and letter stencils.

Merry Christmas to all!

Decorative Pumpkins

 As part of my quest to decorate my server mantel I made these decorative fall pumpkins which I found on the blog Design, Dinning and Diapers. We are currently building two rooms in our basement and we have tons of 2x4 scraps so I was looking for ways to put some of them to good use (this project fit the bill). The letter stencils I bought were 4 inches tall so Andrew cut all my blocks 4 and 1/2 inches long.

  I sanded each of the blocks to knock off any rough edges. I wasn't sure if the grain would show through so I took the time to prime them. I made five identical sets (four blocks each) so that I could give some away, so I had Andrew cut me 20 blocks.

  After priming the blocks, I spray painted them. It took two times, since I had to flip them over to do that backs and bottoms.

  Then I taped the stencils on to the blocks with painters tape and used a sponge brush to apply the black paint for the letters. The stencils still had a bit of give to them but it gave the letters an "artsy" kinda look which I liked.

  

The paints I used! The spray paint is from Lowe's and the acrylic paint is from Michael's Crafts.

  Here they are, all finished painting! 

  I don't seem to have any pictures of adding the screws for stems and the wire for the vines. Andrew drilled a pilot hole for each screw at a slightly different angle so that the stems go different directions. For the wire, I found a spool of silver wire at Michael's Crafts in the floral section - 12 yards for $3 something (they also sold it in copper and gold). I cut the wire into 3 to 4 inch pieces (longer was better) then I wrapped one end of the wire around the screw and used a pencil to wrap the remaining wire around to make a nice spiral that looked of a vine.

  Not hard at all and made a cute gift, you could totally do this for other holidays or seasons, skip the "pumpkin" look and be creative with colors and toppings - imagine the fun you could have!

Burlap Leaf Print

  I found this project while I was looking at recipes on Domestically Speaking and thought I knew just the place where it would go. Our mantel is a bit shallow so I'm limited on what I can do on it but we have a piece of Higgins family furniture in our living room which we call "the server" and it had a nice mantel top which I have been having fun decorating.

  I decided to do an oak leaf (she did a maple leaf) so I looked online for a piece of free clip art, put it into Microsoft Word, and enlarged it to fill an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and printed it out. Then I cut it out, traced it onto freezer paper (which is great stuff) and ironed it on to a piece of burlap that I had cut to fit a frame that I had on hand. I liked the way in her blog the burlap looked roughly cut so I didn't show any care while I cut the burlap. 

 Took it out to the garage to spray paint (I used leftover paint from my Spray Paint Canvas Pillows).

  I let it dry for a bit and then took off the freezer paper and put it in the frame. I covered the inside back of the frame with two pieces of scrapbook paper. I just overlapped them, if you look close you can see the seam but you have to look.

  Then I put it up on the server mantel!

  The mirror came from my grandmother and was in my room growing up; the sprigs of berries I got at a yard sale for $.50. I just added some leaves I bought at Christmas Tree Shop last fall and two pictures of Perrin as a baby - those will get replaced with something more "fall" but at the moment I don't have anything else.

  I love this picture just because you can see a happy little man at play, as well as my awesome server mantel!

  This project didn't cost me a cent. I had the burlap from the Pallet Frame project, I had the spray paint from my Pillows and the frame I had from something or other and it was just sitting in the closet. I'm thinking I might try this framed burlap picture idea again for a different season - not sure for what but you'll have to keep our eyes peeled for something in the future.

St. Patrick's Day Banner

A little bit of Irish in our home!

  Well, it was time to replace the "Love" banner that I put up on Valentine's Day, and I knew I wanted to do something for St. Patrick's Day.  I thought that a banner with shamrocks and Irish flags would be just the thing.

  I found a pack of 12 shamrocks at the Dollar Store. They had two colors, a light green and the dark green with glitter that I ended up using.

  Irish flags turned out to be harder to find. I looked at the Dollar Store and some of the other craft stores in our area, but ended up finding them on sale at Oriental Trading. I was already ordering some stuff for Perrin's upcoming birthday, so I added them on to my order and found a coupon code for free shipping. Pretty sweet!

  I took the flags off their flagpoles and strung them and the shamrocks through the same loop onto a long string of jute. Once I was happy with the spacing, I hot glued the shamrocks into place.

  I call this my "James Bond" glue gun because it comes with its own case and three more tips.  The whole thing looks pretty awesome. It's plugged into the power strip on my new sawhorse desk (Andrew will be blogging about that soon). 

  And that easily, I had a St. Patrick's Day Banner! It cost me about $3 to make - I didn't use all the shamrocks and flags, so I have to come up with something else for them. There's always next year ...

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!