Christmas decor - The Idea Room

Holiday Projects with 3M

I was recently asked by 3M, the makers of Scotch Blue Painter’s Tape (Visit ScotchBlue.com for more information. ), to come up with a fun and festive project using Scotch Blue Tape. Now, I don’t know about you, but I LOVE glass jars. Do you? I love to use them around the house as part of your Christmas Decor and for all sorts of other things. One can never have too many decorative jars.

So, I thought it would be fun to use some Scotch Blue Tape to dress up a couple of jars that I could then use as part of my Holiday Christmas Décor. I wanted to make the jar fairly classic in design and color, so that I could use it year round for several different holidays and purposes.

I love how clean and simple the end product came out. I can already see several ways to be able to use the jar. Throw some a berry garland and some battery powered Christmas lights in the jar and set in the middle of a Pine Wreath to make a sparkly table centerpiece for your Holiday Table, or drop a candle inside (carefully) to create a festive mood in your home. (I light my candle with a piece of spaghetti…true story!)

The jar was really easy to make. I simply took a nice glass jar and then used some Scotch Blue Tape to mark off areas that I did not want to be covered with paint. Be sure to thoroughly clean the jar so that the tape and paint stick.

Feel free to get creative here. Now, my personality likes clean and simple lines…but you could do a chevron pattern, plaid or skewed lines…or, punch some circles out of your tape with a round circle pattern and make polka-dots. You can also get creative with punch letters and other punch patterns. There are so many ways you could use Scotch Blue Tape to dress up your jars.

Be sure to cover all areas of the jar you do not want to be painted. Then take your favorite spray paint and spray your jar. Frosted glass spray would also be fun to use to! Let your jar sit for a few minutes (till it is no longer tacky) but not fully dry and then remove the tape. If you remove the tape when the paint is still damp, the paint will not pull up off of the jar.

The possibilities are endless. I want to make another jar and fill it up with some red and white Christmas Candy for me to ~~eat~~ use as decor.

Another fun idea would be to pretty up some jars and gift them filled with some Holiday goodness. This is such an easy way to add some festive fun to the Holidays. Be sure to stop back by The Idea Room later this week for a free printable for some Oatmeal Cookies in a Jar!

Disclosure: This post is a collaboration with ScotchBlue™ Painter’s Tape. To join the creative community, visit the ScotchBlue Facebook Page.

You can also find out more about Scotch Blue here:

ScotchBlue Facebook Page

ScotchBlue Tape’s Twitter Page

December 10, 2012 · Filed under: Christmas, Christmas Decor, DIY Tutorials Tagged with christmas crafts, Christmas decor, glass spray paint, scotch blue tape

Believe Sign

17 Comments

Hey guys! We have had a busy week around here. My son is on the high school swim team and we are right in the middle of the swim season. So my mom duties have pushed aside this blog thingy ;)…as it should! But I found some time to finally share with you this BELIEVE sign. It, along with this Vintage Crate, are my favorite DIY Christmas decorations that I have made so far.

I actually bought this board over two years ago with the idea of this project in mind but I never actually found the time to get around to making it. So it sat in my attic waiting patiently for me ;). I picked the board up from my local Bennion Crafts and it was already this fabulous red color with the fun edging.

I cut out the word BELIEVE on my Silhouette CAMEO and then drew little circles where I wanted the Christmas lights to go. Make sure they are evenly spaced to get the best overall look. Take a hole punch and punch out the dots where the lights will be.

*IMPORTANT–Be sure to count the number of lights you have on your string of Christmas lights. You want to be sure you have enough lights for each hole. AND…make sure that the lights will fit from one hole to the next. There were a couple of spots that I had to skip a light so the wire was long enough to reach the next hole. Does that make sense? Check and double check. And for best results it would be nice to make sure you have a few leftover lights and the end…just in case. You can always hide those lights behind your finished sign.

I traced the letters onto the wood and then painted the letters white. I chose not to spray paint my sign since it was snowing the day I made it ;). Then after the sign has dried, you can put your punched letter “stencil” on the board and use a pencil to mark where the holes should be drilled.

Take a drill bit that is the same size of your Christmas lights and drill holes where each light will be.

Then comes the fun part…Place the lights so that the plug is on the end where you need it to be as far as where you will be plugging it in. Then insert the lights into each hole. You will want to use some duct tape to securely hold the light in place so that they don’t fall out of the hole. My kids LOVED helping with this part. You can see what a great job they did on the back of the sign! But no worries, no one will be the wiser once the sign is turned around.

I LOVE how it turned out! And I love it even more at night! Don’t you just love this time of year? I love Christmas lights and I love how cozy they make your home feel.

December 6, 2012 · Filed under: Christmas, Christmas Decor, DIY Tutorials Tagged with christmas crafts, Christmas decor, christmas signs, diy christmas, DIY christmas decor, DIY christmas gifts, how to make a lighted sign

Christmas Vintage DIY Crate

32 Comments

This month, as part of the Lowe’s Creative Blogger team, we were given the challenge to create some Holiday décor items. I always enjoy these challenges because it gives me an opportunity to finally get some of these projects that are constantly swirling around my head, out of my head and in my home.

And I am especially excited about this project…a vintage DIY crate! I have actually spent some time looking around for some of these crates but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted and so I had toyed with the idea of making my own. But wasn’t quite sure how to go about it.

So with this month’s #LowesCreator challenge, I decided that this would be the perfect time to try my hand at making a “vintage” crate.

I picked up some tounge and groove pine boards at Lowe’s and cut off the “tounges” and “grooves” by simply running the boards through our saw. I picked these boards because they are really thin and inexpensive.

For the front and back of the crate, I cut 6 of these boards so that I had:

6 boards that measured 3.5 inches by 24 inches.

They are 1/4 inch thick.

Then I made 6 more boards that measured 3.5 inches by 7.5 inches for the sides of the crate.

Then I cut a piece of a pine board 7 x 24 inches. This is the bottom of the crate.

Then to make the corner supports of the box, I cut 4—7 inch pieces a of 1.5 x 1.5 board.

What…You don’t work in your pajamas? :) My little girl takes pretty good pictures…don’t you think?

Then you will need to nail your crate together. I didn’t use any wood glue on this project, but you can if you want.

I started with the bottom and one of the front pieces and nailed them together. Then I nailed on the back piece to the bottom.

Then you can nail on both sides. Be careful to hold your box exactly where you want it so that it maintains a nice rectangular shape.

Then I nailed the corner supports in and finished nailing the other two front planks to the corner supports. I chose to leave a tiny space in between each plank to give it a more vintage feel.

After the front is nailed, I added the side planks so that I could match them up with the front. When nailing these on, be sure to keep your corner pieces straight. This is very important to the overall finish of your vintage crate.

Then finally, you will nail the back planks on. This crate is made so that the sides of the crate planks actually show on the front and the back of the crate. I thought this would help with the overall vintage look. Now your crate is done! Yay!!

To add a label I simply printed out this old vintage stamp that I found in the online Silhouette store. I transferred it over onto the wood with the old trick of drawing on the back of the design in pencil and then coloring over the top of it so that it ends up on the wood. Pretty high tech!

Then you simply need to draw the design with a black Sharpie.

Throw a layer of stain on your crate ( I used a walnut colored stain)…and you have a beautiful vintage DIY crate!

I was surprised at how easy this crate was to build. And was really happy with the overall results. I love being able to make something JUST the way I want.

I added some pine branches and a berry garland to glam it up and threw in a couple of candles. As always be super careful when using candles. And…since I took these pictures, I actually threw a string of white battery powered Christmas lights to give it some more holiday sparkle.