12 Crafts of Christmas: No-Sew Burlap Bunting

I have a plan, guys.  I have a plan to make 12 things this Christmas season.  And blog about them.  That's 12 tutorials in just over a month and a half.  Can I do it?  We'll see!  I'm calling it my 12 Crafts of Christmas and I'm pretty excited about it.  We're going to have some ornaments, some wall decorations, and a lot of fun with clay pots.  I'm kicking things off with a project that I've been pretty excited about since I stumbled across it on a blog I follow pretty religiously, E, Myself, and I.  Last Christmas she blogged about her Christmas decorations and I saw this awesome bunting banner made of burlap.  I immediately pinned it to my Holidays and Entertaining a Crowd board.

Source

There was no tutorial for this bunting (I'm pretty sure it's not homemade, but who knows?), but I decided that I could make it anyway.  So I went to a couple different crafting stores (it's all about the coupons, baby!) and came up with a plan. 

No-Sew Burlap Bunting

What You'll Need

Burlap. Mine came from a roll.  If you want your triangles to be bigger than mine, you might want to use a sheet of burlap instead.

Twine.  Go thin, but not too thin. 

Good scissors

Paint. I used white, but you don't have to.

Sponge paint brush

Round sponge

Stencils. Technically you don't have to have them, but I , trust myself to free-hand when it came to paint. I used one with a sticky backing.

Hot glue gun

What You'll Do

1.  Cut your burlap into triangles. I free handed a triangle on a piece of cardstock and used that as a guide.  They aren't perfect, but we're talking about burlap and twine, so they don't really need to be.  I do think it's important to make sure you have at least one finishe edge.  The top of each of my triangles had a finished edge.

2.  Cut out your stencils and place them on your triangles. Place the triangle on something on which you don't mind getting paint.  Using your brush, dab the paint over the stencil.  Don't use brush strokes because you might get paint under the stencil.

3.  Remove the stencil. I did this while it was still wet but I don't imagine you would have to.

4.  Useing the round sponge and paint, polka dot two of your triangles and then let dry. 

5.  Measure and cut a piece of twine.  I just unfurled mine form the spool and held it up to the doorway where my bunting will hang.

5.  After everything is dry, line your triangles up along the twine.  There are several ways you could attach your twine.  I decided that hot glue would be best.

6.  Using a hot glue gun, I applied a thin strip of glue along the top of the center triangle and then laid the twin on top.  I starte with my middle triangle and then worke my way out. 

7.  Hang up your country chic creation! 

My triangles aren't perfect, and neither is the spacing, but I really love this sucker.  The best part is that storage is going to be a breeze.  All the triangles fold over on themselves, so this is how much room it will take up:

How awesome is that?  I hate when Christmas decorations take up a lot of storage space so this one makes me really happy. I'm really excited for December now so I can hang this baby up.

DIY: Burlap Bubble Wreath

Like just about every other blogger out there, I've been looking forward to fall since about the first day of winter last year.  I love everything about fall.  I love the colors and the smells and the clothes and the flavors and the weather.    While some people put out their pumpkins and scarecrows on September 1, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  It's October now and it's still summer-hot.  But since it's October now, I decided that I should probably get moving on my fall wreath.  And nothing says fall quite like a big, fluffy wreath made of burlap!

Burlap Bubble Wreath

What You'll Need

Burlap.  I had some leftover burlap at home, but I figured there wouldn't be enough, so I picked up more. But I didn't learn until I was 1/4 of my way around the wreath that the two burlaps didn't match.  So learn from my mistake. 

12 inch foam wreath form

Good, sharp scissors

Corsage pins

Felt or flowers

Buttons

Hot glue gun

What You'll Do

1.  Wrap your wreath form in burlap and hold the ends in place with corsage pins.  It doesn't have to be perfect because it's going to be covered up, but it's nice that you won't have to worry about green peeking out the sides.  The front will look like this:

And the back will look like this:

Like I said, not perfect. 

2.  Cut your burlap into 4x4 inch squares.  But you know what?  No one is going to come along and inspect it, so if you cut a little crooked or your square is 5 inches instead of 4, it's totally okay.  Really.  I'd recommend making a few at a time so that you don't waste any of your burlap.

3.  Now it's time to make some puffs!  Fold the square in half to form a triangle.

Then pull the other two corners down with the ones that are already pinched together.

In that picture the 4th corner is still loose, so make sure you pull that one in too. 

4.  Using your corsage pins, attach the bubble to your wreath.

5.  Now keep going until you've covered that sucker!  Don't worry about which directions your puffs are going.  I used the multiple choice test formula.  You know when you took a multiple choice test and stumbled across that one question whose answer completely stumped you?  And you picked the letter that you hadn't chosen in a while?  Do that.  Pin down your puffs in whatever direction you haven't pinned them in a while.  Keep on keeping on,  making the front of your wreath as burlap-bubbly as you see fit. 

You can cut off any runaway threads as you see fit, but I decided to keep them. 

6.  Now it's time for some flowers!  I made mine using this tutorial.  And frankly, she explains it better than I can.  I made a fringed flower, a looped flower, and two rosettes.  

Instead of securing the felt flowers with an embroidery needle, I used hot glue. Not because I decided that was the smarter way to do it (I burned my fingers...several times), but because I didn't have an embroidery needle.  I put a button in the middle of my fringed flower.  Well, two buttons, actually.

If you don't want to make flowers, feel free to use artificial flowers.  Or heck, leave it blank if you're a minimalist!

7.  Lay the flowers on the wreath until you figure out how you like them best, then glue them down.  You can also attach a ribbon or twine or something along those lines so you can hang your wreath.  I just hooked mine on my wreath hook, but Paul suggested adding an orange ribbon, so I'll probably end up doing an orange grosgrain ribbon for hanging. 

Looking back, I probably should have used a brighter color for the fringe flower, since it's so big, but overall I really love the way my wreath turned out.

Do you have any crafting projects planned for this fall?