Showing posts with label butterflies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label butterflies. Show all posts

Monday, May 3, 2010

Simple Spring Wreath

I've admitted it over and over- I go crazy when I see colors, and though neutral tones fascinate so many people, they're not really my style. Not at all. Colors are my fantasy, and I long to use them more and more everywhere.  That's probably why I love Spring, and this spring wreath as well!


This beauty is really easy to pull off! The basic form is very easy to make, and the final look will depend on how you choose your embellishments. You will need:

- Floral wire (not too thin, medium thickness)
- Sharp Scissors
- Tissue paper
- Lots of Mod Podge
- Embellishments: I used several (yeah, you can see that)- twisted paper flowers, beads of all shapes and sizes, paper butterflies, pearls, satin ribbons, and a cute tiny li'l birdie! Follow your heart and choose your own colors.

First, twist the wire to make a round shape out of it. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this step. I kept it asymmetrical and uneven on purpose as I rather like that look.
Next, apply glue on the wire's surface and start wrapping the tissue paper around it. You can skip tissue paper and wrap around a ribbon instead, but I rather love the soft look of the tissue paper. Let it dry.

I painted the tissue surface teal here and there, randomly. Sorry, pic for this step forgotten again!
Never mind! Now lets embellish. I totally went berserk here. I made some rolled paper flowers (I know you all know how to make those- blogland is totally saturated with the tutes; so I won't discuss it here...But I totally love my idea of piercing a wire through the center and twisting in a charming hanging bead into it. Here are the close-ups...
Next I tied three wires in parallel way on the top of the wreath and twisted them all while placing pearls randomly. I glued few butterflies here and there, and the small cute birdie in the centre wire.  I tied few ribbon snippets here and there where there was additional place remaining. I also twisted a wire in the bottom of the circle and inserted a hanging bead in each loop. 
The result was this beautiful spring wreath! Yay!!

 















Wouldn't this make the spring extra special!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Butterfly and Glass Gem Mobile - I'm in love with it!

I've been busy since a few days, making....THIS! Click on the picture to get a better view, as these pics do not do justify the beauty of this mobile. But then I think any project involving butterflies is a beauty! 

Butterflies fascinate me..I'm obsessed with them. Makes me wonder why I never posted any projects related to butterflies, but here I am anyways with an alluring mobile with butterfly and glass gems. One can find butterfly mobiles all over the blogland, but I wanted to make a difference by adding some glass gems or pebbles which shine and shimmer prettily, thus creating a nice ambience.

Here is how its done! You will need:

You can do it with just one hoop if all you desire is a single tier mobile, or two hoops for making it double- tiered. I intended to make a two- tiered mobile, but was too lazy ran out of time so made a single tier. That looks good too!
 I cut all the butterflies in 4 different wall papers all by myself (took me 2 days to cut over a 100 flutters!). You can choose coordinated colors, but I went totally berserk and chose a wild combination of red, white, pink and blue, and colorful glass pebbles. I found a fabulous butterflies template HERE! Thanks Lolly!
Lets get started! Place your hoop on a flat surface and mark the distance at which you would like the strands of the mobile to be. Should not be too far or near ideally. Mine had around 25 strands.
Do not worry about the visibility of the marks, we shall cover them later.
Now take your yarn ball and cut the individual strands. Decide the length of the mobile according to where it will be hanged. Leave an extra allowance of 5 inches on each strand length. My mobile was 25 inches long, so I cut 25 30 inch strands (Huge, yes!).

Now start working on individual strands. Note that glass gems are heavy, and should be ideally glued onto something wider, as we don't want a pebble falling suddenly onto a child, do we? So for a long-lasting glue bond for the glass pebble, follow these steps to make a 'seat' for the pebble where you could glue it:
Make a simple knot onto the yarn strand at the distance of 4 inches from one of the ends.

Make these knots all over the strand at a regular interval of say, 5 inches. The more the use of pebbles, the prettier you mobile will turn!
Now put a dab of tacky glue or hot glue over the 'seat' and press the pebble onto it. There, let dry and it is permanently stuck. Here's how the strand looks like after this step:

Do this to all the 25 strands. Now for the butterflies! Glue the flutters in between the pebbles. See to it that the distances are more or less equal.

Needs some patience, I know, but the result is worth it! Repeat the above for all the strands. Here were some of the finished strands. Let dry.

Now temporarily hang your embroidery hoop from a hanger or suspend it from wires like me. Take the strands and tie them one after the other onto the marked place on the hoop.

Nearly there! Use a coordinated satin ribbon to cover the ugly hoop and the knots. I used pieces of red and pink ribbons. Simply glue one end of the ribbon onto the frame and keep on rolling and wrapping around. Keep gluing at regular intervals. 

Now the final act! Insert 4 equally wide and long ribbons and tie them together to form a hoop to hang. Now hang it from your chosen spot with a hook or chandelier. Our dining room looked like it needed some dash of color so I hung it from our pretty chandelier.


I love to gaze at it while the lights are on!


LOVE this!!





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