Cute Christmas Decor!

These past few days I have been working on some cute Christmas signs and I  am so excited to be finished so that I can finally share them... I am so proud! Now normally I'm not great at coming up with my own ideas. I'm good at copying ideas that I've seen and tweeking them to make them a little more personal, but nothing original. This time, however, the idea was completely my own- you may have seen something similar, but I haven't so I feel I can actually claim true personal creative credit for this one!  So here they are, my own fabulous additions to my Christmas decor! Love them!

Although I am so proud of my originality,  I love to share my ideas and I'd love to be the inspiration for someone else's creativity instead of it always being vice-versa. So I'll share with you just how I made them in hopes that someone else out there will love them enough to make them their own as well. This project really only takes a few hours and can be broken down into less than 10 steps (or fewer if you do things a little differently- I chose the longer and harder process just because of what I had, and didn't have, at the time I started).


Supplies needed: canvas, paint and paintbrush/or vinyl letters, ribbon, glitter spray, glue

• Step 1:Paint your entire canvas white. I did this just because there was some imperfections on my canvas and I also wanted it a little whiter, so you could skip this step if you're happy with the appearance of your canvas. 
• Step 2: Hop on the computer and find a font that you like. Now create your words using the Word Art function on Microsoft Word. Print it.
• Step 3: Cut out your words, letter by letter- a long and tedious task!

• You could completely skip these last two steps by getting some wood letter from the craft store. Highly recommended if you are short on patience or time! Then you could also skip to step 5.
• And if you have access to making your own vinyl letters you can actually skip straight to step 6.
• Step 4: Lightly trace your letters onto the canvas with a pencil.
• Step 5: Paint your letters. This is where some painting skills can come in handy. I have none, however, so if I could do it, you could do! Also I recommend using a paintbrush with a nice straight edge! 

• If you bought wood letters, painting them is a lot easier because you don't have to be exact and within the lines. Let your letters dry, then adhere them to the canvas.
• Step 6 (optional): Spray your entire canvas with some glitter spray. This step is totally optional, but I love the little bit of shimmer it adds. I used a white glitter called Diamond Dust from Michaels Craft Store.
• Step 7: Add some ribbon. I cut my ribbon about an inch longer than the canvas so I could glue the ends of the ribbon to the back. Be sure to pull the ribbon taught after you glue one end before gluing the next.
• Step 8: Add a bow or any other sort of item you please. I chose a bow just because I thought they looked a little like presents, but also a Christmas flower, bells or pinecones could look cute!
• I made my own bow like this:

lay your ribbon down in a zig-zag pattern like this

pinch the center of the ribbons together. don't worry if it doesn't look great at first, you can always adjust it.
secure with some thread tied around the center.
cover the thread with a small section of ribbon and hot glue to the back.

• Step 9: Attach the bow wherever you please.
• Step 10: Repeat for as many signs as you would like!

Now I just have these signs leaning up against the wall, but I think it would be really cute to hang them by a ribbon.  I may decide to do that later, but for now, I'm on to my next craft project...Christmas is only a few weeks away...eek!

Halloween fun!

   Yay! It's Halloween time! I absolutely love this time of year.  Even though I'm all grown up now and supposedly too old to trick-or-treat (boo!), Halloween has continued to be one of my favorite holidays.  I love it because of all the fun ways to decorate, from ghoulish and ghastly to fun and whimsy, and also because I love to dress up and see all the little kiddos in their costumes.  This year will be especially fun for me 'cause I now have a kiddo of my own that I get to dress up for her first Halloween! She even has two costumes: a duck and a bumblebee... I just couldn't resist!

   So for the past four years or so I've tried to increase my collection of Halloween decor so that I can one day have an awesome decked-out Halloween house.  I could spend hours in the Halloween aisle just looking at all the fun things, but I usually only end up with a few new items due to our budget (that's it... next year I'm making a Halloween fund!!).  This year, however, our budget was especially tight so instead I thought I'd try my hand at creating some things of my own using inexpensive materials and stuff that I already owned.  I searched around for inspiration and found a couple of fun things to make and I'm really excited and proud of the cute new additions to my Halloween collection this year.

   

   So these guys here were my first project. I got the inspiration for this idea while scanning through Pinterest (my new favorite website!)  When I first saw them I immediately fell in love and wanted to make them for my own (here's the link to the original).  They were super easy to make and at least for me, nearly free!

So here's what I did:

-I took an old 1x4 baseboard that we just had lying around in the garage and cut it up into 4 pieces (not sure of the sizes, just whatever looked good).  The original used 2x4's.

-Then I grabbed some cheap craft paint at Joann's (I think I spent a total of $1.50).  Sure, the paint was cheap and it took a couple of coats, but for the price I wasn't complaining!  I handpainted each of the characters.

-For the mummy, I only painted a small black strip and yellow eyes and just covered the rest with some tan scraps of fabric.  To create the distressed look I simply ripped the fabric into strips instead of cutting it. Then I hot-glued the strips to the back using just a dab of glue on each end.

-For the base, I used a 2x4 that I again just had lying around, and painted it black.  I then used some small wood letters that I found at Michaels ($3.00 for a package of letters) to spell out trick-or-treat. I painted those orange and then glued them onto the front.

-To assemble the whole thing together I drilled some screws up from the bottom of the base into the characters.  You may be able to just use some glue, but I wanted to make sure they were really secure.

-Viola! My super cute Halloween sign that now sits proudly on my front porch.  So easy to make, and because of some random stuff I just had lying around, it only cost me $4.50!

   I've never really been a super crafty person, but I enjoyed doing these things so much that it has kinda jumpstarted me into some creative kick.  Now I'm planning on doing crafts more often, hence my new blog.  I also thought of how much fun it would be to do a new craft for each holiday, especially now that I have a little one, it seems like such a great mother-daughter thing to do.  So here's to hoping that this is just the first of many things to come!

-p.s. I don't have pictures of the creative process 'cause I decided to blog about them after I had already made them.  Next time I'll be sure to post photos with the instructions!