Tag: burlap

Craft Projects

Burlap Rosette Candles

Jessica Smith

I am excited to share that I’m participating in a craft fair in a little more than a month! On Nov. 10, I will be at the Watkins Nature Center partaking in their Fourth Annual Trash to Treasure Green Craft Fair! I’ve done this fair two times in the past, but missed it last year. I’m excited to go again — it’s the coolest fair I’ve ever been to and I am really looking forward to it.

Anyway, my new few weeks will be spent making crafts out of recycled goods, scraps, trash, etc. The goal is to repurpose things you might otherwise throw away into something neat and useful again.

For my first project, I made a set of candles using fabric scraps or burlap that were barely big enough for the task at hand. I also used old buttons and thrift store glasses. The only “new” supply I used was some pink ribbon.

My piece of fabric was about 9 inches by 7 inches, so just long enough to wrap around my candle. I cut out a strip and placed a dab of hot glue midway down the glass to secure one end of the fabric to the candle holder. Then, I placed Mod Podge beneath the fabric as I wrapped it around the glass. Once it was in place, I slathered on another layer of Mod Podge on top of the fabric.

I let this dry, then added a skinny pink ribbon through the middle of the fabric. For the ribbon, I secured it to the glass only with a few dabs or hot glue.

After the ribbon was on, I started to make a few rosettes out of the burlap fabric. (Note: It’s not actually burlap, but it looks close enough so that’s what I’m gonna call it.) To make the rosettes, I used skinny strips of fabric and Mod Podge.

To make the rosette, I twisted on end of the fabric in my fingers and added some Mod Podge. This is the center of the rosette.

I kept twisting the fabric, winding it around itself as I twisted and all the while adding Mod Podge. Once the fabric ran out, I was left with a cute rosette that I set aside to dry.

Fast forward: The glass is dry, the rosettes are dry — time to combine!

I pulled out my hot glue gun to add the rosettes to my candle holders, along with some buttons.

I glued two rosettes to one glass and on onto the other. Then, I added buttons in the center of each rose, and a few alongside each.

Ta daaaaa! Two candle holders made out of fabric scraps and buttons 🙂

What a cute pair!

Craft Projects, Dollar Store Crafts

Fabric-Covered Pumpkins

Jessica Smith

It is the first day of fall. Hooray!

Did you see the adorable pumpkin I transformed yesterday from a sweet Dollar Store find? If not, check it out here.

I had two pumpkins left over to complete my fall decor trio, so I decided to cover both of them with fabric. I had a gold tablecloth I’ve been wanting to use for a project, as well as some burlap remnant I picked up from JoAnn’s. I also picked up silver tacks at the dollar store, so I chose to use them as little studs in my fabric-covered pumpkins.

I started with the gold fabric, cutting the fabric into scrap strips. I started pinning them to the pumpkin using the silver tacks.

Once the pumpkin was covered in studs, I painted the stem of the pumpkins gray to match the Mod Podged pumpkin. Love it.

I did the same thing to the third pumpkin with the burlap strips.

The only thing securing the fabric to the pumpkin are the tacks, but I used about 150 per pumpkin (wowzer), so I don’t think that fabric is falling off any time soon. Having said that, I found it important to overlap the strips of fabric since there is no glue underneath the fabric. With the overlap, there is a nice texture of rough edge on smooth fabric, and there is total coverage of the bright orange pumpkin underneath.

The tacks run down the valleys of the pumpkin — it is OK to adjust your tacks as you go. If your lines aren’t exactly how you want them, fix them!

I painted this stem gray, too.

It was time to put my trio together, and boy do they look perfect together. I placed them on my copper tray in our bay window.

What a perfect fall decoration!

Happy fall — enjoy the amazing weather!

Craft Projects

A wreath for us

Jessica Smith

I showed you on Saturday how to make a wreath using fake flowers and a grapevine base — I had a few flowers left over, so I decided to create a wreath for our front door!

I had a wire form that I picked up from Michaels, but not enough flowers to go all of the way around it.

To cover the rest of the wreath form, I chose to wrap it in twine. To do so, I knotted the twine and started going around the edge of the wreath. It took about 30 minutes and an entire spool of twine, but I really like the look of it.

By the time I made it close to the end of the wreath, I realized I wouldn’t have enough twine to wrap the whole thing. That didn’t matter though, because I was planning on filling that void with the faux flowers.

So, I knotted the end of the twine and started to add the flowers.

Since all of the flowers are on wire, I was able to bend the “stems” around the wires of the exposed wreath form. Once all of the flowers were placed, I took floral wire and secured the flowers even more to the form.

It’s not pretty, but no one will ever see the back, so who cares!?

I embellished with a few leaves, adding them to the wreath with hot glue at each end of the flowers. And with that, my wreath was finished. It only took about an hour — not too bad!