Image from Prairie Hive Magazine, Winter 2012 Issue

Hopefully by now, you’ve checked out our new issue of Prairie Hive Magazine!  To get in the holiday spirit, we collaborated with the elves over at Gleeful Peacock Mercantile to create some lovely winter garlands (who says they are just for Christmas?).

We asked each of the artists to give us the DIY details:

Painted Pinecone Garland, by Nikki at Gleeful Peacock

Items Needed: Pine Cones, Jute, Spray Paint, Hot Glue

Step 1 – Spray paint pinecones your desired colors.  This will take a few coats and you will want to spray at an angle that gets the paint into the core of the pine code.  Allow a day to dry.

 

Step 2 – Cut jute in 2” to 3” lengths. Hot glue the strips in a loop on top of the pinecones.

 

Step 3 – Wrap jute in a spiral around the loop and down the pinecone. Creating a cap that covers the glue from the loop. Cut the end and glue to secure.

 

Step 4 – Cute your just the desired length of garland plus a few feet extra. Start on one end, a foot in to allow a end to tie to an mantle or banister.  Tie the just around the loop of the first pinecone. Tie a pinecone every 6 to 8 inches and rotate colors as you please.

 

“Be Merry” Book Rosette Garland, by Tiffany Foster

Items needed :a book, letter stickers or cricut, hot glue gun, permanent adhesive,bakers twine, Exacto knife, glitter, tacky glue, paint brush, small clothespins

1. Decide what you want your garland to say.  This will determine how many medallions you will need to make.
2. Cut a good amount of book pages out close to the spine of the book.  You can use an exacto knife or a single blade of a sharp pair of scissors.

3. Cut 2 ½ x 8 inch strips (I use a clear ruler and a rotary cutter to make this process go faster).  Make sure to center the print on the strips so they are interesting.

 4. Using permanent adhesive (I used The Craft Collection Permanent Adhesive Tape Runner), join three strips together for each medallion you wish to make, overlapping about ¼ of an inch.

5. Once you have all your strips joined together begin accordion folding them end to end with about ¼ inch folds.

6. When all the strips are folded, join the two ends together with your permanent adhesive, making sure the folds match up.

 7. Place the circle on the table and press to center….now the magic happens. Ta! Da! A medallion!

8. This part is a little tricky.  While holding the the center put a little glob of hot glue in the middle   – don’t worry about what it looks like because we will be covering it with our letters later (I usually spread the glue into the grooves a little as it cools.  If you don’t like to live dangerously you might want to just glue a little circle onto the back or something safer).

9. Repeat those steps until you have all of your medallions folded and ready.

10. Now cut the letters for your garland.  I cut mine on my Circut using the Simply Sweet card size 1 ½” lower case on Red card stock.  You could also use stickers or freehand them onto your circles.

11. Punch or trace enough circles for each medallion.  I punched mine with a 1 & 7/8” circle punch.  You could also just trace something you had around the house that was the right size.

12. Sprinkle some gold glitter onto a paper plate and pour a little glue into a dish. I used Martha Stewart Florentine Gold glitter and Elmer’s Craft Bond Tacky Glue but I added a little water to it because it was very tacky and difficult to spread.

13. Paint the glue onto the edge of the circles and then dip into the glitter.  Repeat with each circle.  Do the same with the medallions.

13. Atttach letters to circles.  I used Martha Stewart ballpint-tip glue pen for this job because it is much easier to glue a tiny space with this tool.

14. Next attach your circles with a glue gun.  Use plenty of glue because the circle will help hold your medalion together.  Make sure the circle is in the center of the medallion.

15. Lay out your medallions in the order they will hang to determine how much bakers twine you will need.

16. Hang your twine.

17. Attach medalions to twine with mini- clothespins.

18. Be Merry!

The No Sew JOY Bunting by My Paper Pinwheel

Items Needed: Canvas Fabric, acrylic paint, form paint brush, foam alphabet stamps, natural twine, pom pom ribbon, fabric scraps, hot glue gun

1. Cut out three bunting shapes (I chose to use a pendant shape but you can easily do a traditional triangle shape).

2. Take foam alphabet stamps and acrylic paint and brush the paint just covering the letters.

3. Stamp each pendant with the letters.

4. Measure the twine for where the garland will hang.

5. Fold the top part of the pendants over the twine and hot glue it in place.

6. Take the pom pom ribbon and hot glue it across the word “Joy”.

7. Finished the garland with scrap fabric cut into a long strip and tied on each end.

Fabric Scrap Garland by Tiffany Foster

Items Needed: scraps of fabric, string of lights (50 light string is ideal for a mantle)

1. Cut fabric info 9″x2″ strips.

2. Tie onto the string of lights.

(Now that last one is my kind of DIY!) Watch for us on Great Day Green Country next week to show off these garlands and more!  After the show, for you non-crafty types, these garlands will be available for purchase at Gleeful Peacock Mercantile.