1.31.2012

Butterfly wall decor

Oh Pinterest. Who really can be bored today now that we have Pinterest? You don't even have to do any of the crafts. You could just oogle all day long at things that you could, would, want, hope, to do. I do this thing where I try to hold out as long as I can when I really want chocolate (I always hope to make it after the kids are in bed....) and I find myself doing the same thing with Pinterest. How long can I resist before I go back and spend the rest of the afternoon sifting through the goodness?!

And on that note here is a craft for my wall that I found on Pinterest. When you're renting you're so limited and have to be clever in how to make your home more livable!



I saw this idea and thought I'd give it a try. In the picture I found they made their butterflies out of soda cans. I don't drink nearly enough soda to attempt this any time soon so I made my butterflies out of card stock. I chose white although I preferred black. I would suggest picking a color and sticking with it because I cut out about 50 butterflies and that took several days. I painted about half of my butterflies black when I had this idea to paint half of them black and look like the white ones escaped out of the paint. I kind of like how it turned out. I may make some of the escaped white ones colored as well and make them a bit wild. If I do I will post the updated version. But anyway, this is pretty straight forward. I printed off some butterfly shapes I liked and had about 8 different shapes. Then I traced 50 butterflies, cut them out and pinned them on the wall with sewing pins. (Poke right through the paper and into the wall) I let them stick out a little to give them a little dimension. In the future I would have glued them to the push pins first because they had a tendency to tilt downwards when I didn't want them to. To get the design I wanted I used a pencil on the wall to draw it out and then pushed the pins along the design. Overall I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

1.25.2012

Tissue Paper Pom Poms

I'm back everyone! I took a little break from blogging to deal with all the Christmas chaos but I made a resolution to keep up with this blog so here goes. My baby turned one this month and we had a little party at an ice cream shop to celebrate. I made these pom poms for decorations and they were super easy. This would be a great way to use up recycled tissue paper... or am I the only one that keeps tissue paper?? Anyway- The original instructions are from Martha Stewart, go HERE for those.

All you need:
1 package of tissue paper
Floral wire (I used twist ties)
Scissors


 Pull the tissue paper right out of the package and straighten it out, all 8 layers stacked on top of each other. Begin folding it like an accordion, each fold being about an inch and a half.


 It should look like this when finished. Pinch it in the middle and either tie your wire or cut the edges to be rounded or pointy. I rounded my edges with the scissors and then tied my twist ties in the middle.



 After that, begin gently pulling out each layer of the tissue paper one at a time forming a ball.



 That's it! Super easy. They are pretty big too, at least a foot and a half across.

We tied ours to the ceiling with fishing line. In retrospect I would have made more, but they added a little extra fun to the party anyway. Afterward, I hung them above my daughters crib and they look so cute!