DIY Projects and Crafts

DIY branch wreath

Been a while since I posted anything crafty. This is a wreath I made from a pile of twisty sticks from the side of the road. Rescued them from the trash.

It’s actually pretty simple to make.
1) Take four sticks and make a square. Use clothes pins to hold them in place. (This is the hardest part.)
2) Take thin flexile branches and wrap them around. Keep wrapping this way until you no longer need the clothes pins to hold it together. If you don’t have flexible branches, you could use floral wire instead.
3) Continue adding branches and build it up to make it less square and more rounded.

That’s it. Told you it was easy.

I haven’t done it to mine yet, but probably should wrap the whole thing in a length of floral wire to make sure it stays together. I’m kinda on the fence if I should add anything more to it. Maybe fresh flowers?

New pillows

Here are the new pillow covers I made a few days ago. They’re two sided. The bright patterned fabric is vintage from eBay. It was once a curtain valance. (How I wish I would have caught the auction for the matching curtains. Not that I know what I’d do with them. Kinda crazy.) The black and white is new fabric that I’ve had forever, like two years or something.

And the small pillow is one of those unfinished projects. It’s made from a vintage mu’u mu’u from when we lived in Hawaii and vintage shirt (from Texas I think). What can I say, I’m a sucker for a great pattern. But some of this fabric has moved with us 3x already so it’s time something be done with it. I’m going to start selling these pillow covers in my Etsy shop. This was a prototype. I was worried I cut it too small. I did. The insert is really shoved in there. But someone doesn’t seem to mind.

Up next is a box cushion for the wood ottoman thing. Halfway done so far.

Dinosaur towels

For Christmas I made the kids hooded towels. Totally easy using the tutorial here. It only takes two bath and one hand towel to make two hooded towels. If you sew it as shown, it ends up with a real square-ish hood. I rounded out center seam some and added spikes and neck ties. Supposed to look like dinosaur spikes. Kids say they’re monster towels, but they make me think of floppy rooster combs. Next time I’ll make the spikes shorter.

Jacob wanted me to take some other pictures. The kind that get you arrested. You get the idea. Here.

DIY Christmas ornament wreath

Last year I decided I should make a wreath out of all our leftover ornaments. Even went as far as to google “how to ornament wreath + wire hanger.” But it never happened. I figured it wouldn’t this year either…until I found a wire ring at a discount store (yea!). Now, if we were in the states, I would just go to the Hobby Lobby and buy a wire wreath form. But here in Germany those are near impossible to find. So, pretty excited to find the wire ring. So excited I bought two.

Googled it again. Everything online basically goes like this: take a coat hanger, make it into a circle, thread your ornaments on and, bam!, awesome wreath (followed by some beautiful wreath pics). Well, not quite that simple. If I would’ve had to twist a hanger into a circle, I would’ve smashed all the ornaments in frustration.

Here’s what I used:
1 wire circle
20 gauge picture wire
Bunch of old ornaments (mine are glass from Crate & Barrel years back)
Fake poinsettias (mine were “bushes” I got for 90% off at Hobby Lobby after xmas sale one year)

Total cost: 1.65€ for the wire ring

This ends up being two sided so great for hanging in a window. Not so great for hanging on a door. Something to think about.

Instructions how I did it:
I thought, since the online tutorials just threaded the ornaments on, and mine are still have paperclips attached (as ornament hangers), I can just attach them that way and they’ll be good. Not so. The ornaments barely made it all the way around the circle. And you could see the paper clips which looked ugly. Lesson 1: If you do this method, have 3x the ornaments you think you’ll need (and be aware that the wreath will be heavy).

Instead I decided to use wire to attach them. Not wanting to cut a bazillon 3″ pices of wire., I used a length of wire to attach several. Twisted it around the frame, stuck an ornament on, twisted it around, ornament, repeat.

I added fake poinsettias to fill in the gaps and give it some volume (plus I was worried I wouldn’t have enough ornaments). I pulled the “flower” part from the bush, poked a hole in the plastic part of the stem and wired it on to the frame.

After it was all covered, I went back and wired on the green and yellow ornaments individually. Then used the small purple ornaments to cover some of the wire ends that were sticking out. Just made a loop with the wire end and stuck a purple ball on (take the hangers/caps off).

If you decide to make one, some things that might be helpful:
1. If you can pull the caps off your ornaments, glue the cap to the glass ball part FIRST. While I was making mine, the balls kept popping off their caps. So I had this detached ball that I had to find the rest of (wired somewhere to the wreath). Kind of a pain.

2. If you use a length of wire to attach several ornaments like I did, work in small sections. Makes it easier if you need to slide things around and readjust anything. Leave the wire ends sticking out so you can see where one section begins/ends.

3. Don’t put too many ornaments clustered tightly together. If you’re going to come back and add some “feature” ornaments, this will leave space for them. I didn’t—that’s why mine kept popping off (see #1).

4. Wire scratches tables. If you have a nice table (I don’t), put something over it.

It took for freaking ever to do and I’ll probably be cleaning up glitter until next Christmas, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out.

Sweater blanket

The sweater blanket is finally done. I started it two years ago. I know, right? It doesn’t look like it took two years. To that I say: CREATIVITY IS A PROCESS. A much longer process when you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. I did only work on it when it was cold, which in Texas wasn’t very long. And then when I got it back out again, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cut the long stripes and make chevrons, or how I’d make it more square (as it was, it was very long and narrow).

It’s made out of all the wool sweaters I shrunk in the washer, plus a couple from Mike. I cut them into strips, sewed them together and backed it with a fleece blanket from Old Navy. Thought about putting a band on the edge to finish it, but I’m ready to call it done. And I’m happy with the look of the raw edges.

Here’s a better look at it: