Tag: holiday DIY

A Fun Little Holiday DIY

.Reading time 8 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ,

            I did a lot of DIYs around Halloween and I actually had another planned but I am saving that for next year. This year has been a lot, for everyone. I was planning a holiday themed DIY for November but if you have been around for the last month or so my posting has been sporadic, I am sorry. I am a person too though and some days I just can’t. 

            Well here we are in December and I am finally posting a holiday themed DIY that is not a flower arrangement or something that I have done in the past. Woo!

            As I am writing this I have been up since about 4:30 so I have had coffee and chose to DIY instead of sleep, it’s never a good combo, I promise.

            What you need (AKA, Materials):

–           Bottle Brush trees (I got mine in the Target dollar spot section, that place is the best and worst place for me to be in a Target.) I liked the rainbow ones but if you don’t like the rainbow look get all one color or just tree color, you may have to hunt for those though where ever you go. 

–           A frame of some sort, originally, I wanted an open frame but I found this shadow box frame at Hobby Lobby and rolled with it. 

–           Paper, paint, and a paint marker, I did mine with just printer paper and really cheap paint from Target. The paint marker I bought at Joann’s like three years ago and it’s still going strong for all of my holiday DIY’s.

–           Hot glue, because would it be one of my DIY’s if it didn’t involve hot glue?

How I did it (AKA, the instructions):

–           I painted the black paint in kind of messy strokes on a piece of folded in half printer paper because I was doing it more for proof of concept than actually doing it, but I liked how it turned out. I forgot to take a picture of the just black paper but imagine it when you see it with the words. 

–           I waited for it to dry and wrote the words that I wanted in the frame with my trees, that was ‘Merry & Bright’ I write my &’s a different way so that is just a me thing, you could probably use black card stock and paint this on or cut it out in vinyl if you have a Cricut or whatever, but I don’t have one so I am going with what I have. 

–           I waited for the paint marker to dry and then used the insert from the frame to cut out the words on my paper so it would be at least close to fitting, I did use roller tape to put it in the frame because I didn’t want it going anywhere or rolling up more because it’s paint on printer paper and it was already starting to roll. 

–           I realized that I didn’t have enough space for the words and all six trees so I picked four of them and hot glued them down. I promise that this DIY is simple, without drying time for the paper it took me like ten minutes. 

–           I thought about painting the frame black as well but I kind of like the bare wood look so I left it and I put it up in my living room. 

            If I could do it over, I would put the words up higher so I could put all six trees in, but it’s okay to make mistakes when you DIY or craft, it makes it more personal. This was just a fun little project and it doesn’t take very long, what took me the longest was finding the frame because what I was looking for is clearly not a thing this year and that is an open square shadowbox frame, I could have left the glass off of mine and it would have been that, but I kind of like the glass on it. 

            This is a fun little craft and I like it, it has been added to my décor and I don’t know where I’m going to pack it, but that is a late December MJ problem. I should apologize to her now, but I’m not going to. 

            I will be back later in the week with another post, so until then, I hope that everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy!

            -MJ 

A Christmas Décor DIY

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Hey hey, it’s MJ, 

            This is probably the easiest Christmas DIY I have ever done and I have done a couple now. A while back I was looking in the dollar section at Target, you know at the front when you walk in with all the cute cheap things well it sucked me in and I found two things that gave me an idea, a chalkboard sled and a vinyl cut decal that said ‘dashing through the snow’ and it gave me a cute little idea. 

            I thought this was going to take me five minutes tops but I had to pull out all the little pieces in the cursive so it took me a little longer than expected but I did it! 

            So what do you need for a project like this, it doesn’t have to be exactly the same but for a cute little DIY that is something like this you are gonna need some things. 

            Materials:  

            A backdrop (you can use wood, a piece of glass or whatever that you want to put words on)

            Vinyl die cut words (you can usually buy individual letters at most craft stores or if you have a circuit like go crazy!)

            A quote you like (I bought one that was already done)

            A paint pen (I used a Sharpie paint pen)

            Some paint (because I couldn’t find another paint pen or if you don’t want to use a paint pen you can use this.)

            The actual DIY: 

1.  Okay with this one, first of course gather your materials, this one is a little different than my Halloween ones because it was a lot of premade materials. 

2. I had to pick apart all of the die cut letters which I thought would take me like seconds, it took like ten minutes so if you can I would get individual letters but that would also present challenges. The reason I found this so challenging was the cursive lettering and the little pieces you don’t need were really hard to get out because I didn’t want to rip the letters.

3. I drew a straight line in pencil on my sled where I wanted the letters to go and with the words that worked out great, the letter’s not so much but it looks okay.

4. Put on some snowflakes, I did mine in gold because that was the pen I had at the time and I did add the white and silver snowflakes later (I seriously had it up in my house for a few weeks and it wasn’t actually finished.

5. Display, I have mine sitting in my office but you could hang it on a wall (depending on what it is and your quote) or display it however you want, it’s your craft. 

            Guys, let’s be honest with ourselves I am not great at writing DIY posts, I was better at making small DIY videos but I don’t feel like doing that at the moment, but sometimes it’s just the simple things that can help you get inspiration for a DIY. The Target dollar section is really good at that around holiday times. 

            This post isn’t long and to be honest I have been sitting on this one for a while half-finished because I have been focusing on other things, like decorating my apartment, helping my parents decorate their house, and work so this has kind of been taking a back burner; a lot of DIY and craft ideas are at the moment and that is alright.

            So it’s a cute little craft when it’s finished, that I can say because I have been staring at mine for a few weeks now and it’s not hard to do just to have a simple DIY somewhere in your holiday décor. 

            I hope everyone has a great start to the week, we are off this week from school because it’s Thanksgiving Break so I plan on writing several posts but I will see y’all on Wednesday with my actual updating Holiday Décor post, fingers crossed. 

            Hope everyone has a great start to the week!

            -MJ