Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Yarn projects for my mantel

I am hooked on decorating with yarn right now! It is so easy and cheap. For this post, I wanted to go into more detail on my fall mantel and a couple of the projects I did with yarn.

Inspirations:
The Inspired Room
Thrifty Decor Chick

Making these two projects was really easy! For the letter "O," I just started with making a knot in the yarn around the letter. Then I wrapped it a million times! Over and over and over. I tried to be as neat as possible and to keep a good tension as I was wrapping the letter.


The vases were a little more complicated. The orange one was pretty easy. I just started at the top and wrapped the yarn around the vase as I went. The smaller, yellow one was a little more difficult. The shape of the bottle made this a little more challenging because the yarn kept slipping on me. I probably should have spread some glue around it, but I didn't have any readily available. Instead, I grabbed a couple of glue dots and put them around the areas where the yarn was slipping. That worked really well.

Supplies: Yarn--Green, orange, yellow; wood, unfinished letter; and two small glass vases. I also used a couple of glue dots. All materials were from AC Moore.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Fall mantel


The last few months have been really busy for me, both at work and at home. I almost didn't decorate for fall, but then I became inspired by some of these pictures from Pinterest.

Inspirations:
Sweet Something Designs
My Blessed Life
Babble

Here is my mantel:



My mantel ended up a little softer than the inspiration features, but I'm really happy with it. I was able to pull together some fall-specific pieces with pictures, candle holders, and the tree sculpture that I already had.

I made the Fall banner using craft paper, ribbon, and craft letters. I'll put the tutorial up in a couple of days.

The yellow and orange vases and the green "O" were yarn projects. I also added some fall greenery to it and the little pumpkin. I'll also put up a tutorial for doing these projects.

Botanical prints with burlap mats

In May, Mr. O and I spent a lovely weekend in Portland, ME. Of course, we did some shopping--they have some great shops in Portland!

We went to this used bookstore and found four botanical prints that we loved. They were lithographs from the late 1800s. We picked up all four for about $90. A little pricey, but they fit so well with our house, so we couldn't resist

Unfortunately, the pictures weren't a standard size and I had a lot of trouble finding a frame and mat to fit it. I priced some custom mats and even considered cutting my own mat, but I wanted to try something a little more creative. While perusing Pinterest, I saw some great pictures with burlap.

Inspiration picture: 
Jones Design Company

This picture got me thinking that maybe I could make my own mat. I went to Michaels and bought three yards of burlap fabric for $10--I probably could have found this cheaper, but I was in Michaels already and decided to just go for it.

I really like how they came out--and now I'm obsessed with burlap. What have you done with burlap fabric? Have you worked them into any projects yet?


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