Helloooo....
Well, today is baby shower day, here at the McVey Ranch. I'll be sure to share photos of the event itself, but for now, I thought I'd show you a couple of little garlands I whipped up for the dining room, where the food will be set up on the table, buffet style.
I knew I wanted to create a garland for the hutch but instead of the usual banner style garland, I wanted something a little lighter....a bit more delicate....fitting for a teensy little baby. AND, because I used colors that coordinate with the shower and the invitations, which I told you are also the colors of the baby's new room, my sister can take these garlands home and hang them in his room after the shower, if she'd like. Although we might have to thumb wrestle for the star one. I'm thinking it'll be PERFECT for Christmas! I love it! It looked sooo cute in there, even by itself and I could just picture another garland with some reds mixed in....ahhh. Well....we'll see how it goes. I suppooooose I could give her this one and make another. ;)
And you know why I could do that? Because making these is easy! Have you seen them all over the internet and wondered how they make them? Well, I'd seen them and liked them but never tried my hand at them until today. I have to say that I'm hooked!
First, I made the star garland. To speed up the process since I needed lots and lots of stars, I simply used a star punch. But of course, if you have Papertrey's Seeing Stars dies, you could easily use those.
So to start, I punched out lots and lots of stars from an ugly old book. You know the kind....not old enough to be truly beautiful and not new enough to not be considered old. Haha. It's just an ugly old book from a thrift store, but the best part is those soft, creamy colored pages inside. PERFECT for crafting with.
Next, I pulled a little thread out from my sewing machine to create a small tail at the end of the garland (in case I needed it to hang the garland with) and then ran a star thru my sewing machine. Then, lift the presser foot, pull the two strands of thread out a little bit (toward the back of the sewing machine), put in another star, lower the presser foot and stitch. Then, just keep repeating that process over and over until you run out of stars or as in my case, bobbin thread. HA! The key is just to pull the thread out a bit after stitching each star, so that there's a little space between the stars. I figured this out after making a tiny star garland with stars REALLY close together. But as you'll see when I post pictures of the whole shower, I think that little banner is going to work perfectly somewhere else...stay tuned. ;)
After making the star garland, I also wanted to make one with circles (since the baby bedding has circles on it) and also because I wanted to create one with some of the shower colors on it. Since the table cloth I'll have on the dining room table is aqua blue, I opted to make the circle garland using dotted paper from the dark chocolate pattern pack and striped paper from the new leaf pattern pack, as these are the other two shower colors.
I did this one just a bit differently because I didn't want the circles to flip around and be white on the other side (the patterned papers are single-sided). So, I just punched out all of my circles (again, you could use Papertrey's Limitless Layers: circle dies for this) and then used a bit of adhesive to adhere the circles back to back. That way, even if the circles spin around, it won't matter. They're colored on both sides. Then, I created the garland in the same way I did the stars. The only other difference is that every now and then on a circle, I slipped a star on top and stitched them all together. You can see what I mean on the green circle in the upper left corner above.
So what do you think? Do you have an event coming up that you could whip up a little garland for? Or perhaps a corner of your crafty space that could use a little sprucing up? You could use any die or punch shape to create these fun garlands....the sky's the limit!
My family should all be here soon....it's a brunch shower, so we're having it this morning and then the brother-in-laws will bring my nieces and nephew over after the shower, so they (the kids -- not the brother-in-laws) can stay with us for a few days! Yehaw! I have a feeling it's about to get crazy up in here! Hahaha! Follow me on Twitter and Instagram if you'd like to keep up with our adventures in babysitting! :)
See you soon.....well, or after I've recovered from all the craziness! lol!
