Paper Mâché Reindeer

I found a paper mâché reindeer at the craft store really cheap and even tho I had no idea what I'd do with it, I knew it'd be something. Too cute to pass up. I've been seeing deer antler art a lot lately, and that led to my thinking the paper mâché deer with fake flowers would be cute hanging on our front door.

Because it's paper and not sealed and our door gets a lot of sun, wind, occasional rain, I painted the face with a light creamy-colored craft paint just to help seal it. Then I wrapped the antlers using thick twine, just adding a drop of hot glue here and there to hold in place.

I tried a couple different types of twine before
deciding to go with the one on the right

For the flowers I found a bouquet of white flowers that looked wintery to me, what I really like is that the bouquet is already tied together so I didn't have to come up with how to attach individual flowers to the head. I just trimmed the stems down so they are flush with the back of the deer head, and held them in place on the deer with more twine tied around the hanger that came on the back of the deer. I'm not permanently attaching the bouquet so I can change it out with the seasons as I see fit (I already bought a pink bouquet on sale the other day at the craft store - look at me planning ahead for Valentine's day!).

For Christmas I hung it on top of a tinsel wreath with a big silver bow and put a couple pieces of fake pine garland around the antlers - wouldn't ya know it, we had a wind storm and the whole thing fell down and one of the antlers broke. Sigh. I performed surgery (removed the twine, hot glued back together, reinforced with masking tape, then re-wrapped the twine) and it's good as new. Better. Stronger. 6 million dollar man-like reindeer....or was that the Bionic Woman? Whatev. I fixed it.

Note that has nothing to do with how to make this project: Dave naturally rolled his eyes when I showed him our new front door-flower-decorated reindeer and asked why "the buck" was wearing a flower crown. I pointed out that it is, in fact, a female reindeer and did he know that female reindeers grow antlers? Hope you're sitting down and ready for this - because if you know Dave you know this is a shocker - he doubted me. Mumbled something about only males having antlers. And then I got to PROVE HIM WRONG by googling the fact that female reindeers do indeed grow antlers! Oh man that felt good.

One more reindeer fact because I'm on a roll - male reindeer shed their antlers in the fall and females in the spring. Which means Santa's reindeer are probably girls because the males don't have antlers in the winter!!! Mind blown, right? 😁

1.4.18: cookie sheet hack
1.4.17: grilled turkey ruebens
1.4.16: scrabble tile keychain

Spring Flower Hanging Wreath

I'm loving this upside down wreath I made to hang from our chandelier - yes, it's a lot going on since the chandelier is solid shells... but I like it. I made it out of dollar store finds so it only cost 7 bucks, you could spend less by not buying as many flowers and/or skipping the garland, and you could make a simple wire ring instead of using a pre-made wreath form.

For my base I saw a plastic and tinsel bunny hanging thing, I only wanted the bigger circle so I just snipped off the top and used the body. Using little wire cutters, I snipped off the flowers and stems from the bouquet base and bent the ends to create little hooks. Before attaching the flowers I needed to hang the thing up so I could build the wreath - using white twine I ran it around the outside edges 4 times to make a hanger, then hung it from a cabinet knob so I could add the flowers. Then working from underneath, push the little hooked ends up thru the tinsel and hook on one of the plastic rings that form the wreath. Fit as many as you want - I made some short, some long, and tried to stagger the different colors thruout the wreath. Once you have it how you want, attach to the bottom of your chandelier using more twine. To finish it I just wrapped a piece of 4' garland around the top part.

Supplies:

• wreath base (if it isn't covered already you'll want to wrap it with something - rope, yarn, garland, tinsel, etc.)
• 5 flower bouquets (each bouquet had 6 flowers in it, except for one of them that I didn't check before buying it and it was missing a flower!)
• little wire snippers or strong scissors to cut the flowers off the bouquet.
• twine to hang the wreath.
• garland to finish (not really necessary but I had it so I used it). 

My dining room table is covered with junk so I didn't take a picture from a distance - hope you can tell how pretty this turned out without a photo from farther away!

one year ago: how to make mod podge
two years ago: make a bracelet out of a zipper

Wine Cork Flower Holder

This is super fast, super easy, and super cute... crafts don't get much better than that! I made this to hang in our baby RV - I hung a magnetic board with Command velcro picture hanging strips and thought it needed a little flower :)

All I did was put a wooden skewer into the hole in the top of a cork (where the wine opener went in) to make the hole a little wider and deeper. Then jam a fake flower into the hole (you could glue if necessary but mine stayed in just fine) and hot glue a small magnet on the backside. Done. Seriously it didn't take 2 minutes. And look how cute!

on the magnetic board in the RV