Posts Tagged ‘accessories

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Ya, ya, I know, it’s NOT EVEN TURKEY DAY YET!

BUT, and that’s a big fat BUT…

Don’t you want some Christmas crafts NOW so that you can make them for the entire Holiday Season?

Ya, that’s what I thought! You are welcome!

Make an adorable Christmas Tree out of terra-cotta flower pots!

(Isn’t this just adorable?)

Do you want to know how to make this? And I’m going to be extra super nice and include a cost break-down for you as well. Yippie!

If I’ve peaked your interest and you want to make one, read on! This isn’t a hard craft. You’ll love it.

To make this exact tree:

First you’ll need some terra-cotta flower pots.

I bought enough for 3 different sizes of trees, so don’t have a panic attack. I’ll show you the other two trees as I finish them over the next week or so. You really only need 4 pots and a saucer for this tree.

The pots need to be PRIMED before you paint them. I just used a brush and painted the primer on all of them. The saucer needs it on both sides, but the pots only need primer on the outside and the bottom.

Once the primer is dry, spray paint your medium sized pot (you have two of these – 4″ pots) with the brown spray paint. This will be the stump of the tree. Set this aside until the end.

Spray paint the lip around the top of each additional pot and the entire saucer with the white spray paint.

When they are dry tape off the lip of each white pot.

Now spray paint the 3 pots with the Olive spray paint. Make sure to paint the bottom of each pot as well.

When the green paint is dry, remove your tape. The edge doesn’t have to be perfect, but if any of the green bled really bad you’ll need to touch it up with a little white paint. I just used some white acrylic paint to touch up one or two spots.

Now it’s time to add the glitter! This part was really fun!

I put a big blob of the school glue in a paper bowl and then added a bit of water (maybe about a tablespoon or so). Mix the glue and water together to make a soup type consistency.

Now just paint the liquid glue on the areas where you want your glitter. I painted all the edges of the pots and saucer (minus the brown pot).

Work in small sections. Paint the glue, add glitter, paint more glue, add more glitter.

I used a large cookie sheet and just poured glitter over the glued areas over the cookie sheet. At the very end I scooped all the extra glitter up and put it back in the container. Believe it or not this was not that messy!

In the middle of your crafting you may want to take a lunch break and watch some TV. …in your PJs.

I tried the glue mixture AND Mod Podge, and honestly, for this project they worked about the same. School glue is much cheaper!

Now it’s time to wait again. Waiting is the biggest part of this project. Wait for the primer to dry. Wait for the spray paint to dry. Wait for the 2nd layer of spray paint to dry. Wait for the glitter glue to dry….

When it’s FINALLY dry (it really only took an hour or so), you can bust out your red paint!

Now, let me give you a little tip. I NEVER squirt paint out onto a plate. NEVER. It’s messy and wasteful. I just unscrew the cap and pour a little paint into the lid and use that to dip my brush. So easy!

Next I just free-handed some red dots all over the pot.

When the dots were dry I coated them a 2nd time so they would be more vibrant. While they were still wet I put a sequin in the middle of each dot. It’s glued on by the wet paint.

Wait again. This time for the red paint to dry.

Now it’s time to stack them!

Turn your brown pot upside down and set it where you want your Christmas tree to sit.

Place the saucer UPSIDE DOWN on top of the brown pot.

Place your 6″ pot upside down on top of the saucer. Place your 4″ pot upside down on top of the 6″ pot. Place the 3″ pot upside down on top of the 4″pot. Yadda yadda yadda….

For the topper I just found a metal star napkin holder at Goodwill. I spray painted it yellow and coated it in glitter. I set it on top with the ring for the napkin around the top pot.

*NOTE* I did not glue the pots together. I would recommend keeping this away from small children and pets that can knock it over. You can glue them together if you’d like, but I like to keep them separate so that I can nest them after Christmas for easier storage.

There are so many possibilities for this tree! I’ve got a 2nd one in the works that is 4 layers tall with a larger base and larger saucer. You can decorate these ANY way you’d like! Add any topper you can think of! I’ve got two more I’m making that are totally different from this design. Be creative! They don’t even have to be brown and green! Paint one hot pink and lime green. Paint one gold. Glue on bells and bows. The possibilities to decorate these are endless!

If you make one for yourself, PLEASE let me know! I’d love to add you to my Share.Inspire.Create. Party. I’d also LOVE to see all the great color palates you come up with.

Happy Crafting!

Goodwill freaking ROCKS.

Yes, you read that right. Allison is actually saying something nice about Goodwill.

I went to Goodwill on the fly and to say I SCORED is an understatement.

For some reason they had tons of brand-new merchandise from Target. I asked if Target just donated it all and the Goodwill lady told me that Goodwill purchases huge lots of unsellable lots from Target (ie: damaged goods).

LUCKY ME!

So, what did I walk away with?

Huge tray:

Vinyl Coo-coo clock kit:

FIVE rolls of vinyl for $.99 each!

I got one each of the chairs and phone booths, and then THREE of the huge pop art phone.

And a brand new large roll of cork.

Large tin summer bucket (it’s hard to tell, but this bucket is the size of a laundry basket!)

Charger for $.79. My mom is collecting white plates for a plate wall she’s going to do so I snatched this up and will give it a coat of white paint for her.

Wicker tissue box.

My FAVORITE purchase of the year! I found this brand-new bench for $79! The brand-new Target price tag says $259. S-C-O-R-E.

And finally, I found 8 (EIGHT!!) LAMPS:

I got these FOUR lamps for 20 bucks total. (Both pics are horrible, sorry.)
  

These two lams were $8 each:

And these two were $6 each:
  
We are obviously already using these two lamps. Kinsey promptly added her Minnie Mouse ears to the top of her lamp. I’m sure it’s a fire hazard.

I’ve never found so many fabulous scores at Goodwill. I still can’t believe it!

Keep an eye out over the next few weeks to see what I do with all these fun things!

I’m seriously in awe that I was able to inspire so many amazing people to create their own wreaths and pumpkins!

Here are more crafts done by my readers.

More wreaths!

This Fresh Fossil‘s wreath. You HAVE TO go read what happened to her wreath. Too funny!

Here’s Mommas Kinda Crafty‘s version of the Dollar Store wreath:

Addicted to Homes made one:

Kat emailed me her wreath:

Sandy Sewz also made a wreath!

AND a dryer pumpkin!

Keeping It Simple enlisted her boys to help make some pumpkins.

Today Along the Journey was inspired by all my ORB talk (Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint) that she used it for her pumpkins!

On a side note…

Michelle from Sustainably Chic Designs copied my cheese dome cloche!

La Bella Casa made some decor balls using my tutorial!!

Great job everyone! I LOVE all your hoh inspired crafts!