4th of July Craftiness

I added a few new ornaments to my 4th of July tree this year. I made these three little barrel ornaments from empty ribbon spools. I store most of my ribbon on old fashioned clothes pins so when I buy a new ribbon spool I take it off the spool and transfer it to the clothes pin. What to do with the empty spool besides toss it?

Why make an ornament of course!

Below are the basic steps to make an ornament. First remove the ribbon. Then carefully take off the round chipboard sides so you just have the "spool" left. I added some music paper to this spool with a decoupage medium.

When that dried I used my crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the spool and threaded a hanging loop through the hole with bakery twine.

The next step was to find a die about a half inch larger in diameter than the spool. One of my scalloped Spellbinders "nesties" worked perfectly! Solid colored card stock or paper with two sides works best as you will see both sides.

I centered the first scalloped circle on the table, centered the spool on top and glued the inside edges. Then I added glue to the top of the spool and centered the other circle on the spool. If your pattern paper has a definite up or down design, be sure to line up the pattern with the hanging loop.
Next step was to weight the spool until the glue dries. I used a several items sitting on my table to weight the spool. A plastic jar bigger than the spool and floral frog.

When the glue is dry, it is time for the fun part! Since these were for my 4th of July tree I used my stash of patriotic papers and embellies to decorate both sides. Crepe paper ruffles, glass glitter, glitter paper, Stickles, punches and dies. On several of the ornaments I also added some paper border trim around the spool. 

I had some bits and pieces left over and put together this tiny garland ornament. Each pennant is only about an inch tall! 

Thanks for looking! As always, any questions post a comment! 

Happy 5th of July

 Happy 5th of July! 

I have not been here for over 2 months!!!! Life has just gotten in the way of my crafting and blogging. 

 I decided to re-arrange my craft room, move my sewing stuff to another room. It has taken me a lot longer than planned and still I am not finished. But I will save that for another post!

I did get my 4th of July tree up! I made a few new ornaments and also fixed one that did not survive the heat and sunlight of the solarium. I made a loopy chain garland from chenille stems in red, white and blue to circle the tree. I also made some little barrel ornaments I will share in another post. 

The ornament on the left started out with some patriotic crepe paper that disintegrated but the collage stayed intact. I added it to a vintage red Christmas light reflector. All shiny & new. 

I also finally scrapped my photos from my Newspaper article post about my 4th of July tree. 

I bought the photos from the Press Democrat and scrapped them on the lay out below. In my album I will have the layout on one side and the newspaper in a page protector next to it.

I used lots of red, white and blue of course! 

Thanks for looking!

7 1/2 minutes of Fame ;-)

Today I was featured in an online article in our local paper, the PressDemocrat. article.

Since the article only ran in the online edition, I did not see it in "print". So instead of 15 minutes of fame, I will settle for 7 1/2!

ETA: I made the "real" paper in the Saturday Home section! So I guess my 7 1/2 minutes of fame can really be 15 minutes! ;-)

The paper ran a request for 4th of July celebrations and traditions and I submitted my 4th of July tree and was interviewed and photographed for the story.

I blogged about my tree here

It was fun to share about my tree and how the tradition got started. Since I love to decorate for every holiday when I started my holiday trees I already had lots of decorations for each season/holiday.

And each year it is fun to craft new decorations for the trees.

For the 4th of July tree I have made decorations to honor the service men in my family. One for my father-in-law Ray, who served in WWII. Another for my brother-in-law John who served in the Navy in the 50's and one for my hubby who served in Vietnam. They add a meaningful touch to my fun holiday tree!

Red, white and blue

I love to craft and a good excuse to make more crafts are to make holiday decorations.

After Christmas 2009, my sister and my niece and I went on a girls road trip from my home in Sonoma Cty. to Portland OR. We headed up Hwy 101 and had a great time stopping to shop, enjoy the sights, eat and stay where ever we thought was a good place to spend the night, spending New Years Eve in Portland. 

Since I did not return home until after New Years I still had all my Christmas decorations to put away.

I put up a big tree in my dining room that we cut down here on the ranch, so it had to come down first.

All 11 ft of tree and ornaments. And then all the other decorations, the Santas, the wall hangings, the garlands etc. So by the time I got to taking down my "fake" tree in the solarium, it was halfway through January. And now it was time to put out my Valentine decorations.

 So since the tree was still up, I turned it into a Valentine tree. I thought my sons and hubby would think I was crazy, but they liked it and even suggested I could do a tree for every holiday. So I did! I now have decorations for Valentine, Easter, Spring, 4th of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving! And I have crafted ornaments for all the trees.

Since 4th of July is the next holiday coming up, I now have my 4th of July tree on display. 

I made several paper crafted ornaments for the tree including this patriotic bingo card with a great vintage image from vintageimagecraft 

This little chenille man was made from a down load from Vintage Image Craft also.

He is so cute!

And another fun vintage image on a paper rosette.

The rosettes are easy to make with my Martha Stewart Crafts score board.

 Score board  A great deal at $20 and even better on sale or with a coupon. I use mine a lot!

I also found this great striped crepe paper streamer somewhere (I don't remember where) and made this ornament collage.

And my Jenni Bowlin vintage looking supplies also came in handy for this calendar card ornament.

The Liberty card ornament was put together with stuff from my stash.

I love decorating for the holidays and I will post my holiday trees with each season. So Halloween will be next, unless I decide to make a "summer/beach/tropical"  tree?

I am making a few more Patriotic ornaments and a garland for this year which I will post in a few days.

 

Thanks for looking! And if you have a ??'s about any of the products I used, let me know!