Legend Of The Crafter

Hello and welcome to the Legend of the Crafter, a blog for all you crazy and nerdy crafters out there! My name is Alisha and I'm a crazy housewife and stay at home mom with too much extra time on my hands and too many crafty ideas in my head! So I thought I would start a blog to show off my creations. First a little bit about me, besides crafting I love drawing My Little Ponies, listening to bad pop and techno music (get used to dubstep people cus its robot music and when the machines take over the world its all we will be listening to!), watching horror or fantasy movies and bad teenybopper tv shows, roller skating, making forts and having dance parties with my kids, thrift shopping, reading books about vampires and wizards, and basically anything from the eighties the best decade ever! Oh and my favorite craft supplies are googly eyes and glitter! My philosophy in life is "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys r us kid!" and my dream is to one day own an antique store with my hubby that specializes in oddities and stuff from the eighties, where I can also sell my crafts and we will live above it. That is after we kick the damn weiner kids out of the house! Enough about me, lets get this party started!

My Craft of the Month:

 

Well this time of year I have been busy making gifts for the upcoming holidays cus I'm too poor and white trash to actually buy nice gifts for people and one day I came up with these cute and super easy wreaths that you can make with stuff around the house. It all started when I took down the Halloween decorations (it was a very sad day!) and I decided then and there I wanted to start decorating for Christmas. Well I told my hubbie Jacob (or as I like to call him my big goth daddy Jacob the prince of darkness) of my wonderful plans which he immediately shot down saying it was way too early (he is such a grinch!). So to get revenge on him I decided to make some super cute Thanksgiving decorations for the house and I decorated while he was at work. When he came home and saw them I was like "You never said I couldn't decorate for Thanksgiving!" So anyway that's how the idea for the holiday wreath came about.

Supplies for wreath:

cardboard or poster board

scissors

various printed paper (from old books, magazines, scrapbook paper etc.)

craft glue or hot glue gun

paper napkins or tissue paper

yarn and ribbon

 

 

Instructions for holiday wreath:

 

 

Step one: Find a piece of cardboard or poster board big enough to trace a large plate sized circle on it ( I like to use the cardboard backs to Jacob's comics cus it pisses him off) if you can't find a piece big enough just tape a couple smaller pieces together, then take a large plate and trace a circle with it, then a smaller plate to trace a smaller circle inside the larger one. Cut this circle out (I like to used scalloped craft scissors to make the edges cooler looking).

 

Step two: Next you need to gather a bunch of different printed pieces of paper, I have an old textile designs book I found at Goodwill for like two bucks that has some amazing prints in it but you could use pretty much anything you like (for example for the Ernest Saves Christmas wreath I used old xmas wrapping paper and gift bags that I have saved over the years because I am a hoarder). Just cut a bunch of about three inch leaf shape pieces out of the paper. Sometimes I go for a theme like color (black and red goth prints for the vampire wreath)

or patterns (I picked prints related to the ponies cutie marks for the My Little Pony wreath)

and just go crazy cutting out a bunch of these (I also use the scalloped scissors for this) make enough to completely cover the circle all the way around. Then get busy glueing them on the circle, I suggest listening to some bad dance music like Flo Rida while doing all this, it makes all the cutting and glueing seem less tedious.

 

Step three: Now you are gonna want a few pictures to decorate the wreath so pick a theme it can be something normal and boring like a turkey and leaves for Thanksgiving or Santa and xmas trees for Christmas, or if you are not normal like me think of your favorite xmas movie or cartoon or better yet a holiday themed horror movie cus I bet you'll be the only one on your block with a Thankskilling wreath for the holidays! Just find the pictures online and print them out or cut them from magazines or old books and glue them on. Make sure to space them out evenly to make room for the paper flowers.

 

Step four: Okay now for the paper flowers, I use old party napkins from the kids birthday parties but you can make these from tissue paper or even kleenex, or if you are really desperate use toilet paper! Just cut a bunch of squares out (for the bigger flowers I used 6x6 inch napkins) about six, but you can use more if you want to make them fluffier. Place them together in a stack and accordion fold them up like you did when you were a kid and made those paper fans. Then take a piece of yarn or string and tie the middle securely. Then comes the fun part, pull each layer one at a time towards the center on both sides of the yarn, very carefully so you don't tear them, until they are all pulled up and you can then mush it and fluff it until you are happy with how it looks. Make a few of these, enough to fill in the spaces between your pictures, then glue them on.

 

Step five: And last you cut a piece of yarn or ribbon long enough to hang your wreath, tie it into a loop, and glue it to the back side of your wreath, let it dry and it is done and ready to hang! Have fun coming up with your own crazy and nerdy wreaths for the holidays!

And that is all for now, I want to give a special thanks to my hubby big goth daddy Jacob the prince of darkness for creating my super rad Legend of the Crafter logo for my blog! Keep on craftin and wear those hot glue gun burns like a badge of honor, peace out from the crazy crafter!