I've been in quite the Holiday craft mood these past fews weeks and have been running around making a mess in a different room every other day to satisfy my desire to craft! My most recent project being an Ornament Tree. I've seen variations of this idea floating around pinterest however I wanted to use smaller ornaments that varied in size opposed to one size. Surprisingly, tiny ornaments are rather hard to come by so I settled on some pearl beads, some vase/bowl filler, and tiny Christmas bells.
Before I started the "glueing of the ornaments" which actually took a lot longer than I had anticipated, I spray painted a paper mache "tree"metallic so that there would be no gaps where I was unable to fit any beads. I also spray painted a handful of the gold styrofoam balls and pearl beads metallic as well so that I could have every color in the book (and by that I mean gold, silver and white).
I try to avoid hot glue whenever possible. I hate working with it and I always end up with a huge mess. For this project I used Gorilla Glue super glue, however if I were to do it again, I would have used the gel version of that glue. The regular version took awhile to dry and it couldn't support some of the heavier beads. I eventually ran out, so I rant to Rite Aid and picked up the gel version of Krazy Glue to finish up the project.
I didn't have any particular pattern in mind when I glued everything together giving it a rather eclectic look to it which I loved!
I glued little Christmas bells in places where there were maybe too many of one color, or a gap in beads to help fill it in.
We love decorating our walls with fun and meaningful custom made pieces that tell a story or are interesting to look at. A majority of these pieces being trail maps from our favorite ski mountains. I'm always on the lookout for fun items to frame which is why I bought this awesome hometown puzzle from L.L. Bean (shocker!) a couple months ago with intentions of glueing it together and having it framed.
Our home, which is represented by a house shaped puzzle piece, was extremely accurate, honing right in on the street that we currently live on. The rest of the puzzle features miles of surrounding terrain using detailed topographic map data. I'm really glad that I ordered this puzzle with our Boston address, as it encapsulates the "heart shape" that Boston looks like from a map, and the many rivers, wharfs and the Boston harbor that surrounds the mainland. It took maybe two days to complete thanks to the details of the water making it easy to sort and put together. Along with the North End, Beacon Hill and Waterfront, I'm really glad that the puzzle also includes the airport and Charlestown as well, two places that we frequent... often!
I've never glued and sent a puzzle off to be framed before, so I decided to document the process and make a short little "how to" film out of it to help anyone who is looking to do the same thing!
I probably emptied an ink cartridge and glued my fingers together 50 times, but I am thrilled to share what I refer to as the "cut, glue and repeat" project.
A local boutique that had these wooden letter cutouts on display is what originally turned the idea lightbulb on. I'm always up for a homemade gift that incorporates memories so I fired up the 'ole macbook and started printing out a handful of wallet sized pictures in black and white. Each photo was cut and glued down onto the wooden letters from oldest to newest. I cut off any overhanging scraps and then slapped a couple coats of Modge Podge onto both sides to keep it polished and smooth.
Other homemade Valentine's Day gifts that I have made include:
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