Oh Tannenbaum

Well, there you have it, start to finish on my Christmas ornaments for Freshly Blend's Fifth Annual Ornament Swap. 

Supplies:

balsa wood

acrylic paints

two sizes of silver jump rings

plastic ornaments from target

ribbon

First, I painted the balsa wood using almost every shade of green that I had. I tried to mix the paints to create a lot of interest in a small space. That way, when I next cut the pieces for the tree, the detail of the painting would still appear.

The hardest part was punching the holes in the balsa wood for the jump rings that articulated the tree. I used a pencil to poke the hole since the wood was so soft. But, several times, the jump ring tore the thin wood. If someone wanted to do a similar design, I would choose a little heavier balsa wood. I think there were a couple that were heavier but could still be cut with scissors.

Then, I added a larger jump ring at the top to attach the ornament and the ribbon. To package these up for the swap, I cut cardboard to sandwich the tree while the ornament was to the outside. I do hope that all the ornaments arrived intact.

Time for spring wreath

When folks come to visit my apartment, I tell them to go until they see an orange rug. The rug came from Anthropologie many years ago, and I just put it there when I moved in. I always meant to get a new rug, but I've really come to love the spot of color when I come around the corner to my door. Then, at Christmas, I hung my very first wreath. That came down about mid-January and my door has been rather ordinary since then.

Until now. I finished my new wreath, which I am calling 'Time for spring'. It's made from a Styrofoam wreath form, yarn, fake flowers and pieces of time magazine. And, a lot of hot glue.
  

First, I covered the wreath form with variegated green yarn. This took quite awhile. I started on Sunday during the Oscars, and worked on it a little bit each night since then. The real trick was keeping the yarn from tangling as I wound it around the form.

I choose the two different floral stems because I liked the leaves and the colors. And, since it’s me, I needed to have something made out of magazines on it. I saw this tutorial from Dozi on another blog and printed it off a long time ago for creating paper flowers. I don’t remember which blog referenced the tutorial, but thank you!

Time Magazine is good for large blocks of text, but the paper stock is rather light. The result was more of a bud than the full flower that Dozi achieved. To get the bud to work, I glued it onto floral wire and then wrapped from there. I held on to the bottom of the wrap to try to get the top to fan out.

The buds were not enough magazine, so I simply made some paper carnations by bunching together a couple of different sized circles.
Finally, I grabbed the hot glue gun and just started sticking stuff on. I wish I could tell you that there was a process, but I would add something and then realize it needed something else.

My door is a now a lot more welcoming.


Oh, and I had an extra paper carnation, so I glued it onto a bobby pin and stuck it in my hair.

Bulletin board

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In honor of the color of the day and also the warm weather we've been having here in WI, I’ve put together some things that I like on my bulletin board to share with y’all.

envelopes (Paper Source), green vase (Etsy), pillow (Target), tealight (ZGallerie), shoes (Tilly's), necklace (Anthropologie)

I think I'm gonna order a package of these envelopes in the chartreuse green. They'll make whatever I put in them look interesting