Silhouette Collages

I know this post is a little late considering Christmas was 3 1/2 weeks ago, but I did this project very last minute to adorn some empty wall space in our front room before my family got into town for the holidays.  I had a few canvas boards laying around from past projects that I had done, so I decided to make what I'm now deeming "Silhouette Collages."  I threw a few materials that I had laying around my house together to create these cost-effective, cute little gems.  All you need is a (few) canvas boards, mod podge, a paint brush/foam brush, old newspaper, and packing paper (yea, that's right, packing paper... I got a decent size roll of it from the Dollar Tree to use as wrapping paper for presents).

Simply tear a few pieces of newspaper, randomly mod podge it onto your boards, cut out any silhouette from the packing paper, then mod podge your silhouette on top of your 'collage' of newspaper and this is what you get....

The reindeer is my personal favorite!  When I was thinking of this project and how I wanted to implement it I thought of few other ways you could try such as using a pattern fabric w/ a solid color silhouette (or vice versa) or painting a black background and making the silhouette from an awesome festive patterned fabric.  But, for this project I wanted to keep it simple so I could place them in different rooms without having to worry much about matching the decor. 

Have fun exploring and playing around with the many options of making 'Silhouette Collages'! 

Warning:  More past-due Christmas posts are on the horizon (mainly just Christmas presents that I made for people that I couldn't post on here until after I gave them their presents)! 

$1 Christmas Craft

I was moseying around the house last week in an attempt to get a little bit more organized in the new house when I found a bag of felt that I had purchased at Hobby Lobby to make a few felt flowers.  Seeing how I was over the whole felt flower kick I was on one day, I decided I could use them for some other project... maybe even a Christmas project (our house is lacking a little in the Christmas decor department).  I began messing around with the felt and figured I would attempt to make a set of little Christmas trees to adorn our (sad excuse for a) mantle.

This is what I came up with.

And, this is how to do it.

1) Gather materials: 3 pieces of felt (found at the craft store for 4 for $1), scissors, tacky glue, and binder clips (optional).

 

2) Use one piece of felt and make a cone shape starting from one of the corners. 

3) Glue the edge down and then cut the bottom (sort of like a semi-circle) so the 'cone' will stand up evenly.

4) Place binder clips over the area you just glued together to help it adhere. (This step might be unecessary, but I found that the felt didn't really stick together with the tacky glue unless forced.)  Let your trees sit about 10 minutes before taking the clips off.  

        

5) Repeat steps 2-4 with three different sized cones.  (I was able to make all of my cone shapes out of one piece of felt.)

6) Decorate your trees however you'd like!  The good thing about this project is that you don't have to glue down any of the decorations on your trees because the felt pieces stick to one another!  So you can redecorate your trees as often as you'd like!

As a side note, I created the spiral design by drawing a circle on the felt (about the size of a cd) and cutting it into a spiral.  This makes it very easy to drape the spirals over the cones. 

 

I created the 'bunting tree' by making anther spiral out of a circle and cutting little triangles out of the green felt.  I found it helpful to use a little dab of glue on the triangles to keep them in place.  And, the smallest tree was created simply by cutting small circles out of the felt (pretty obvious, but I didn't want to leave the little guy unmentioned!)  

And here's our (sad excuse for a) mantle with felt trees and a little bunting piece I made with the extra felt and an empty frame I had laying around.

 

Merry Christmas!

Stephanie P.