blogging mom – Page 2 – SunnyMommy Creations

Posted on December 15, 2024December 15, 2024 by Sunshine — Leave a comment

TP Roll Christmas Ornaments

Here is yet another craft idea I found on Pinterest, couldn’t find instructions for, and figured it out myself. It was pretty easy to collect these materials (free!) and easy to make these too. You could make as many as you want, but I used 11 TP rolls and 1 paper towel roll to make 2 angels and 10 flowers.

I also like the variations you could make to these. I used gold tape to add some sparkle, but you could paint them or use stickers or whatever to change the color. I like the simple but pretty look of the “natural” paper color with the light brown/white beads and gold accents, especially because that looks nice around my gold-ornamented Christmas tree.

Supplies:

(As an advertising affiliate and Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. But it doesn’t cost you anything extra and helps me keep up my site!)

toilet paper and/or paper towel rolls
hot glue and glue gun
gold tape
wooden beads (or other decorative materials)
clear fishing line

Step 1: Cut the rolls into rings. For my flowers, I mostly cut the TP rolls into 4 equal sections. I did this by first pushing down on the rolls to flatten them a bit. Then I just used scissors and eyeballed my measurements. If you want to be sure you’re precise, you could use a ruler and mark them into equal parts, then cut.

For the angels, I cut more narrow strips – the same width as the gold tape, so be sure to do that if using colored tape! I didn’t worry about how many narrow strips I cut per TP ring, since I could use the paper towel roll to make up however many I needed after my TP rolls were used up.

I also used the paper towel roll to cut some extra pieces to finish off some flowers, so it’s a good idea to leave yourself some extra (whether a TP roll or paper towel roll) if you need more as you go.

Once you’ve got your rolls cut, you’re left with a whole bunch of rings. I grouped them together by width, with my bigger ones in flower piles and smaller ones in piles for my angels. I needed 5 rings for each flower. Each angel needed 1 for the head, 3 for each wing, and 6 to make the 3 bottom skirt parts. It was at this point that I cut up the rest of my paper towel roll to finish off my piles if I needed more. I also had a few extra narrow rings, so I cut enough narrow rings to make a few narrow flowers too.

Step 2: Adjust shape/size for certain pieces. First, for my angels’ bottom skirt parts, I cut rings (6 per angel) at one bent side. Then I took pairs of these and connected them together, making bigger rings. I used just a little bit of hot glue to connect the cut ends. This left me 3 larger rings for each angel.

For the angels’ heads, I took one ring for each and unbent them as much as I could so they were round again.

Step 3: Tape/Color/Decorate angel rings. Next, for each of my bigger angel rings, I took strips of gold tape and ran the tape around the rings evenly before smoothing it on. I did the outside of the rings first, then decided I wanted the insides to have gold tape too, since they were so visible. Running the tape around the inside of the bigger rings was a little tricky for my fingers, but it ended up looking nice.

I also did the outside and inside for each round head piece.

For the angel wings, I only did the outsides of the rings. The insides ended up so squished that you couldn’t see them much anyway, but you could do these insides too, if you want.

Again, you could paint or color or use glitter or whatever you want for decorating these! I left my flower rings alone during this part, but you could decorate those as well.

Step 4: Assemble the rings into flowers and angels. The flowers were VERY easy to assemble. I took my grouped piles of 5 and arranged them like flowers. Taking my hot glue gun, I smeared on a little glue and held them together, adding one at a time, until they were all connected.

For the angels, I took the 3 wing parts for each side and glued them together, first the wing at the left side onto the one on the right side, then the next on the left, then the next on the right, then the other on the left, then the other on the right. When all 6 (3 on each side) were together, I added a little glue to the inside of the rings and squeezed to make these ends more smooshed and flat where they met.

For the bottom skirt pieces, I held the ends of the three pieces together to make sure they were even, and then I glued the sides to each other where they met at that end. Either side of the middle piece connects to that side of the side pieces, basically.

To connect the bottom to the wings, I glued the undersides of the bottommost ring pieces and stuck the bigger rings against those. I made sure to hold the bottoms all the way up against the wings until the glue dried and held them in place.

Finally, I took the round head piece and glued that on where the wing ends overlapped – like a head on shoulders.

Step 5: Add final decorations. To cover where all the glued wing pieces met, I took a little white ribbon and tied it on to cover the “body” of each angel. This also added little back wings where the ribbon tied.

For the flowers, I took little wooden beads that I had leftover from other projects and glued them on in a number of different ways. For the thicker flowers, I had to decide which side was front and which was back so the beads showed up best at the front. The beads stuck on the TP rolls really well, which was good because I was initially worried about them falling off.

For other narrower flowers, I took some more of the gold tape in about 1-2 inch strips and stuck that on the ends, folding it over each tip.

Step 6: Add hangers. I used clear fishing line and tied them in loops through a ring of each decoration. You could also use twine or ribbon.

That was it! These turned out pretty cute, considering they were basically free and made from TP rolls! 😂

DIY Must-Have Lists

Posted on November 29, 2024November 29, 2024 by Sunshine — 1 Comment

Mini Present Decorations

I’m a Thanksgiving purist, in that I insist we wait until after thanksgiving before we get all Christmasy. But now that we’re here, I’m onboard with kicking off Christmas!

I’ve had this idea for a while, and fortunately I was at my mom’s house for the weekend – she has a LOT of scrap Christmas paper plus blocks of wood that were perfect. I’ve been saving/hoarding ends of cut wood at our house too, so I’m sure I’ll be making even more of these once I get back to my house. Either way, if you’ve got scrap blocks of wood, odd bits of Christmas paper, and ribbon, this DIY decoration is free and easy to make! You can make as many or as few as you like, too – little stacks are cute, and giant stacks would be cool too.

Supplies:

(As an advertising affiliate and Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. But it doesn’t cost you anything extra and helps me keep up my site!)

Scrap blocks of wood
Scrap Christmas wrapping paper
Ribbon
Tape and scissors

Step 1: Prep the blocks. If you’ve cut all these blocks, they might have rough edges that need to be sanded down, otherwise the edges might rip through the paper. My mom, fortunately, had sanded these blocks a while ago because she’d originally wanted to make colorful building blocks out of them for my girls.

Step 2: Wrap the blocks. I tried to do 3-4 blocks for each wrapping paper that I had, just to get colorful variety. You could also do these as all the same wrapping paper for a more unified or minimal look.

Very simply, you just wrap the blocks like you would a real present. If you don’t have big enough strips to cover the whole block, I found it was fine if the bottom still showed some exposed wood – you won’t see the undersides anyway.

Step 3: Add ribbon ties. I considered using a hot glue gun to connect each “present” and hold them secure, but the ribbon held them pretty well once it was wrapped around a few times. If you’re doing a giant stack, you might want to hot glue them together to help with stability. Or, if you don’t want ribbon at all, you could glue them for a different t look entirely!

First, I practiced stacking the presents to see what heights I wanted and which paper looked best side by side.

Again, basically wrap the ribbon around the wrapped blocks like you would do for a real present. I found that once I got the ribbons around once tightly, the blocks stayed in place and it was fairly easy to wrap the ribbon up and down and around again to get the look I wanted.

For a few of the stacks, I used bigger, prettier ribbon, and that I only had to put around once. That would look really pretty with fancier wrapping paper, especially with golds or whites. Again, we were going for colorful, but a mom can dream. 🤪

Step 4: Set them out! I arranged my stacks on my mom’s little ledge around her staircase, and they look quite cute all sitting together, but we might space them around once other decorations go up. They’d also look cute with garland or greens or lights behind and around them.

That’s it! I’m glad these look cute, and it was a great way to use all those scrap pieces of wood, not to mention the odd sizes of Christmas wrapping paper that were just waiting for a use.

DIY Must-Have Lists

Posted on November 8, 2024November 8, 2024 by Sunshine — Leave a comment

Upcycling an Old Headboard

Since I’m sure my children were in some way responsible for the destruction of my mom’s headboard, I was happy to find a way to bring it back to life. Following the same general idea for how I’d made my own headboard, I had her pick out a fabric that she liked, buy a roll of batting, and give me a little time. 😜

Supplies:

(As an advertising affiliate and Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. But it doesn’t cost you anything extra and helps me keep up my site!)

Old headboard
Batting
Sheet or other large fabric
staples and staple gun

Step 1: Assess the damage. Depending on how bad your headboard is, you might need to clean it up, take off broken parts, and/or add some wood for framing the new headboard. I decided to only take off a few of the broken pieces, leaving the rest to help add a little stability. You will want something under all the batting – not just around the frame, but also in the center – so you could always nail on a few pieces of wood or something if you need your frame to be stronger.

The other really important thing is to make sure the parts that attach the headboard to the bed frame are still functional. My mom’s lower portion of the headboard – the leg parts that attach to the bed frame – were still fine, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Step 2: Wrap the headboard with batting. I only needed one roll of this batting to completely cover the queen-sized headboard. Starting with the backside of the headboard facing me, I rolled the batting over the top of the headboard and tested out spacing for how I wanted to layer the batting and make it thick enough to soften the wooden frame. I decided to overlap the batting in the middle, making each side stick out about eight inches.

Once I had a plan, I took a staple gun and stapled the batting onto the BACKSIDE of the headboard all along the top. Again, I probably had about 8 inches that came down over the backside, same as at the sides.

With the top secured, I made sure to keep the batting fairly tight and straight as I pulled it around the side. Folding the batting around the corner kind of how you’d wrap a present, I stapled that corner down really well first. Then I went all down the side and stapled.

Where the headboard’s leg started, I simply folded the batting and kind of tucked it around, then stapled it on. This bottom end of the batting was still quite long, so I took scissors and cut along the bottom of the headboard, once again leaving about 8 inches of extra batting to wrap around the bottom. I again made sure to pull the batting straight and tight, and then I stapled all along the bottom to hold the batting in place.

I repeated this on the other side of the headboard, and the middle where the batting overlapped was nice and puffy.

Since I had enough, I took the rest of the batting, cut it in half, and wrapped this over each side of the attached batting where it was not overlapped yet. This gave all along the headboard an overlapped, double layer.

Step 3: Wrap the fabric. My mom had picked an old sheet that matched a blanket she still used on her bed, and this sheet was the perfect size. Folded in half, it was the perfect thickness for covering the batting too.

First, I turned around the whole headboard so that the front side was now showing as I worked. (It worked VERY well to lean the headboard against chairs, since I could move the chairs as I worked and stapled along the back.) I draped the folded sheet over the headboard and pulled it this way and that until I liked how it looked.

Next, I folded the sheet over the headboard and stapled the backside into the batting and the headboard. For the sides, I again folded the corners like you would a present, and I made sure that the front stayed nice and smooth before stapling the sides of the sheet into the backside as well.

Down at the bottom where the sheet had to kind of tuck around the leg, I pulled the sheet tight and stapled where the staples wouldn’t show, just in case this was ever visible.

I repeated all this folding and tucking at the other side, and that was it – the whole sheet was now smoothly covering the front of the headboard and nicely secured around the backside.

I’m glad I added those 8 inches all around, because this helps hide the backside from different angles if you’re standing along the side of the bed.

I’m really glad my mom picked a sheet that she liked, because it was the right size and also obviously gives her colors and patterns she already had in her bedroom.

Best of all, this project was a simple and quite inexpensive way to upcycle a headboard that otherwise would’ve been trash.

DIY Must-Have Lists

Posted on October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by Sunshine — Leave a comment

Don’t Throw Away That Packing Paper!

After last winter, as I was taking down our front door’s wreath, I looked at the wire wreath frame and thought, “I’m sure I can use this for something.” So I kept it. Fast forward to a week ago when I was watching a video of a woman using packing paper to design a basket, and I had my “Ah-ha!” moment. Could I braid packing paper and make a wreath out of it?

This turned out to be very easy, a little sticky (because I over-glue everything), in the end really pretty, and basically free!!

BEFORE: Scrap wreath form and packing paper.

Supplies:

(As an advertising affiliate and Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. But it doesn’t cost you anything extra and helps me keep up my site!)

Long strips of packing paper
Hot glue and glue gun (I used 5 glue sticks)
Wreath form
Decorative ribbons, fake plants, flowers, etc.

Step 1: Cut strips of packing paper. My husband and I are always amused by how Amazon, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. overpack our orders with way more packing paper and way bigger boxes than seem necessary. We are pretty good about recycling, but I happened to have a large amount of this packing paper in our garage, so I grabbed the 2 longest pieces and brought them inside.

First, I flattened them out on the floor. Then, I folded them lengthwise in thirds. This made it easier to cut even strips, using scissors to cut down each fold. This left me with 3 equally long pieces.

Now that I had my pieces, I squeezed each one back to being scrunched, more like paper rope.

Side note: About the length of your paper… The longer the better, but you could use shorter pieces too if that’s all you have. You’ll just end up tucking them in and glueing more often.

Step 2: Braid the paper “ropes.” I channeled my inner middle schooler and did this like I used to make friendship bracelets. I took each of the 3 ends and taped them to my counter, then began to braid the paper. I was worried that it might rip if I pulled my braid too tight, but it didn’t at all. I had to keep making sure the long ends weren’t getting too twisted up as I went, but that was easy enough.

When I was done, I took my hot glue gun and glued the braid together at the ends. For one end, I really mashed it up and made it as narrow as I could. This would be the end I would tuck into my wreath form to start. For the other end, I tried to make it a little more decorative, kind of like a bow, but I ended up not using that, so don’t worry about it. Just make sure you glue both ends to hold the braid together.

Step 3: Wrap the wreath form. Taking that narrow end, I shoved it between the prong-things and was glad to find that it held pretty well. You may need a string or something to hold it in place, or even glue it. Next, gently pressing the braid around the wreath form, I stretched it carefully all the way around. This part should be the sides of the wreath, not lying flat on top but rather around the sides.

Once I had the braid back where I started, I cut the braid there. Then I used my hot glue gun to hold the cut end in place, blending it into the existing braid where it met the other end.

I then took my second braid (created the same way as what I described before) and tucked the one end near the start of my first attached braid. I kind of wish I’d spaced these differently so I didn’t have an obvious narrower area, but it didn’t end up being too noticeable. Wherever you start your second braid, this is the one you’ll use to wrap around the topside of the wreath, facing up as you work. I again gently pressed the braid around the wreath form, only on top this time. Once I got all the way around, I again cut the end and glued it to blend into the start.

There was a gap between the first braid and the second that sat on top of it. This was fixed easily enough by going around with my glue gun and pressing the two braids together.

For my third, inner braid, I used the leftovers from my first braid. Taking the one end, I glued it against the other braids and then pressed the braid in place all the way around the inside of the wreath. Where it ended, I again glued. Then I quickly went around and glued this inner braid to the others where any gaps showed.

Again, how many strips/braids you use depends on the length of your paper. But basically, however many pieces of braids it takes, do an outside layer, a top layer, and an inner layer. OR, you could wrap the braid around the wreath form again and again as you go around – I bet that would look great too, though it would probably take a bit more paper. For my wreath, I like how it looks like a couple of connected braid rings.

Step 4: Decorate. Like I said, I had a narrow spot because of where I attached all the ends. But, since I wanted to add some decorations to my wreath, I knew my decorations could make this spot less noticeable. You could leave your wreath plain, because the braid itself is pretty. Or you could add ribbons, a big bow, fake birds – whatever!

I took a little strip of burlap and tied that on. Then, after hanging the wreath so I could see how I wanted it, I stuck little plastic plants into the braid.

I really like how this turned out. It’s thick because of the 3 layers of braids, and I can change the decorations depending on the season or holiday.

DIY Must-Have Lists

Posted on October 14, 2024October 14, 2024 by Sunshine — Leave a comment

Fake Pumpkins for Fall

This idea was inspired by 2 different things I saw on Pinterest. Apparently I’m late to the game – there are a ton of people who knew you could make fake pumpkins out of grocery bags! I wasn’t exactly going for real-looking pumpkins with mine, so I used the basic instructions I found combined with another idea for how to decorate them. And, my kids helped, so this was a fun way to make decorations for Fall that we all can take some credit for. Best of all – it cost me practically nothing!

Supplies:

(As an advertising affiliate and Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. But it doesn’t cost you anything extra and helps me keep up my site!)

plastic grocery bags
painters tape
twine and/or clear line
joint compound or glue
sturdy paper towel
acrylic paints
petals, tissue paper, leaves – whatever you want to decorate with!
hot glue and gun

Step 1: Stuff and bundle grocery bags. We have an embarrassing pile of plastic grocery bags in our garage, waiting to be taken for recycling. Now for this project, I was glad we had them! Taking one bag, I fluffed up a bunch of others and stuffed them inside. For 3 of my pumpkins, I also added an empty, cleaned gallon jug to fill some space. You could add newspaper too, or packing paper – whatever will fill the main bag and still let it be squishy around the sides.

Once I had a bag full and generally sphere-like, I tied the top handles together so this could become the stem layer.

Step 2: Wrap to make dividing grooves and stems. I tried to make pumpkin grooves a few different ways.

For one pumpkin, I used painters tape. Starting at the top “stem” (which I wrapped in tape to create), I put on a long strip of tape and held it tightly near the stem, then ran it down and around the bottom of the bag. I did this a few more times around to make dividing sections around the bag. This worked okay but didn’t make as obvious grooves as other methods.

For another pumpkin, I used twine to make the grooves. I tied it around the stem, then wrapped it down and around the bottom of the bag, spacing it a bit and wrapping it around and around until I had a bunch of denting divides. This was my favorite look and worked the best, in my option. When I was happy with it, I tied off the twine at the stem again.

Unfortunately, I ran out of twine, so next I tried fine, clear fishing line for the last 2 pumpkins. This worked okay but slipped around a lot more than the twine had done. It was also harder to tie off and keep tight. But, it worked pretty well to make a lot of deep grooves.

As I’d done for the first pumpkin, I used painters tape to make the other pumpkins’ stems. Holding up the tied handles, I wrapped the tape around the handles to make a stiff, single stem. You can bend these a little bit to give the stems different shapes sticking out the top of your pumpkins.

Step 3: Paper mache the pumpkins. I’ve seen a lot of paper mache recipes that use flour, but that seemed kinda gross to me and I didn’t want a mess. 🤷‍♀️ Instead, I took about a spoonful of joint compound and stirred it around to dissolve in a bowl of water. If you don’t have joint compound, you could use glue – just be use you get the mixture right so that it sticks and hardens when dry.

You also normally use paper/newspaper, but I used sturdy paper towel. This worked really well because it was pliable and also had a nice texture. Be sure to use a good, thick paper towel so it doesn’t fall apart when wet, though.

After ripping the paper towel into smaller strips, I dipped each strip in the bowl’s mixture, let it drip off against the side of the bowl, and then stuck it on the pumpkin/grocery bag. I made sure to push the paper towel down into the dividing groves around the pumpkin to keep that shape.

It worked really well to set the grocery bag on a whole paper towel to catch the excess water – once this was wet enough, I flipped the pumpkin and used that paper towel to covered the bottom side of the bag. I then added a layer of paper towel strips around the edges of that bottom piece to help it stay on and also blend the edges.

Once I had the whole bag covered, I added a few strips over places where some edges didn’t stay flat. A good trick was to make sure all sides of my strips were ripped so that the wet edges really blended in. This looked better than leaving the paper towel strips with straight, blunt edges.

Step 4: Dry and paint stems. I set my pumpkins in the sun to help them dry, but mine still took overnight to completely dry and harden. The joint compound on the paper towels makes them just stiff enough to hold the pumpkin solid so that you can work with a harder surface for the following steps.

Step 5: Paint the pumpkins. Because you’re painting paper towel, little acrylic paints work just fine. One pumpkin I wanted to have a white base, so that one was easy to paint white, barely brighter than the dried paper towel was naturally anyway.

Another pumpkin I painted with a “realistic” orange , then added some brown touches in the groves.

The remaining 2 pumpkins were claimed by my daughters…and I let them go nuts since I planned to mostly cover these anyway. 😁 They had fun, and the reds and yellows in particular added a cool touch to the end result.

Also, to finish the stems, I took a dark brown paint and painted each stem, covering the blue painters tape.

You don’t have to paint the pumpkins if you’re going to cover them, but I thought it was a good idea to do so in case anything showed through in the end. (I also considered painting a pumpkin in a light brown, since the paper towel looked a lot like burlap – so that’s another option if you’d like to try it for me and see how it looks! lol)

Step 6: Cover the pumpkins in…

For my white pumpkin, I took an enormous, dried hydrangea that I’d spray painted with a rose gold paint last Fall. Pulling off a bunch of individual petals, I glued them on one at a time all over the pumpkin. I even took a few of the dried leaves from the hydrangea and added those around the stem. This option took a lot of time, but it looks really pretty!

For my “realistic” orange pumpkin, I took a lovely tissue paper and cut it up into strips that I then glued onto the pumpkin. Yes, I covered the whole thing, but I’m glad I painted the pumpkin because you can slightly see through the tissue, and this way the pumpkin looks like the real thing. Once I had all the tissue paper on, I added a little strip of burlap tied around the stem for an added decorative touch.

For my girls’ pumpkins, we headed outside and collected a whole bunch of fallen leaves. This was quite fun. We brought them inside and set them on paper towels to dry, and I placed a paper towel over them along with plates on top to keep them flat.

Taking the biggest leaves first, I spread a little hot glue around the edges and then pressed them onto the pumpkins, pushing them especially into the groves to keep the pumpkin shape as much as I could. I put mostly green leaves down first, then added the prettiest orange and red leaves on top, layering them like a collage.

Fun fact: if you spread hot glue on wet, green leaves, they make a smell like cooked spinach. 🤣🤣🤣 I learned after a while to turn the glue gun off if it got too hot, and it was much less painful on my hands to press the leaves on if the glue wasn’t so hot.

Because I didn’t want all their painting efforts to be lost, I left a few gaps where the red or yellow or even blue paint could show through. Much to my surprise, these leaf-covered pumpkins ended up being my favorite.

All finished, here were the end results:

There are a LOT of ways you could decorate these fake pumpkins. Let me know what you come up with! I ended up putting mine on the top of my kitchen cabinets for some added Fall decor, but you could use them as centerpieces on a dining table or on a mantle or on bookshelves – anywhere they’d look nice! It’s great that they won’t rot like real pumpkins, so all our crafty efforts might even be enjoyed next year.