Christmas Fever! O Come Let Us Adore Him

This sign was inspired by one I saw at Not My Own. You can go there to see the original.  I did this project for less than $3.00!  How is that possible? I had all the materials already on hand:)

My neighbor gave me several1x4's about a year ago and they've been sitting in my storage building.

I cut 4 4' pieces and 2 20" pieces. It took about 5 minutes to cut the wood. After lining up the 4 footers I took the 2 smaller pieces and nailed them to the back.

After this I flipped it over got the hammer out and handed it to my little boy!  He had a blast adding the divots!

After this we brought it inside and got out the paint I had on hand. If you need a great netural paint Valspar's Vanilla Steam from Lowe's is wonderful! One (yes, only one) coat later this is what I've got.

I wasn't looking for a perfect finish, I wanted a more rustic look. This only took about 5 minutes to complete.

If you have a steady hand by all means freehand the lettering. I didn't want to attempt it free hand, and didn't want to pay the money to make stencils. I don't have an overhead projector, or a printer at home that works... So I was at a loss of how to do my letters for about an hour.

This is what I came up with: 

I got out the laptop, open MS Word, grabbed some scratch paper, and a pen.

Very gently trace over the letters. This works GREAT!!!!!!

This took about 30 minutes mostly because I had a hard time choosing the fonts I wanted to use.

One more thing I set the font size to 600 and 700.

Once this was completed I set the words out on the painted board to see exactly where it needed to go.

If i would have taken the easy route I would have used my Exacto knife and cut the letters out, buttttt I did it a little backwards. I cut the letters out on the board making my life a little bit harder.

Once this was completed I open my sample paint purchase and began filling in the lettering.

I tried the foam brush but didn't like it, use the craft brushes they work so much better!

Again, I wasn't going for perfect. I wanted a kinda it's been sitting neglected for a while.

This is the result:

I would love to see your projects!

Christmas Ball Wreath

We all know about my wreath obession and this one is by far my favorite! My little boy helped me with this one we had a blast. 

I used about 90 ornaments all different sizes. Stop by your local Dollar Tree and pick up ornaments, you are looking at around $10 total!!!!!

Before you start layout all those ornaments, pull the tops off and add a couple drops of hot glue and attach the top again. This will take 20-30 minutes.

The ornaments will start to pop off if you don't glue the tops, so go ahead and do this step now and save yourself some time!

Now, take that wire hanger and bend it into a circle.

Start threading your ornaments

It's going to look a little funny, you are gonna wonder if your doing it correctly! Yes you are, don't worry, those ornaments will start to fill in.

Add a ribbon to the top

After I got the wreath up on the mirror, I noticed it need a couple of fillers, I took the smallest ornaments and hot glued a few into places giving it a really full rounded look!