A-Door-Aborable Wreath: Tech Edition, Part 1

      I know it has been a while since I've written a post (the combination of being in my best friend's wedding and the holidays), but I have another - perhaps now less timely- Christmas wreath project. This project is unique in that my brother and I collaborated on the design and implementation of the wreath. I also knew that I wanted to use cardboard in some way because I have a bunch of it at my house from work and it is a cheap material to work with. This post will just describe making the cardboard wreath. The next post will cover how to install LED lights and set up the arduino code to play Christmas music.

Materials:

•  cardboard, lots of cardboard
• wood or white glue (Elmer's or other brand)
• An exacto knife or a box cutter
• marker or pen
• surface to cut on (one that you don't mind getting scratched up or marked on)
• (optional) acrylic paint (red, green, white)

How To:

1.  The basic plan was to create a wreath of interlocking triangles. So, the first step was to cut out a bunch of similarly sized triangles in three different sizes. (I needed about 60-75 total for the project)

Triangles- so many to cut out. Get a cushy exacto knife or your hand is gonna kill you afterward

An A-Door-able Wreath

   When I brother asked me to create a wreath for the door of our apartment, I'll admit, I sort of panicked. Not because it was such an extreme request, but because I realized that Christmas is real and truly on it's way and I have gotten almost no shopping done for family and friends. So instead of solving that problem, I took my brother up on his challenge and decided to make a wreath for our door (yes, the old standby of productive procrastination).

    For some reason, I felt the need to use ribbon in this project. After buying the ribbon, I had no real idea of how to attach it or how to make a ribbon wreath. So, while walking around the store, I bought a set of fancy pearled topped pins, figuring I might be able to wrap the ribbon around itself and pin it to keep it together.

    When I got home, I checked pinterest to see if I could find any good ideas, but none of them really spoke to me (they were either too girly or not fancy enough.) So I thought about my original plan, and came up with this easy 2 hr. wreath:

Materials:

• Extruded Styrofoam ring (mine was about 12" across)
• 2 different colors of 2.5" ribbon
• 2 or more different colors  of 1/4" ribbon (I had 4 - yay for 50 cent ribbon spools at Michaels)
• Sewing scissors (believe me, using regular scissors on this project would have been ridiculous)
• Straight pins
• Tape (optional)

 

Holiday Cards, Christmas

 Hello again,

My cute little arts tote- thanks again Debbie!

     I’m back again, this time to show one of my favorite crafts- homemade cards! This hobby is something I picked up a long time ago and though I don’t remember how or why I got started, cards are something I love to make for other people. I think part of my fascination comes from the written word as well as getting a hand-written card from someone else (still so much better than an e-mail in my opinion).  I used to spend hours making just a few, but as time has gone on I have tried to simplify and make cleaner, more professional looking cards in less time.

Material List:

·      An assortment of stickers

·      An assortment of paper

·      Scissors and/or Paper cutter

·      Glue, double-sided tape, glue dots, or other adhesive

·      Blank card sets with envelopes

·      (Optional) yarn, hole-punch, aluminum foil