Well, these are the last two DIY’s of the year people. One is holiday decor in my house and one is a present for my Mom. This year has been a learning experience for me. I found that my DIY’s are hardly conducive to blogging because I can’t guarantee when they’ll be finished. I don’t know how all of the other DIY’ers do it. I’ll have to check in with them to get some tips.

I want to do so much but they take so long…..I guess when you’re not creating content you don’t really pay attention to or maybe it’s not important how long they take. But anyhoo, the first one is a little trick I’ve done most years but haven’t done in awhile, and the second is a stocking stuffer for my Mom.

Presents on the Wall

This one is pretty easy and it makes such an impact. You just take your pictures on the wall, wrap them and put them back up. Here is my gallery wall that’s next to my Christmas tree. I wanted to do this project where it would make a statement.

I started getting all of my materials together. Wrapping paper, double-sided tape, ribbon and faux floral picks.

Next, I put double-sided tape all around the back of the frames. To save paper, I don’t wrap the whole frame, I just wrap it around the width of the frames. The double-sided tape works perfectly for this.

After getting the wrapping paper on, all you have to do is tie a ribbon and use whatever floral picks you have in your holiday decor stash.

Voila!, Here’s the finished product. Excuse the bad lighting, but it’s been overcast around here lately. I love how this looks, but you could even make more of an impact with bright colors or maybe do the art in your kids room with kiddie paper. The sky’s the limit.

Quilted Kitchen Magnets

If you didn’t know, I quilt and I used to quilt a lot before I started my design and blogging business.. I miss it so much, but it takes so much time to make blankets, so I usually just quilt small things and it gives me the satisfaction of quilting but not really. Haha. I will usually make one present for my Mom every year and this year I decided to make kitchen magnets for her. A couple of years ago, I made a potholder and oven mitt for her, so I decided to use the same fabrics for the magnets using a patchwork of three different fabrics for each one.

These are the fabrics that I used and I already had the magnets for some reason; can’t remember why. I love it when I already have the materials, don’t you?

I cut off small pieces of fabric to piece them together in a random way. I love the sew and flip method of quilting. There’s no rhyme or reason, I just wanted all three fabrics to show.

After they were sewn, I put cotton batting on the back and pinned them. I thought the green variegated thread would be a nice pop against all of the burgundy in the fabrics.

Then I quilted the pieces with a zig zag pattern that I created a long time ago. It allows me to go really fast.

After I had the quilting done, I cut them roughly into the shapes and decided to use cardboard inside to make them more sturdy. I then wrapped the fabric around the cardboard and started hand sewing it.

Here I am in the middle of my process trying to figure out if I liked how I was doing it. The little ones were pretty straight forward, but the longer ones I had to figure out.

The cardboard came in handy again. I decided to use it on the backs of the longer ones to again make it more sturdy. Then I brought out my trusty glue gun and started burning my fingers which I usually do when I use the gun.

The small ones had a sticky substance on the backs of the magnets (see the white squares) and when it dried, it didn’t stick that well. So, I ended up using E6000 glue over it and that did the trick. The longer ones were okay, but I did end up painting the back cardboard strip with a black acrylic paint.

DIY’s are done for the year and now I have to concentrate on wrapping real presents. Comment below if you’ve ever wrapped your pictures on the wall and I’ll talk to you after Christmas.

I hope everybody has a Happy Holiday!!!!