Pottery Barn- Inspired Potted Pines

Once I saw the potted pines in this Pottery Barn picture,

I knew I would have to make some. So I did.

I made them before Thanksgiving and since then have seen a few tutorials for making pine tree topiaries that are much more complicated. Mine are disposable but super-easy and practically free! In Oregon there are ten million pine trees per neighborhood block (approximately) and therefore I certainly couldn't see actually buying pine (or fake-pine) from a store. Besides, haven't you noticed how the tips of pine tree branches are shaped just like the tops? There's a mini-tree waiting to be cut from the edge of every branch!

Step one: snip off some tree-branch tips. Step two: Make sure to keep them high above the realm of grabby reach-y chubby one-year-old hands.

I bought tiny terra cotta pots for less than a dollar, and to keep them natural-looking but a bit more interesting I lightly dusted them with white spray paint. If you hold the paint nozzle down gently, slightly bigger blobs of paint come out than the regular fine mist.

I hot-glued some dollar-store twine just under the lip and affixed a twine bow. Then I stuffed some floral foam inside (Four chunks for a dollar from The Dollar Tree).

I stripped off the shoots and needles from the bottom part of the branch,

and stuffed it in the foam!

With a little dollar-store Spanish moss to hide the foam, it was complete. So cheap. So easy. Just the kind of project I like. :)

Pottery-Barn Inspired Noel Wall Art

In case you missed my guest-post on Lil Luna last week, here it is!

If you're anything like me, you have Pottery-Barn taste on a garage-sale budget. So when I saw this fabulous bit of word art a few weeks back, I immediately knew I would have to recreate it.

Here is Pottery Barn's version, for, like, a million dollars:

Here is my version, almost twice as big, and for less than $20!

First I gathered my letters. These ones are from Joann's. I got the huge paper mache ones they sell because I knew I was putting it in our living room with the vaulted ceiling. They're about two feet tall each.

 I got each letter for $4.99 with coupons, except for the N which had a little damage.

So they gave me that one for 75% off. $2.50! Score! The damage doesn't show a bit. To stick the letters together, I knew I had to use my trusty E-6000 glue, which takes 24 hours to cure, and has to have something applying pressure to it to hold it in place for that time. Since I have the patience of a flea that was not going to work. Instead, I first applied the E-6000,

and then squeezed hot glue inbetween the E-6000 globs. The hot glue dried immediately and held it together while the other stuff dried. This way I could keep right on working!

Next is my favorite part- the spray paint. Pottery Barn's wall art has a hand-pounded bronze finish. To mimic that, I used Rust-oleum's Hammered Finish Bronze.

                    


It gives it a cool metal-y looking sheen and texture. And the texture hides imperfections, like in the top of my 'N'.

All done! As soon as the paint dried I plopped it up on the shelf and the glue cured as it was displayed. Multi-tasking decoration!

Email addresses!

Quick note- if you've left a comment for me to email you the Christmas Subway Art printable and haven't received it yet it's because there was no email address in the comment! (Or because I messed up somehow since I'm sending them out most nights at two in the morning!) Whoopsie! (Totally something I would do. :) ) I've responded to everyone I could so just leave another comment if you haven't heard from me. Make sure to leave your address!! :)

Blog Swap with Lil Luna!

I am so very happy to be blog-swapping with Kristyn from Lil Luna! It's so fun to find another crafter whose style you like so much and I love hers! We are Bloggy-BFFs so enjoy her tutorial here and then go check out her blog today to see my tutorial for Pottery-Barn inspired 'Noel' wall art!

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Hi there Craftily Ever After readers!!

My name is Kristyn, and I blog over at Lil' Luna.I'm so happy to be here today.I Love Jessica, and I LOVE all that she does.She's amazing!!! We've become Bloggin' Buddies and
decided it would be fun to do a swap!Today, I will be showing you how to make an EASY, INEXPENSIVE, and FUN Christmas Centerpiece.I made a similar one for Halloween and knew I'd have to make one for Christmas because they're so whimsical and easy!

Here is what you'll need:

SUPPLIES:- Box/Vase/Cart to use as Centerpiece Base
-Floral Foam (Found at the Dollar Store)
-Paper Shred(Found at the Dollar Store)
-Skewers
-Paint
-Foam Brush
-Scrapbook Paper
-Hot Glue
-Embellishments

INSTRUCTIONS:


1. Begin by picking out your Centerpiece box. I just bought one for a buck at my local grocery store and painted it red. I also cut some vinyl dots and added them to the box, just because I am OBSESSED with polka dots! :)


2. Put two strips together and fold back and forth until you are all the way through. Then, hot glue the two ends together as well as the other ends so it makes a circle.

3. Push edges of strips IN to make an accordion flower. Hot glue center and hold, and do the same on back. For another tutorial on these flowers, I used one HERE.


4. Paint skewers the desired color you'd like and let dry. I stuck mine into the floral foam to dry.
5. I wanted to add a little something to the skewers, so I cut out .2 inch white strips of vinyl and twisted them along the skewer. My hubby is super smart and suggested I stick them in his drill, turn it on, and let the drill do the twisting. It takes seconds (isn't he smart?).
(And don't look at my nasty glue gun - the poor thing has been my right hand man through thick and thin - ha!)


6. Add buttons or other embellishments to your flowers. I also added some scrapbook embellishments I found at Joann's with some vintage Santa Claus pics as well as some scalloped circle punches I made.


7. Hot glue skewers to backs of flowers. I also cut out a 1 inch circle to add to the backs to cover the ugly


8. Stick skewers through the moss and foam into your base and arrange as desired.


Voila!! A super cute and easy centerpiece. I had most the supplies at home, but with the box, paper, and everything else you could make this for about $7 or less.

Thanks, Jessica, for letting me take over for the day, and thanks for all the fun inspiration you have on your blog!

XO-

Thanks so much Kristyn for showing us this awesome centerpiece! I LOVE accordion flowers and your arrangement is just fabulous!!

Free Christmas Subway Art printable

My love of Subway Art continues...

and I like to share!

To get this high-resolution Christmas Subway Art image for FREE(!) be a public follower of Craftily Ever After via Google Friend Connect (if you're not yet, just click the 'Follow' button in the right sidebar!) and leave me a comment here with your email address. I will email you the image!

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Poor-Man's Vinyl

Awhile back I bought a large delightful frame at Ikea that I love so much that it has sat unused for three months because I didn't want to put something unworthy of it inside! I couldn't figure out what to do until trolling the closest Walmart recently (30 minutes away- boo!) and found this sheet of window clings for one dollar.

And inspiration hit! Poor-man's vinyl! Poor-man's subway art! So I took the back out of the frame, stuck the clings to the glass and YAY! Finally something worthy of my beloved frame!

I positioned the cut-outs pretty much how they were positioned on the sheet.

How's that for a cheap and easy project?!

And for the final step: Hand the empty sheet to your pantless toddler, who delights in such things.

                   

Pasta Angel Ornaments

In case you missed my guest-post over at Under the Table and Dreaming, here it is! I'm showing you how to turn this...

...into these!

Pretty little Pasta Angels are cheap, easy, and you can eat the left-overs! This craft reminds me of Christmases when I was little- my mother would make these ornaments for our trees and as gifts for her friends. So fun! You will need a 20mm wooden bead for the head, Rigatone (the big tubes) for the dress, a wagon wheel for the collar on the dress, elbow macaroni for the arms, stars (Stelline) for decorating the dress, a bow-tie for the wings, and Ditaline for the hair.

First, hot-glue the wagon wheel to the tube. (Craft glue works too, but I'm impatient enough that I will put up with having to remove all the pesky hot-glue strings.)

Next, glue the head bead to the center of the wagon wheel.

Then attach the bow-tie to the back of your angel, just underneath the collar.  

Glue the elbow macaroni either to the sides of the dress or to the underside of the collar, whichever works best for your particular macaroni. Because mine were so twisty, I tried both ways and they both looked great.

For the hair, glue a row of Ditaline on the head-bead. In this picture, you can see that I have the holes in the Pasta facing sideways. I also made some with the holes of the curls facing frontwards. Both were cute!

Fill in the back of the head with curls.

Decorate the dress with stars! Here I put one star in the center of the collar and also used them as a trim.

Now the fun part! Seeing them turn white! To spray-paint them evenly, I jabbed some pencils and take-out chopsticks into the frozen ground and stuck the angels on top of them. They got shot with three coats of glossy white spray paint.

After they dry, use a fine-tipped permanent pen (I used a scrapbooking one) to draw their faces.

And there's lots of room for making them your own! If you like a demure all-white angel, you could run a ribbon through one of her curls and stop there. You would have something like this!

Or for a little extra sparkle, you could paint the stars gold (I did mine with a paint pen) and attach some gold seed beads strung on a wire to look like a halo.

And that's it! A fun and easy project that won't break the bank. And I have a budget for craft supplies, but when they come from the grocery store, you don't even have to count them, right?!