Good Wreath, Bad Wreath

Who knew there could be such a thing, right?  I thought all wreaths were happy, pretty decorative love.  Not so.  Not so at all, my friends.

Let's start with the good wreaths because they make me quite happy.  These matching little darlings are going to hang on either side of the steps leading up to my front door.  These were so easy it literally took me 10 minutes. 

Believe it or not, they are just dollar store wreaths.  I hot glued mini ornaments from Target and tied and bow and viola'!  The thing that took the longest was making dollar store wreaths look like wreaths and not like a piece of wire with green spokes sticking out.  I'm really in love with them!

Now, on to bad wreaths.  You know all those gorgeous wreaths you see on Pinterest and Flickr that say things like "this was so easy to do"  and "OMG, this just came together naturally".  Well, they're lying.  Or maybe not lying...maybe it's like childbirth, a few hours after the baby is born and is healthy and swaddled up cooing at you, you forget that you just ejected that living being from your body.  Perhaps these wreaths look so darn cute afterwards that you suddenly forget all the burnt fingers from hot glue, the way the bulbs will not and do not just settle into place and no part of making it was fun.  Not a dang part.

I will never forget.  I will never make another one.  Maybe I'm a little bitter because mine does not look darn cute.  It's more oblong than circular and the stupid coat hanger shows through.  I knew about 1/4 of the way through that I was going to hate it, but I was committed to finishing.  I've been working on it for two weeks now, just so you know.  And I cheated and had J cut the stupid clothes hanger down today so I could stop adding balls and just finish it. 

So fair warning...don't expect cute.  Expect done....and maybe passable from a distance:

I'm almost embarrassed to show it.  Can you see the white coat hanger showing in places.  No one said that would happen.  No one.  I am going to fix that because it's driving me crazy, but I'll be hot gluing a couple of baby ornaments on there, not feeding them onto some stupid dumb coat hanger that would probably be happier still hanging in my closet unused.

So anyway, that was my crafty day, how about yours??

Always,

K

Pumpkin Trio

There is no better time to catch up than fall.  I have finally climbed out of the mojo-funk I've been in and have been crafting away at fall and even Christmas projects!

Today I wanted to share the pumpkin trio I made for $3.  I found these cute lil pumpkins at the dollar store for just a dollar each and everything else I already had "in stock" as my sister says.

How cute are these guys? They were pretty quick and easy too, which is a huge plus in my book.

I'll show you some close ups and hopefully you will love them as much as I do!

The polka dot pumpkin was the easiest.  I just made a little ribbon from a tutorial I found on Pinterest (OMG, I am addicted to Pinterest, aren't you?!?) and added the dots by dipping the eraser of a pencil into black paint. 

For the ribbon pumpkin I used dressmakers pins that I had gotten in a batch of stuff picked up from freecycle to pin the ribbon to the top and bottom of the pumpkin and tied another ribbon on the top. The orange ribbon looks kind of off in this picture because of the lights but it matches much better in person.

This one is my personal favorite.  I call it a doodle pumpkin.  I drew the doodles onto the pumpkin with pencil then used more dressmakers pins to complete the designs.  The light really dulled them down, they are very bling-ish in person!  I'm not sure the aqua ribbon will stay.  I was trying to do something diffferent instead of a bow and I think I will have to find something else because I'm not loving the ribbon.

Check back this weekend for some more crafty updates.  I have lots to share thanks to my revived motivation!

K

PS  I'm linking to my sister, Quilted Cupcake's, new feature, Thrifty Thursday's.  Pop on over and check it out and add your thrifty/low cost craft projects!