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!

Burlap Swag Curtains

  I'd been thinking about doing burlap curtains for awhile when I found 1 and 1/2 rolls of gardening burlap at a yard sale - I paid $1.00 for them (happy dance) it normally sells for around $12 at Home Depot. I'd come across this tutorial for Burlap Swag Curtain on the blog Town and County Living and loved the way they looked and wanted to copy it in my Sunroom.

  Here is what it looked like before - it just needed something to finish it up!

  The roll of burlap was 3 feet wide by 24 feet long. My curtains needed to be 18 feet long - plus a bit more so the curtains had some swag to them.

  It was a long piece of cloth. Andrew mounted the curtain rod for me (I reused one I already had, just spray painted it hammered silver). I knotted the swag on the left side and looped it over the rod using the picture from Town and Country as a guide. Once it was looped over the right side I tied another knot and just eye balled that they were even and then cut off the extra burlap.

  Here it is all finished, probably took me ten minutes to do - mostly because I retied the knots a few times. I love how it looks and it cost me a $1.00 plus a can of spray paint but I have some of that left over for another project (wonder what that will be).

  On a side note: Check out my awesome tin bucket planters, got those at a yard sale too and transplanted my house plants into them and they looks so cool!

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.

Slip Covered Throw Pillow with Burlap Roses

  I had one more throw pillow to make a slip cover for, I followed the directions I found on V and Co: to make the slip cover.

  Here is my slip cover laid out after sewing, just before it was turned right side out and had the pillow stuffed in.

  I had seen Burlap roses and thought that might be fun to add to a pillow so I found a tutorial on Shabby Love and followed her directions. They were very easy to make!

  I cut the burlap to different widths - top one is  1 x 12 the middle is 2 x 18 and the bottom is 3 x 18. I iron the burlap strips before I started the gluing process.
 I found the thicker and longer ones the easier to work with. You just roll and twist and add some hot glue here and there and try to be careful not to burn yourself and in no time you have some burlap roses.

  I added a bit of ribbon I had on hand to the pillow to add to the look!

  I don't think it took me more then a half hour from the cutting of the slip cover to the gluing on of the roses. I think it turned out very cute, a nice addition to my Spray Paint Canvas and Burlap Slip-Sash pillows.

Burlap Slip-Sash Pillow

  While on my pillow kick I decided to try making a couple of slip covers for some of my pillows. I found a tutorial for a easy slip cover from the V and Co: blog (but there are lot of them to be found on Pinterest).
  I got a yard of cloth at Joann's Fabrics for $2.50 on sale - I was pretty proud of my find. I measured my pillow and cut out my cloth to fit.

  Here is the pillow I was covering: it had beads on it so I had to remove them first.

  I hemmed the two back pieces and then pinned them to the front piece right sides together and then sewed them together.

  I had seen a sash-slip tutorial  on Pinterest and I decided I wanted to put a burlap sash on my pillow (I had the burlap left over from doing the back of my pallet frame). I used the grain of the burlap to cut a straight line and then hemmed the two ends so they wouldn't unravel.  I left the sides undone, I just liked how it looked.

  When I got my sewing machine from my grandmother she had given me a bucket of buttons so I dumped them out and found some buttons I liked to add to my pillow.

  I hand sewed my sash and then sewed the buttons onto the sash. Once the sash was in place I stitched it to the pillow.

  Here it is with one of my Spray Paint Canvas Pillows, I love how it looks! It turned out super cute and only cost me $1.25, since I already had the burlap, the buttons and the pillow.

Spray Paint Canvas Drop Cloth Pillows

This project started out as a birthday gift for my sister in law Johanna, but I liked it so much that I went on to update all of my own throw pillows. 

  I'd seen in my May issue of Martha Stewart Living an article about projects you could make from Canvas Drop Cloth and one of the project was throw pillows. I'd also found a few blog posts about spray painting pillows, which I found kinda intriguing and wanted to try.

  Andrew picked up a canvas drop cloth for me at Lowe's, the smallest they carried was 9' by 6' - way bigger than I needed. That is why I ended up doing all of my pillows too - I had plenty of canvas! I also picked up two cans of spray paint from Lowe's, an orange and a blue.

 These two blogs "This Thrifty House" and "V and Co:" have instructions on how to set up the pillows to spray paint so you can check them out for the how-to.

My stencils

I cut out the circles from a sheet of freezer paper and ironed it onto the canvas.

Spray painted.

This is the pillow I made for Johanna with orange and blue circles of different sizes.

  For the stripes I just used 3 inch wide painters tape, then I did a second and third round and made pin strips with orange. I really like how they turn out!

Here they are with the blue spray paint, I made orange pin strips by using more tape to make thinner strips and to cover the already painted parts. The top right pillow piece is a pillow back, I just lightly sprayed the cloth to give it a marbled look. I did that for all the pillow backs except the one I did for Johanna, hers was the same on both sides.

 Then I put them wrong sides together (so painted sides out) and sewed them together on three sides. I sewed it once and then checked to make sure the pillow form fit. Side note: I got the pillow forms at a yard sale, washed and dried them and they were ready to use. Once I was sure it fit I re-sewed over the stitches two more times with a smaller stitch setting - the canvas rips out easily so you want to make sure to do this.

  Insert the pillow form - if you couldn't figure out this picture. :)

Pin it in place and sew. I ended up using a tissue box to prop up the pillow as I was sewing to make it easier (thought I took a picture of it but can't seem to find it - sorry). It helps to prop it up otherwise its hard to sew it shut - the fatter the throw pillow the harder it is to sew shut. I sewed that seam three times over as well. Once its all sewed together I used a ripper to fringe the edges of the canvas - this took a while to do but looks awesome!

  Here are my "new" pillows, I really like how they turned out! Its an inexpensive way to up date you throw pillows.
  I just got the newest Crate and Barrel catalog and they have these Eyelash Throw Pillows you could totally copy cat them with these pillows. All you need is some canvas and spray paint and that won't cost you $30.

Supply List:
Light Weight Canvas Drop Cloth
Spray Paint
Freezer Paper
Papers Tape
Scissors
Sewing Supplies
Seam ripper