New Summer Decorations

Hooray, it's FRIDAY!  Are you looking forward to the weekend?  We sure are.  The weather is absolutely fabulous today.  The temp hovered around  70 and it was so nice not to roast so early in the summer season.  It has been awfully hot awfully early.  We got some much needed rain and our garden is looking fabulous.  The squash are blooming, there are some green tomatoes on the vine and some little peppers on the pepper plants.  It won't be long until we will be enjoying some yummy produce directly from our yard.

All of our spring decorations were changed over right before memorial day.  Remember my spring/Easter decorations on this cabinet?  I had a wreath and a small banner on the wicker arch and a beautiful bunny and a little blue bird on the cabinet top.  You can find it in an earlier post if you don't remember.  Well, spring decorations have been put away, and we moved on to our summer Americana theme to celebrate our patriotic holidays, the upcoming Summer Olympics and presidential election.  Actually, I just really love Americana and these events gave me an excuse to make some new decorations.  It really doesn't take much for me.

This cabinet sits inside our front door and is the first thing you see when entering the house.  It is also visible from the living room and the kitchen, so I always like to have something special on it for each season.  On the top of the wicker arch sitting on the cabinet, I made a paper cone wreath in the colors of our flag.  The plaque beneath was made on one of my $5.00 unfinished cabinet doors I found at the Habitat store.  The USA letters came from JoAnn's which I painted, and I highlighted them from behind with some glittered red #40 ribbon that is gorgeous!

The wreath is made on a piece of cardboard from a shoebox and the cones are two sided scrapbook paper that was on sale 5 pieces for a $1.  Total cost for the wreath was $3.00.  I bought 5 pieces of red, 5 white and 5 blue.  That's my kind of price.  Cone wreaths are all over the blogosphere these days.  Most of them are made from the pages of old books or sheet music and I love the way they look.  Since I wanted patriotic colors, I turned to scrapbook paper.  You could also use construction paper, it's just a littler more matte than the scrapbook paper.

To make the wreath, I measured the area where it would hang and drew a circle on a piece of cardboard with a smaller circle in the middle.  After doing that, I decided I would not cut the middle out like a regular wreath, so I simply marked the center of the circle so I would know where I would place the ends of the cones.

Scrapbook paper is 12x12, so I cut each piece into 4  6x6 squares.  Using a ruler, mark 6 inches to the center vertically and horizontally and cut along the lines.  The next step is to roll your cones and you can make them pointed or round, your preference  I liked pointed.  Place a dot of hot glue on the underside of the point where it is rolled around the middle of the cone and hold until set.

To place the cones on the cardboard backing, I started with navy blue at 9 and 12 o'clock.  Then I placed red and white cones alternately back around to the navy blue and hot glued them to the cardboard.  I would recommend laying out your pattern before you begin gluing the cones down.  Paper will tear if you have to move it after gluing it down.  

Ack, I forgot to rotate the picture when I edited it.  So, just look at it sideways and you will get the drift.
Now, it's time to fill in the circle.  Place more red cones next to red, and more white next to white on the cardboard and then glue them down.  Then, you will make a top row by placing cones between the ones on the bottom row.  Lay them out first, then glue them to the bottom cones.   You just sort of have to play it by ear here.  To finish the wreath, I used a big star cookie cutter I have and traced a star on a white piece of scrapbook paper for the middle.   The star covers where all the cone points come together and it looks sort of unfinished.  I put some Mod Podge on the star and sprinkled it with white glitter and glued it to the center of the wreath when it dried.  Ta da!  Done.

You may figure out another way to do your wreath, but this is what mine looks like completed.  It's inexpensive and quite showy, don't you think?  Not bad for $3.00 plus tax.

The red plaque underneath was simply spray painted and then I stamped a line from "America" that says "from every mountainside let freedom ring."  I wrote down patriotic lines that I could think of before deciding on this one.  Even had to sing a bunch of songs through to come up with lines, but it was kind of fun.  Of course, there are some stars stenciled on it!  You know me and stars.   After looking at it, I decided it needed some blue, so I used navy blue acrylic paint and simply followed one of the raised edges on the panel.

The USA letters were $2.99 each at JoAnn's and were all white.  I painted them barn red, ivory, and navy blue and sat them on the cabinet top after they dried.  That glittery red ribbon just ties everything together and of course, it SPARKLES!  What could be better?

Here's a close-up of the vignette.  I like that wicker arch so much, I couldn't bear to take it down after Easter.  It adds height to the cabinet, but is still open and airy and present many decorative possibilities.

I hope this will give you some ideas for things you can do that won't cost a lot of money, but will add beauty and interest to your home.  Be sure and join me next week, we are going to be talking food which everyone enjoys and must have.  I've got some good recipes and summertime ideas for you.  Have a great weekend.

Everyday Donna

Things to Remember:

Surround yourself with things you love and they don't always have to cost a lot of money.