St. Patty's Day Banner

This weekend I decided to make a St. Patty's Day Banner to spice up my house for the next little "holiday". 

I do have a Cricut, so it made this little project a little simpler than if I didn't. But you don't have to use the same shapes that I did, play around with it and make it fun. If you don't have a Cricut or some sort of cutting machine, just use scissors or your handy dandy paper cutter.

 I started out with this cute flag design, it ended up being 3"x4". Then the squares I used were 2.5"x2.5". The letters were in Celtic Hand fond and 2" tall. 

 Glue (with a glue stick or with glue dots, whatever you prefer) your letters to the green squares...

 It will look like this...

 Then glue your green squares to your cute patterned paper, but make sure you leave a little extra room at the top for some holes...

 Use whatever tool you have to punch 2 holes at the top of the flags, just enough to stick some string through (I think I went in a half inch and down just a quarter inch).

Then, string all of your pieces, and hang on a mantle, wall or anywhere else you'd like to have spiffed up for St. Patty's Day. 

 This was a super easy craft and only took 1 hour to do. The patterned paper is by Echo Park, but check out your local paper store to see what other cute papers they have (I do recommend cardstock over regular paper). Please follow us on Facebook and upload your pictures so that we can all see your creativeness!! You can also leave us a link to your web pages in the comments below. We would love to hear from all of our blogging friends!

Easy Valentine's Wreath

I was looking through my Martha Stewart Magazine last week and saw this cute wreath they had made out of really cute flowers and they were made with tissue paper! I wasn't sure if I had the patience to make the ENTIRE wreath out of flowers, but I could try a few. So, I followed the instructions....some what. I didn't know what a pom-pom kit was, so, I decided to make my own. I took some pink and red tissue paper and cut it into 6"x6", and 4"x4" squares and layered them 4-6 pieces per flower and accordian folded them (like the fans you would make in grade school). Then I took a piece of floral wire about 6 inches long and wrapped it around the paper and twist and the bottom 4 or 5 times. Then trim the ends in a semi-circle. Like this...

 Then, you open up the fans a little (this is a top view)

 Then layer by layer, pull gently up to the middle of the flower. Like this...

 This is what it will look like when you have done both sides! Cute huh?!

 Then I took an old grapevine wreath I had laying around,

 And attached the flowers to it with the extra wire hanging from the back. Pretty simple and cheap. I didn't have to buy anything, but I think I picked up the tissue at Dollar Tree, and the wreath is from Michael's. This was super fun to learn how to do and it turned out pretty cute too!!