DIY Feather Wreath
I am so excited to share today’s Project Spotlight with you! A few weeks ago, I fell in love with a white feather wreath at Target. I stood there staring at it, trying to decide if I should buy it. It cost $19.99, and I decided to pass it by and try to make it myself.
Today I am going to show you the technique I came up with to make this DIY feather wreath, and it only cost about $4.00 to make! That is less than 1/4 the price at Target, and it really was so easy!
Here is what you will need to buy: one styrofoam wreath and white craft feathers. I already had my hot glue gun with glue sticks, but if you do not have those items, you will have to buy them as well. I got my foam wreath (normally $4.47) at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon. I also got my white craft feathers there, and they were 30% off this week. So, the normal $1.99 a package of white craft feathers cost me about $1.30 each. I completely used both packs.
I started by adding a big drop of hot glue to my wreath.
I added a feather and pressed my thumb on the spine of the feather to prevent getting burned. I just want to briefly say here, I am so sorry for my messed up/old finger nail polish in all these pictures. How embarrassing. 🙂
I went about five or six feathers across the styrofoam of the wreath.
Those feathers were my first row. I then started my next row about an inch lower on the styrofoam. This allowed for lots of overlap but spread the feathers out a little, so I didn’t need as many.
I found that the five or six feathers across allowed for some “wrapping” on the sides of the wreath. They started to go towards the back but also the back still had a bare streak, so as not to waste feathers that would not be seen. Play with the amount of feathers you need. Depending on the size of your ring of styrofoam and feathers you may need more or less. The important part is to just cover the sides well because you don’t want any styrofoam to be seen at any angle your wreath ends up being displayed and seen.
You then just keep adding rows and rows of feathers doing the same steps until you are about to where you started.
From there you do your best holding/bending the first row of feathers back so you can stick glue in there behind them and glue those final rows. It was a bit tricky managing it on my own, but it can be done!
After you get those last rows done, you are done! You have just created a professional looking wreath for less than 1/4 the price!
I love it!! I think it looks Christmasy yet also wintery. Even after the rest of your Christmas decorations come down, this pretty wreath could stay up till the spring!
I think these wreaths would make amazing Christmas gifts for friends or family. I think they would also make fun hostess gifts or a nice wedding/house-warming present. The ideas are endless, and they are gorgeous and CHEAP!
I stuck my wreath up on my mantle with a little star I found at the Dollar Tree last week. Today we are getting all of our Christmas decorations down out of the attic and I can’t wait to really deck my halls with this beauty! I’m sure I will be back to show you my results!
Have you started decorating for Christmas? Can you see yourself making this wreath? Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Linked up at: DIY Show Off, The C.R.A.F.T. Blog, Little Inspiration, Homeschool Creations, and Shaken Together
DIY Transformer Necklace and Game
On Saturday, my sweet Jeremiah turned four years old. That morning I posted a picture collage which listed things he likes. If you still want to know even more about my sweet boy, read his BIO on our “Our Family” tab at the top. I don’t think it came as a surprise to you to see Transformers at the top of the list. Transformers have been the “thing” around here since the end of the summer, which led Matt to making them their transformers school desk.
As his birthday approached, J kept talking about how he wanted to have a Transformers party. The poor guy has a birthday that always falls right around Thanksgiving, if not ON Thanksgiving, so we opted to keep it small and just invite our families over for this shin dig. Which you know my family alone is a party waiting to happen.
We took last week off school, yet with three kids in the house, we are always learning. They assisted me in making this DIY Transformers necklace that I am going to share with you today.
We first picked out a bunch of bottle caps (and practiced counting them as we made sure we had enough for each of our party guests to have one). The boys were sure to point out which bottle caps there were more of, so we must like that beer more and which bottle caps there were few of, so we must not like that one. Aren’t they smart?
Next, we chose a pretty color of spray paint from our vast collection. J liked blue the best, so we went with it for his birthday. I spray painted the bottle caps on the backside to cover up the logos.
Waiting for these guys to dry was hard for the boys, so I let them hammer flat the “extra” bottle caps. We will be using these on another project soon.
Those last three pictures were a rabbit trail, but all of you with active young boys like me would appreciate this news. That activity kept them busy for an hour! They loved it! Boys with hammers and destroying stuff. It was a perfect activity. Ok, now back to the necklaces. 🙂
Once they were dry, my amazing husband helped us by using a nail and hammering a hole into each of the tops of the bottle caps.
I then printed really small pictures of Autobots off the computer. The boys spent a long time with me looking at images and telling me which ones were good and which were not. We had to talk about “pixels” and other new terms with this part of the project. It was really fun to have them involved and excited.
It took some perfecting and printing of different sizes to find the size that could be cut close enough into a circle with seeing the image as big as it could be.
Once all our bottle caps had an images, we threaded them with a cord or string. We used whatever we had. Once there was a string (that would allow the Transformer “charm” to go around our necks) we glued the images on top. By doing the thread and gluing of the image in this order, we got a bigger image and covered up the hole, so our “charm” would not move around on the string. It made it a more permanent piece, which is what I wanted.
I then painted the images with a thick coat of mod podge to make them shiny. Once they were dry, they were all done!
We laid them out, and the boys loved giving all our guests one as they arrived for J’s party.
They were SO cheap to make. If you are not into collecting your own bottle caps, you can order brand new ones online. Just Google “Bottle Caps” and you should find plenty of options for less than $5! I hope you will give these a try for your Transformer fan! You could also branch out and turn these into fun charms for a number of occasions. Replace the Transformer images with your favorite characters, names, or symbols. You could use your guest’s names and hang them on seats for assigned seating or a drape them around a wine glass stem to keep track of glasses. As always, the possibilities are endless!
One other thing you might enjoy for a Transformer themed party is a quick game!
My son, Caleb, cut out a bunch of Decepticon (the bad guys) logos for me.
We taped them up all over our little house. They were on walls, lights, beds, and even people. Thank you Sam for being an incredible sport with your Decepticon label! I then gave out all our Nerf guns and told them to run through the house and shoot all the Decepticons. The boys, and a few other party members, had a blast! It was so fun!
See everyone wearing their necklaces?! They were all such great sports in honoring my little boy. He felt so loved and had the best day! I can’t believe he’s four!! I hope you enjoyed these Transformer fun DIY party ideas. I’d love to know if you give them a try! Do you have a Transformer lover in your family too??
Check back tomorrow for more pictures from this party and from Thanksgiving!
Linked up at: Uncommon Designs, DIY Showoff, Setting for Four, Red Head Can Decorate, Song Bird Blog, Miss Information
Thrifting Treasures
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday. We had an amazing day! It was our first time to host, and we had Matt’s extended family over. It was a lot of fun with lots of laughter and family! The benefit of hosting was we hardly had to do any of the cooking. Sweet deal in my book. I can’t wait to share some of these pictures with you! I hope you enjoy the rest of this holiday weekend. I did a little Black Friday shopping last night with my sister-in-law and am now gearing up for my son’s birthday tomorrow. It is crazy busy times, but it is all so fun and full of love. I am truly blessed!
Even though its been a busy week I didn’t want to ignore my Friday Project Spotlight. I wanted to share a quick chair makeover that my sister, Olivia did last week. Olivia is the other half Dancing Zebras, our Etsy craft store.
Olivia, and my niece, Charleigh, were in town for a week. We crafted and did all sorts of fun thrifting shopping adventures. It was a perfect week! My mom was so sweet to watch the boys one afternoon and finish up “school,” so I could have a girls day! So, my sis and I loaded up our girls and went to four thrift stores in a row. It was so fun!
We found lots of good deals and fun things to re-do/re-vamp! Don’t you love Reagan’s Baby Gap hat we found for $1.00?? I love brainstorming with Olivia and dreaming of how to make ugly things beautiful again.
One of Olivia’s amazing finds was this old chair that she redid with a little paint and a pretty piece of fabric! I love it and might secretly be wishing I had bought that chair!
The chair folds up, and it would be so easy to store and yet bring out when you need that extra seat! I love the colors she choose and combined together! She unscrewed the seat, spray painted the chair, then recovered the seat with some fabric she had left over from another project. She then went back and gave it a light sanding job. Didn’t it come out so cute?! It always amazes me how quickly these thrifting finds can become treasures.
We had a lot of fun on our shopping trip. I found some fun things that I was able to use this week to decorate for our Thanksgiving feast.
I got that little pumpkin holder for $1.00 and those glass vases for $.80 each. I simply filled them with some acorns I had collected. I just adore that wood bowl I found for $1.00!
Thanks for stopping in and seeing my Project Spotlight item. Thanks Olivia for letting me feature your chair makeover! Do you have a project you would like me to spotlight? I’d love to hear from you and share one of your creations! Message me and we can work it out! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I’ll be back on Monday with more from my Tidbits of Me series.
**Linked up at Miss Information.