Tag: home decor

Yarn Wreaths

 As I was looking up how to make a pine cone wreath, I saw this cute idea for a yarn wreath. I like to do crafts with my girls. Well, scratch that. I like to do crafts and my girls like to do crafts so I try to find stuff we can do together. There’s usually some drama but more fun than drama. But so it goes with any family together time. :-p It’s fun with a tinge of drama – as long as none of us takes the cake with the drama then we are good.

What you will need:
Styrofoam wreath (we bought ours at Joann’s) – Or you can duct tape 2 pool noodles together..
Felt to coordinate with the yarn colors (for the rosettes – we bought ours at Joann’s)
Yarn (assorted colors – we chose a max of 2 colors per wreath because it can get tangly – one would be even easier)
Pins (for the rosettes)
Spray glue
Good scissors
Stapler

To make the wreath:

1.) To start, we stapled the yarn to the wreath with three staples, then used the spray glue and sprayed the wreath in that beginning spot (just a little section) and wrapped around a few times – this made it extra secure.

2.) Every time you wrap around, you have to put the balls of yarn through the wreath which ended up being hard with my little one’s wreath because she picked such a small wreath but she insisted the smallest kid has to have the smallest wreath – lol.

3.) Then just keep wrapping the yarn around and spraying the spray glue every once in a while to make it extra secure.

4.) I wrapped the yarn around the wreath twice to make sure all the white was covered.  One of my daughters wrapped once and the other wrapped haphazardly so who knows how many times she went around. They all turned out fine. Once you get to the end tie a knot in the yarn and you are done with the wrapping of the wreath.

Time to make the rosettes or whatever you want to call them.  I tried to find pre-made felt creations at the store that I could just glue on, but I didn’t find anything that I liked and the girls kept wanting to buy poop emoji  and other ridiculous (sandwiches, hot dogs, etc) stuff which I thought would ruin their wreath so I abandoned that idea and told them we were just going to make our own things to glue on.  Luckily, I found this site that taught me how to make rosettes and also luckily the girls didn’t have any ideas to make poop emojis out of felt – dodged a bullet there.  I like to roll the R when I say rosettes – try it it’s fun.  I nicknamed my little one Rosa for the day because she was a rosette making beast.

To make the rosettes:

1.) Trace a circle onto the felt using whatever you can find.  I used a peanut butter jar that had about a 4 inch diameter, a coaster with a 3 inch diameter and also a circle from our Twister game which was the largest – about 6 inch diameter.  We traced all of these on the different colored felt then cut them out.

2.) Next, cut a spiral out of the circle (make a snake).  That’s not confusing at all, right?  Here’s a picture (as you can tell, you don’t even have to be great at cutting):

3.) Then, roll up the snake into a rosette starting with the tail of the snake.  Here’s a picture (I always wanted to be a hand model):

4.) Last, put a pin through the rosette to hold it together, then hot glue it to the wreath wherever you want it.

One thing to be careful of when making the wreath is to make sure that you don’t have too much line of yarn because it will get tangled very easily. I did have to get out quite a few tangles, but it wasn’t so bad because we were doing all of this while watching TV so we were sufficiently entertained/distracted. I prefer to be distracted when doing crafts because it calms me – music or TV. I also like to have something called Sleepytime Tea which also calms the nerves or at least that’s what the package says – that’s enough to convince me. The stocker at Wal-mart got a real good laugh when I asked him what aisle the sleepytime tea was in (he asked me what kind of tea I was looking for – should’ve made something else up)..

My 9 and 8 year old did theirs all by themselves. They used different strategies to get them done but both look great. My 5 year old couldn’t do the wreath but she did make all her rosettes by herself which completely blew my mind b/c cutting the felt is rather tedious. My 8 year old agreed to make my 5 year old’s wreath for her as long as I promised to let her use the glue gun. I was really nervous that she was going to burn half her face off but it worked out fine. You just have to keep your expectations low like I do. :-p My 8 year old actually glued most of the rosettes on all the wreaths except mine (because I didn’t want to freak out if she messed mine up). And she did better than I probably would’ve done.

We all did ours our own way. My oldest wrapped the yarn haphazardly. She wasn’t able to cover all the white of the styrofoam wreath this way, but it still looks great I think and she got done way quicker than the rest of us. My 8 year old meticulously did hers to cover all the white on the first wrap around because she did NOT want to have to wrap it around again. I wrapped mine around twice in order to cover all the white and I didn’t worry too much about having mine twisted I didn’t mind it being a bit messy or mummy-like.

Cara (my 8 year old) made up this saying we used whenever anyone critiqued any of our wreaths while we were working: “I tried and I tried and all you want to do is blame me.” But you have to say it in kind of a drawn out Minnie Mouse accent type of voice and really drag every syllable out. Here’s a link to Cara’s voice: Voice_170713_1[1]  This had us cracking up the whole time. Once, I got annoyed with Cara because she really tangled up her yarn (and I was of course the designated detangler) and she said this and had us cracking up so the rest of us used it too. This came in handy to break up the intensity of crafting.  So, I say to Sydney after an hour of her making her wreath that I’m not so sure about her strategy because the white will still be showing, etc.  She says, “I tried and I tried…”  LOL.

I used this website as my guide for the wreath: http://millionmoments.net/2013/01/how-to-make-yarn-wreath.html

And this website as my guide for the rosettes: http://millionmoments.net/2013/09/make-felt-flowers-rosettes.html

Here’s a pic of the kids all hard at work:

Magnet Boards Collage

Magnet Board CollageI’m a tiny bit obsessed with magnet boards.  Here’s a magnet board wall collage I created to keep my kid’s school work organized (using the clips) and also to display notes, weekly menu, etc.

I found these picture frames at Joann’s for $10 each – they were on sale 50% off which they do pretty frequently – just have to wait it out for the deals.  The 2 at the bottom though I could only find online in black so I spray painted them bronze to match the other 2 frames (found bronze spray paint at Home Depot).  I bought a piece of 2′ x 2′ piece of foam insulation board at Home Depot for the center piece.  I found all the fabric at Joann’s fabric – it goes on sale all the time so I waited for the sale.  The hardest part is having the patience to wait for all the sales! :-p  So, the 2 on top are a combination dry-erase/magnet boards and the one in the middle is a pin board.  The 2 on the bottom are just magnet boards (no glass on front for dry erase).  When you put the glass on front, the magnetic part is not as strong so you can only hang light stuff like pictures and cards.  I took the glass off the bottom ones so that they could hold some heavier school papers, artwork, etc.  Also, I hung these as I hang everything these days using Command Picture Hanging Strips – they are a life-saver – I no longer have to wait for my husband to hang things.  Those suckers work really well and don’t leave big ugly holes in your wall – woohoo – win win!

To make these:
1.) Prepare the sheet metal: Get some sheet metal at Home Depot in the plumbing/duct work area (about $9/sheet).  You will have to cut these to size with metal cutting scissors (sheet metal shears – you can get these at Home Depot also).
2.) Prepare the fabric: You will need to cut out the fabric to size – leave about an inch extra on each side to fold over and lay it out pattern side down on a flat floor – make it as smooth as possible.  Be sure to iron the fabric if it’s wrinkled.
3.) Stick the fabric: You will need to spray the adhesive glue onto the sheet metal and place it on the laid out fabric.  Then spray the back edges of the sheet metal and gently pull the fabric on each side and stick it to the metal.  Tada!  Now, just place the fabric covered metal back in the picture frame and there it is!  For the foam board, you just spray the board with the adhesive and stick it to the fabric the same way you did the sheet metal.  You might need to smooth it out a little bit more – it seems to get crinkled a little easier – so I flipped it over and got all the crinks out before folding the edges over.  Note: More recently I have done without the gluing for the dry erase magnet boards since the glass holds it in fine and this way I could switch out the fabrics if I wanted to, but you have to make sure you iron especially well b/c wrinkles will show.
4.) Make the magnets and pins: To make the magnets, I just walked around Joann’s craft section and found some cute felt things and necklace charms, etc that matched the decor then I hot glued some super strong magnets to them (also found these magnets at Joann’s).  To make the pins, I did the same – just hot glued the cute things to the pins.  I love these – I went bezerk and made some for my girls’ rooms and for our dining room – I’ll have to post those as well!  :-p

Things you will need to purchase from the store:
Joann’s:
Cute things to put on magnets and pins
Spray adhesive
Fabric
Picture frames
Super strong magnets (I think they are actually called that)
glue gun and glue sticks

Walmart or wherever:
Gloves (for cutting the sheet metal – it is sharp! I just used my leather ones I wear in winter)

Home Depot:
Metal cutting shears (tin snips)
Sheet metal (make sure you don’t buy aluminum – bring a magnet and make sure it sticks before you buy)
Magnet clips (found these in the check out aisle) also Walmart and Target has some too.
Piece of foam insulation board for pin board (Found this in the insulation aisle at Home Depot – literally, in a box in the middle of the aisle).  It’s the perfect size 2′ x 2′ so I didn’t have to cut it or anything.

InsulationBoard2

InsulationBoard1

 

Blog_MagnetBoard2

Here’s a pic where I didn’t glue the fabric down:

Blog_MagnetBoard

Final Product:

Magnet Board Collage