Christmas Explosion

The weather has been a little difficult this weekend. It rained all day yesterday; like stormy, rainy, cold, bad weather all day long. Today is beautiful but the wind is strong enough to make my ears ring. I made good use of the indoor time by working on some Christmas crafts, wrapping presents, and watching holiday movies throughout the entire process. My first task yesterday was another Pinterest inspiration. I'm not including this as part of the Pinterest Pledge because I've already fulfilled my goals for the month. This one was just a bit of extra fun. Here's the inspiration...

Precious, right? I stopped by Hobby Lobby yesterday morning after the gym. I grabbed some fabric, metallic gold paint, and some card stock. I got green card stock because I wanted to use the extras for making Christmas gift tags. They didn't have cinnamon sticks and I didn't want to make another stop so I decided to improvise. I used a Hobby Lobby coupon code so all the supplies cost under $9. I stopped at our mailbox to scrounge for sticks that would work for the base and antlers. It started pouring again after about 2 minutes. I drove home and waited a few minutes for a break in the rain to get my goods out of the car. Jeff saw the branches and got curious. I wanted the whole project to be a surprise but he was happy to help me locate some good branches and cut them into 3 1/2 inch chunks. Looking back, his helped saved me loads of time. This probably took about 30 minutes. The time element is important for later. Jeff went off to do dude things and I got to work. Here is the majority of my supplies. 

 Here you can see the fabric a little better. The one on the far left is my favorite. 

I proceeded to sort through the twigs to find perfect little antler pairs and prep them for painting.

I did about 4 coats of paint on each pair. A little excessive, I know, but every time I looked at them I noticed another spot that I missed. The next step was drawing little shields onto the green card stock, cutting them, and then tapping small fabric squares over each shield and trimming the fabric around the shield. Next, I grouped the bits of stick that Jeff cut for me into stacks of four or five. The glue gun was my next tool. I glued the stick bundles together, then glued the fabric over the shields, then glued the shields on top of the stick bundles, and then glued the painted antlers on top of the shields. I kept running upstairs to my craft stash for this and that and magically I had a box of green pipe cleaners. I have no memory of buying them or receiving them whatsoever but it is exactly the kind of thing I needed to attach to the back of the ornaments to hang on the tree. They were glued last but in hindsight I should have glued them on before gluing the antlers. I made 5 for me and Jeff because I had 5 different fabrics and I made a few more for friends and family.

I really, really love them. 

And I better love them because the entire project, from finding the twigs to placing the finished products on our Christmas tree, took about 5 hours. They're more rustic than the pinned images and they don't smell like cinnamon but I don't care. I love 'em. My feet were hurting by the end of the ordeal but I had enough energy left to make my Christmas gift tags. I cut out little Christmas trees and then painted names on them using the metallic paint from the antler ornament project. Today was all about wrapping presents. I bought the most beautiful wrapping paper at TJ Maxx--the same place I got my cute wrapping paper last year. Here are some wrapped items with the gift tags. 

The picture quality isn't great but you get the idea. I love this plaid print. It's got a little navy, burgundy, and gold in it rather than reds and greens. You can see the little tree tag on the left. 

This one is gold and has deer heads that you can only really see at an angle. It would have been even better is there were moose heads!

This one is my absolute favorite. I love the wood grain with gold. Sooooo beautiful. I bought an extra roll of this one to use for future projects--maybe as matte for framed pictures. And all the wrapping paper goes very well together. 

They're great quality too. Nice, thick paper. No tearing or shredding while using this stuff. I also bought this little pillow cover on Etsy a while back. 

It will obviously be a Christmas only pillow but it makes me smile. I've had my tree lights on pretty much all weekend long because it's been so gloomy outside. I'm working really hard to get and stay in the Christmas spirit. Up next mom and I will be taking a fun trip next week so look forward to pictures and recaps from our adventures.