Thursday, December 11, 2014

A little holiday DIY inspiration

With Christmas apporoaching, I have been in such a cheerful mood. I think now that Bennett enjoys the trees and lights, I love the holidays so much more. He loves the decorations, and the music and the tv movies, just everything! And I LOVE that he loves it! SO since we're home a lot while daddy is at work or away, we have been crafting up a storm!

I look to pinterest quite a bit for inspiration, but I also enjoy looking at the cute decor that Target and Pier 1 have to offer. Then I think to myself, How can I make this myself, and will it be cheaper than buying it? Usually I can, and almost always, it is cheaper.

So here they are, my creations. Not perfect, but totally enough to make this base housing feel more like a home.

DIY Tree Skirt






I purchased two yards of burlap, one tan, and one red. I believe each yard was around $3.50 at Walmart. I also purchased a small hot glue gun, and a small pack of glue sticks, the two together totalled about $6 at Walmart also. The woman in the DIY video I watched used a felt tree skirt from the Dollar Store, and glued her strips of burlap on top of that. BUT here in Hawaii, we don't have any sort of dollar store, and the most simple tree skirts I could find were $15 (aka WAY more than I was willing to spend.) So what I did, was cut two yards of yellow (it was the only color the craft store had) felt, and glue other part to it, to make the biggest working area. Then I traced a circle, and cut it out. I cut the center hole, and the slit, like a traditional skirt, THEN I glued my burlap to that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCkuy9V1W0U
(This is the video I followed, She is pretty good about explaining the process...)

DIY Stocking Hanger

Pretty simple and self explanatory. We found a 3' x 1' piece of wood at Lowe's, and I sanded it as smooth as possible. I painted it green, twice, then I used a paint marker ($2 at Walmart) to write on the board. We bought some hooks and threw them on, and also bought a hanging kit for the back, and that's that! Pretty easy! I love it , except my handwriting is kind of terrible, I just can't find a stencil I like here :(

Holiday Canvases



These two were inspired by other artwork I found on Pinterest. I just used a pencil on the blank canvas and took my time, sketching and erasing until I was happy with it, then used about 20 different brushes to paint each one. Again, I hate my handwriting here, but whatever. Still cute ;)

Chalkboard design


Just typed in "Christmas chalkboard" on pinterest, and tried to make mine look like those. This chalkboard isn't actual chalkboard, so chalk won't write on it. I had to use crayon chalk, which is more waxy, but still wipes right off. I might change this soon, but I thought I'd show y'all my first design. This isn't really anything special, but this chalkboard is the only 'holiday' thing in the kitchen/dining area, besides my snowflake dish towels HAHA...


Arrows (not Christmas decor)


These aren't Christmas decor, obviously, but we made them, and my arrows I painted are kind of messy. I still love them though :) and had to share them with y'all!


That's what we've got right now. Bennett and I did some salt dough hand print ornaments the other day, but we haven't gotten around to painting them. I guess I'll post those when they're finished :)

Hope this inspires you all to try some DIY decor for Christmas this year!!

TTFN loves!

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