Spring Decorating!

This year, my case of spring fever is worse than ever! I'm sure I'm not alone...what a winter!!! Step two of spring decorating (step one was taking down all Christmas decor *cough*) was to make an Easter egg wreath. This proved to be more difficult than I could imagine!

First I used my beloved hot glue gun and connected the eggs in a circle, adding pink polka-dot bows.  Yeah, that looked adorable...until i picked it up! It promptly broke into seven pieces.  Next I tried some stronger glue, again it looked lovely...but when I moved it, *grumble grumble* ....

Not about to be defeated by some cheap plastic eggs, I thought and thought about how to make this wreath a reality. Then I remembered my mom making holes in them I was younger. She made ornaments for the trees in the front yard by poking through the ends with hot nails.

A-HA!

I took one of gazillion wire hangers from the hall closet and straightened it out, lit a candle, grabbed my bag o' eggs and got to work.  Holding one end of the hanger in the flame for a few seconds made it hot enough to push through the ends of the eggs. I then threaded the eggs onto the hanger and shaped it into an oval, twisting the ends together to make a hook at the top.

I really like how it turned out, originally I planned on a circle shape but the oval shape is cute!



Here's a tip for making the holes: open the egg and lay it on a flat surface, with both ends pointing up. This will keep the egg stable while you poke at it!

found hearts

One thing I get excited about is finding hearts, whether man-made or natural. I love coming across them and almost always snap a picture when I do. Here is my 'found hearts' set on flickr.com. It makes me happy!

FOUND HEARTS

The beginning ...

So, here I am, starting a blog.  Really it's more of a place to attempt to organize my thoughts, photographs and creations.  The first thing I'll share is this little pumpkin. I have seen a couple around the internet, made from strips of paper, and I thought, hmm, I wonder what that would look like with those long paint chips!  Turns out, pretty darn cute! I made it for Halloween, but it is staying out until after Thanksgiving for sure!

Here's what you do:
Go to a paint store, home improvement store or department store where they have those walls of paint chips and pretend you are trying to decide which lovely shade of orange you are going to paint your bathroom. I found two strips that I really liked, So I grabbed three of each, giving me six strips of orange. I also grabbed a pretty green strip for the stem and tendrils on top of the pumpkin.

Now lay them out in a sort of star pattern, on top of each other (sorry I didn't even think about taking pictures of the process at the time!)  I used E600 glue but hot glue would probably work, too! I glued them together in the star pattern and let it dry.  Next you pull the ends up one at a time and glue them together on the top.  I used part of the green strip to make tendrils, curling them with my scissors like you do with ribbon. Then i made a little tube with the rest of the green for the stem.

I really like the way it turned out! I think it would be cute if you used pastel colors or even white-creamy chips to make one of the moon pumpkins.