Stay At Home Nation...: April 2011

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Easter/Spring Wreath-redo

Happy Easter guys!!

I've had 2 children down with strep this week.....no fun at all, because it's both my girls.

Sydney got it Tuesday & missed 3 days of school & took Michaela to the Dr yesterday and yep now she has it too. I'm crossing my fingers that Jackson & Landon don't get it.

So Easter will be celebrated with Amoxil-poor guys.

Here is my latest crafty decor piece-finished before the sickness crept in the house

I wanted to quickly post my Easter/Spring Wreath before Easter is gone.
I saw a wreath I fell in love with over at the adventures of nick and jessica but there was no tutorial to go along with it so here is what I did:

First I started with a winter wreath from Target I've had for 3-4 years and
I wanted to update it for the Spring.

I used
an old wreath
plastic eggs
latex paint
foam brushes
paper plate
small paint brush
raffia

First I removed the berries & frosted sticks that were glued into the wreath.

So it looked like this

Then I took 3 oops paint samples(.50 each woohoo!) that I had purchased from Home Depot.
There was brown, blueish gray, & a cream color paint.

I painted 1 layer of solid color on each of the eggs with a foam brush & placed them on a paper plate to dry over night. You will get paint on your fingers btw.

Then I repeated that process again, touching up any spots that had dried to the plate & peeled away.

At this point I thought all of the paint would end up peeling off and revealing the colored, plastic eggs beneath.
I decided to keep going and just see how things turned out. I suppose if I had more colors of spray paint on hand I would've tried that as it would have eliminated the peeling of the latex paint.

Then I was ready for my accents,

all I did was dip the narrow, wood end of my thin paint brush into an opposite color and either put dots or

just swept back & forth over the egg, depending on the look I wanted.

I left a few solid, & some I even went back and put some more paint of the 3rd color in the same manner.

I really love how these were looking!

I took pieces of raffia and started weaving it through,

piece by piece into my wreath.

Once I achieved the look I imagined with the raffia, it was time to add some eggs!

I carefully opened the eggs and placed a piece of raffia at the hinge and snapped it back tightly.

I tied the raffia with the egg attached on to the wreath, spacing as desired.

I thought the opening of the wreath was a bit too open & bare, so I added a cluster of eggs.

I did this by attaching 1 egg to the raffia, as described above,
making sure it was in the center of the piece of raffia.

Then I crossed the raffia & added 2 more eggs in the same fashion. and tied that to the wreath, leaving some length in the raffia so it could hang freely.
I took the extra length of the raffia (after I tied each egg to the wreath)
and weaved that through the wreath as well.

Finally I took a bunch of raffia and just tied a bow at the bottom of the wreath

and
TaDa....

I was going to add some purple silk flowers but didn't have any on hand, then thought a purple bow but since I have not learned how to make a bow from ribbon yet
I opted for the raffia.

Very earthy and a completely different look from what I started with.
Before:

And After:

And see how it fills that empty spot over the mantle so well =D

Do you like it?

~Iffy~

Partying with

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Crafting Kiddies Sunday #2~ Spring Blossoms

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Are you ready for a really fun, easy, family project that looks great on display?

Well grab your kiddies and some supplies and let's begin!

This was another craft we completed over the weekend, and I am really pleased with the results.

I came across this craft over at Sew,Craft,Create.

Such a cute little blog, check her out.

First you will need:

twigs,
2 colors tissue paper(1 sheet each)
scissors,
& a hot glue gun

I used 1 purple & 1 yellow for my colors.

Then I cut assorted sized squares from the tissue paper,
I put the purple sheet on top of the yellow so I would have matching sizes.