How I did it - Christmas decor tutorials

How did she do that? Here's how!

In my last post I showed some decorating I've done around (and outside) the house and since I didn't want to make your eyes cross with a post that had a billion photos I decided to put the how-to's in this one.

Door decor - pine cone swag.

This idea was inspired by:

I just fell in love with the beautiful simplicity!

Per their instructions you simply hot glue the ends of the ribbon to the cone then stagger them to make it look interesting, tie the knot, trim the ribbon ends and hang.

Ummm who wants ugly hot glue and ribbon ends on the first decor people see when they walk into their homes? No takers? So maybe I'm just a huge slob with my glue gun but I knew that's what mine would look like so I improvised a little.

I started with pine cones I cleaned up out of a friend's yard and some red ribbon; not as big as CL's version but proportionate enough to the cones to be fine.

Then I took a scrap of felt from a previous project and carefully measured and cut perfect circles - wow I almost typed that with a straight face! I have issues with circle cutting dating back to Kindergarten but that's a sob story for another time. Instead I just freehanded them making sure they were big enough for my purpose.

I folded each in half and sliced an opening in the middle with my scissors, then threaded each onto a ribbon like so.

This way when you add the hot glue (a dab will do ya so don't add too much) and stick the ribbon on you can cover your ugly end and glue blob with some felt that sorta kinda matches your cones. I think it helped make them look a bit more finished.

The end result one more time now!

Love! On to the next.

Merry Christmas garland.

Inspired by:

I have a ton of these metal edged tags but do you think I could find them? Now that would be just way too easy. So I gave up on it and just grabbed a sheet of cardstock that has that "old parchment" look to it and my papercrafting tools.

A scalloped circle punch, regular hole punch, black ink, alphabet stamps and distress ink in "vintage photo" (which I found at Goodwill!).

Punched out my circles, stamped my letters in black and punched a hole in the tops. That process is simple enough I really thought you didn't need to see each step in photo form.

Then I added distress ink to the edges. What a difference that makes! I just love the dimension it adds. I should have taken a before and after for you...now why didn't I think of that earlier?

Then I took my large jute string and my tiny jute string and attached my letters - loosely so they are adjustable.

It has the same effect as the inspiration and I love how it turned out.

The finished product one more time!

Festive rustic. On to the next:

Rescued mini trees under glass.

Not really a tutorial but more like a show-off. I literally rescued these guys from the garbage. Well I would have taken them out of the garbage had they not first blown away into the flower bed and sat there in the dirt. They were kinda (really) gross and I had to dry them out, pick out the icky bits and whatnot. I was really committed to this project, haha. ;)

Then I spray painted them white. Let me suggest that you don't try this with the cans that spray in a fan pattern - it seemed like it took a ridiculous amount of paint to cover these.

(See what's in the background of the "before" pic? That's a 75 year old Frigidaire which belonged to my great aunt and uncle...and which still purrs like a kitten! It's outside and keeps the pop nicely chilled)

Once they were ready for use I put them in this Goodwill purchased glass with some basket filler in the bottom. They look lovely next to the painting done by my great aunt Ellen (the same great aunt who owned the refrigerator I just mentioned).

This little vignette is so ME. The great outdoors, tea and classic literature - that is what I'm all about!

Are you finished with your decorating yet? I don't think I'll ever be done! I should have started in July.

Linking to:

Frugal Friday @ The Shabby Nest