Last week we shared a holiday edition of DIYs to Try, and this past weekend try them I did! I had one of those infrequent, blissful weekends where the days stretched long and my obligations were few – it was the perfect time to crank up the music and do some festive crafting.
I loved the simple wreath we shared and really wanted to create my own, but wasn’t sure where to find a lovely metal ring like the one they used.
I don’t know about your thrift stores, but ours are practically overrun with wreath forms this time of year – huge bins of them tangled among the innumerable broken tree stands. I just unhooked the rings, pulled the smallest one off, then spray painted it copper.
The form still had floral wire attached (bonus!) and I just eyeballed the placement of eucalyptus and baby’s breath from the grocery store supplemented with some greens and berries my dear aunt brought over. I’m loving my new holiday wreath!
I loved the advent village we shared last week, and it inspired me to make a couple little house-shaped votive holders. Instead of the paper they used in their tutorial, I decided to try air-dry clay. I did not want anything too complicated to interfere with my weekend of leisure and air-dry clay has much to recommend it: It’s cheap, very easy to use, and very easy to clean up. I started by cutting out paper templates of the houses and, because I decided to make my them three-sided, I cut rectangle templates too.
Cameron showed me a great trick for rolling out a uniform slab of clay – just put a couple strips of wood the same thickness you want your clay to be and set the rolling pin on top of them.
I used a small utility knife to cut the clay around my house templates, and also used it to cut out windows and doors. I used a teeny-tiny cookie cutter to make little stars in the houses’ sides.
I didn’t worry about making things perfect or even symmetrical – whimsy is the name of this game! I left the clay to dry on a piece of parchment paper for about 24 hours.
To assemble the houses, I just glued the rectangles onto the sides. I tried using a hot glue gun, but it didn’t work at all. I ended up using Gorilla Glue (just something we already had around), and though it worked it didn’t dry completely clear, and I had to scrape some of it off.
I used battery-operated LEDs so I can leave them lit without worrying about setting the booze hutch afire and I gotta say, I’m really liking the festive light they cast. This would be a really, really easy project to do with little kids and if you used a square cookie cutter instead of the utility knife to make the windows, they could do almost all of it themselves.
These are both easy, inexpensive projects that I definitely recommend trying! Have a wonderful week!
