Nature-Inspired Christmas

I love to change up my Christmas decorations every year, and usually make most of them myself. This year I've had a lot of fun playing around with my sewing machine, and I made some paper circle garland that I sewed together in greens, whites and painted some paper in metallics. I draped them on my mantel and piano for bright pops of color. I took a walk in a local park to collect the large sticks to make the star that I put above my mantel. I simply wired each connecting point together and I was done. The pine cone door decorations were a Pinspiration. They were incredibly easy to make too. I just used ribbon with drop of hot glue on the end to tie on the pine cones. The green one was made by cutting strips of burlap, gluing and tying in the same way.

Seems like we always get the itch to paint something this time of year, so this year it was the bay window wall. We painted it a dramatic charcoal called "Evening Hush" by Behr. I love how dramatic it looks, especially with light curtains and wall art. I drew the "Mistletoe" sign with chalk on my framed chalkboard on the same wall. This year we cut down a huge tree as tall as our 8 1/2 foot ceilings and placed it in a galvanized tub like last year. Merry Christmas!

Spring Wreath Made with Watercolor Paper Rosettes

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."  ~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Perfect description of this freezing first day of spring! I have had this wreath up on my door for a few weeks now, beckoning warmer days and blooming flowers to come already! It is made from burlap and different types of paper rosettes, including some watercolor paper I painted that turned out so pretty. 

If you've been on Pinterest, you've probably seen lots of ways to make burlap wreaths. The accordion style below is my favorite and easiest to make, in my opinion. For the tutorial I used, click here. It is basically weaving a piece of wire through the folds of a wide strip of burlap and securing the back with wire. 

A helpful tip I figured out while shaping your wreath is to use clothespins all around the circle-it holds the wreath together while you secure each section with wire. I also used burlap on a roll instead of cutting strips for less mess and to save time. 

For the paper rosettes, I used thick handmade paper and also painted some circles of watercolor paper and cut them out after they were dried. Paper rosettes take a little practice to get right but are fun once you get the hang of it. There are a few tutorials out there that show the same basic technique: 

First you start by cutting out a circle a few inches wide. They don't have to be perfect. It helps to use thicker paper, like watercolor. 

Then you draw a swirl from the outside in, trying to space them evenly. 

Begin cutting out the swirl all the way to the center along the line. 

After your swirl is cut out, begin rolling the paper from the outside in. I used dots of tacky glue to hold them in place as I formed my rose, but you can also use hot glue. 

After making a few different sizes, shapes and colors of rosettes, I hot glued them to my burlap to finish the wreath. I love how it turned out-the rustic burlap contrasting with delicate pastel flowers. Since it was going on my front door, I sprayed on a coat of spar polyurethane to protect it from sun and humidity damage.

 This wreath is really fun to make-I recently got to teach a group of women at a nonprofit art center how to make them and love how different each one turned out. There's so much you can do with the burlap base-I consider it the "year round wreath", this is the third one I've made, just changing out the embellishments to fit the season. I'm pretty sure this one will be up until the fall-maybe then I'll make one with bright yellow leaves or white pumpkins? 

I link up to these parties. 

Trash To Treasure Gallery Wall

This summer I worked on remodeling my bathroom by adding a fresh coat of paint, a new mirror, lighting and as a finishing touch, a colorful gallery wall. Can you believe everything I used came from thrift store junk? I choose the pieces that had an interesting shape and the potential for prettiness-because I know what paint can do!

Below is everything I used to create the look above: 
Stainless steel platters, outdated Avon recipe plates, cast iron owl trivets...stuff you might just throw away, or transform like I did!

Here's what I did to create my gallery wall: 

Spring Medallion Garland

I have loved the look of medallions ever since I saw them in last month's issue of Better Homes and Garden's. Have you ever seen Sweet Paul's ideas? I love pretty much all of them and I want to make everything he's done. Here are the wall medallions he made-aren't they pretty?

Source: bhg.com via Kristina on Pinterest

These seemed really easy to make so I decided to try some mini ones for my mantle. It's been looking a little bare since all the major holidays are over so I figure these springy flowers would add nice pops of color and spice things up.  And they do!

Here's the easy tutorial for making some of your own:


You will need: 

• decorative paper at least 20" long (I used handmade wrapping paper)
• scissors-straight or decorative cut
• paper glue or glue gun
• yarn, twine or string
• scrap paper in different colors for center circles

First, cut your strips about 20" long using decorative or regular scissors. 

(The wider the strip, the larger the medallion--my mini ones were about 2 inches wide.)

Then, fold each strip about 1/4 " -1/2" wide accordion style.

Next, glue the short ends together to form a tube.

Before you flatten each tube, cut out circles in different shapes and colors to add to the centers of the medallions.

Now it's time to flatten each medallion and glue together at the center.
Add your circles to the centers with a dot of hot glue or paper glue.

To make into a garland, I hot glued my medallions to the back of twine to stretch the length of my mantle.

And here are a few shots of my finished Spring medallion garland:

 These were really fun to make and I plan on making bigger ones in different colors next time a good excuse for a party rolls around. They would be a great way to repurpose a catalog or an old book, don't you think?

Hope you enjoyed this post and thanks for visiting ReMadeSimple!

Linking up with these parties.

Guest Post: Paper Mobile

Hello everyone!
I'm happy to introduce my first guest post from Sarah at Renewed Upon a Dream--I am guest posting over at her site today! We both have fun repurposing uses for embroidery hoops today. Hope you enjoy them today!

Hello!  I'm Sarah  I blog over at Renewed Upon a Dream.  I'm so excited to be here guest posting for Kristina!  I LOVE her blog.  Everything she posts seems to be amazing, and her photography is always wonderful.  Wouldn't you agree?  So, I'm super happy to be here today, sharing with you a little project that I did for my cousin who is having her first baby in about a month.  Yesterday on my blog I shared some other little gifts I made for her, but now I'm sharing a pinwheel mobile that I presented her with this past weekend.

I really wanted to try to make a mobile for her, but I pretty much had no idea what I was doing.  I saw a photo recently of some cute pinwheels propped up in some grass for spring, and I thought they looked so cute & would be lovely hanging as a mobile.  It seemed easy enough to create so I went for it.

The supplies I needed were pretty inexpensive:

• Large embroidery/sewing hoop
• Spray paint
• 4 sheets of double sided scrapbook paper
• Some kind of string or twine, I used stretch magic jewelry string
• Hot glue
• Buttons, pearls or whatever you like to put in the center of each pinwheel (I have pictured pearls, but they didn't work with my string, so I switched to buttons)
• Tape

To get started on my project, I first spray painted my embroidery hoop.  I wanted it to be white, and I had just bought a regular wooden one at Michael's.  If you wanted to skip this you could also purchase a colored plastic one if you prefer.

Then I got started on making pinwheels!  I cut my scrapbook paper into 5 inch squares.

I then found the center of each square by measuring 2.5 inches in.  I then cut from each corner, in towards the middle of the paper where I marked.  I tried to cut pretty close to that dot, maybe about a half inch from it.  You want it to be close enough to make a good pinwheel, but not so close that it's going to rip when you bend the paper over.

Once I had my cuts, I folded one corner of each side towards that dot in the middle and taped them together.  I used two pieces of tape, one on the bottom & one on the top.  I was careful to fold it over in such a way so that it wasn't creased, but almost, so that it would stay & lay properly.  If you do this it will probably take a little trial & error, it did for me.


I soon had a bunch of pinwheels all over my table.  I went through each of them & cut off the access tape.

Next I punched a whole in the middle of each pinwheel.  I did this with a little hole puncher I had, but you could probably use a sharp needle too if that's what you have.  I then cut my string.  I cut 8 strings total.  4 were a little bit shorter, and 4 a little bit longer.  On each of them, I strung two pinwheels.  One a little less than halfway from the top, and one at the very bottom.  I secured each pinwheel with a button.

As I made progress with this, I taped completed strings up to my ceiling fan, just to kind of see what they would look like.  It was so fun working with pretty pinwheels above my head!

A couple of days later, once my spray paint was dry, I started attaching my pinwheels to the hoop.  The string that I used is very slippery, so it doesn't hold a knot very well.  If yours does knot well, you can probably skip most of the hot glue.  I attached the 4 shorter strings of pinwheels directly to the hoop.  Then I attached two strings across the loop, so that they crossed in the middle.  I attached the 4 longer strings of pinwheels to those strings going across the loops.  I guess it's kind of hard to explain, so here's a picture, although it's still hard to see, hopefully this helps.

I hot glued every string at their tie on point for extra reinforcement.  Then I attached a couple pieces of yarn to hang it from, and I was done!

How cute is this!?  I really love it.  I kind of want one in my home & I don't even have any babies!

Pinwheels are so fun & spring-y!

Have you ever made a mobile before for a baby.  What do you think of making one with pinwheels?

I really hope you liked this project.  It's been baby-mania this month over on my blog.  My friend is pregnant too & I made her a baby afghan & refinished a dresser into a changing table for them!  Check 'em out if you're interested!  Thank you so much Kristina for having me here!

Homemade Birthday Celebration

So, in my last few posts I've been bragging about my cute little men and that my youngest son just celebrated his second birthday. (We almost had to cancel the party because I got sick, but I was able to rest up the next day while my sweet husband made all the food and tidied up the house.)

And we all survived and had a great time-luckily I was the only one to get sick and it was short-lived...

So, I wanted to show you a few photos of his birthday bash with some homemade decorations I made for his "choo-choo train" themed party.

Believe it or not, I am not good at decorating cakes (I tried to make a baseball hat cake for my older son's birthday last year and it turned out looking like an igloo...)

So to simplify, I decided to hand draw some trains for cupcake toppers. A friend of mine owns a frame shop and she gave me some mat board circles that were perfect for this. I hot glued dowels I had cut in half to the backs and pushed them into the cupcakes.

 I completed my little display by circling the cupcakes with a wooden train set.

I also hung this cheerful happy birthday sign.

(A few posts ago,  I explained how I made this cute reusable felt birthday pennant.)

the birthday boy blowing out his candles

He was so cute staring at everyone in amazement while they sang to him-and, for the second year in a row-didn't touch his birthday cake! Silly boy...I love this kid!

Thanks for tuning in today! I've been working hard this week on some knock-off decor projects that are just about done. Can't wait to share with all of you!