How to make garland

I mentioned a week or so ago that I would re-post my garland making technique. I did this post in 2009 and I haven't really changed the way I do it. In fact, I'll be sitting down this weekend to whip out 30 or 40 feet of this stuff for my mantel, stair railing and front door. I'll also be making 2 or 3 sizes of wreaths for above the fireplace, on the front door, and for the dining room bay window. All count I will make 5 wreaths minimum but since I've become the wreath master they shouldn't take near as long as 40 feet of garland. I'll post next week on how I make wreaths out of coat hangers.

Here is the post with my beloved Tripper who died last year at this time. I titled it a Meatless Monday recipe.

A Recipe for Garland - Meatless Monday


I realize that some people think that vegetarians eat nothing but leaves and twigs but no I'm not going to make you eat the pine boughs.

See a recipe doesn't have to be about food. According to Dictionary.com a recipe is:

rec⋅i⋅pe 

–noun

1.	a set of instructions for making or preparing something, esp. a food dish: a recipe for a cake.

2.	a medical prescription.

3.	a method to attain a desired end: a recipe for success.

See, instructions for making something. And, the something I'm going to show you how to make is garland. I made 30 feet of garland for our staircase, mantel, and gallery railing this weekend. This is a fun, cheap and easy project.

I made all my garland out of a shopping buggy full of cuttings from Home Depot and a package of garden twist ties. The cuttings were free and the twist ties cost all of about $2. If bread bags still came with twist ties or I would have had enough foresight to collect them, this would have been a free project.

Get your stuff together.
You'll need:
a pair of clippers, a tape measure, a pile of clippings, twist ties or flexible wire, and someplace to sit.
A dog friend helps.
The tree clipping are the parts that are cut off from the Christmas tree that they sell. Sometime people don't quite want the tree as high as it is so the store cuts it off and tosses it away.
Think of this as recycling.

Big pieces.

You'll need to cut your cuttings into big pieces and small pieces depending on the clipping.
See what you can get out of each one.
You should get some of each.

Small pieces.

The trees that places like Home Depot sells have been sheared.
This makes it so that there will be lots of pieces that are forked like the one above.
You'll need to place short pieces on top to fill it out.

This is my beginning piece.
I used it because it was fluffy on top
and long and thick on the bottom.

Put a couple of cuttings together.
Over lap them so that one is not matched up.
The tail of the top piece should stick beyond tail of the bottom piece.
You are going to take the third piece and lay it over the second piece then tie them together.
You know, make a rope type thing.
Put a twist tie over top of the cuttings leaving a tail on the underside.
Wrap around as many times as you can leaving as much of an ending tail as you need to tie the beginning tail to the ending tail.

It will look like this on the underside.
Continue overlapping, wrapping and tying until you get the length that you need.
If you want it fluffier just keep adding to the same place until you get it the way you want it.
Don't make it too long. I'd say 80 inches is the longest if you have a friend to help you hang it. 50 inches if it is just you.

Tie onto your banister with the twist ties or lay across your mantel.

Decorate.

Now that's a holiday recipe that won't make you fat.

I'm calling this my recipe spin for the week. According to Jen we were to find our favorite holiday treat. This is a holiday treat that isn't any more difficult than making a batch of cookies or candy, lasts longer and won't add to the waistline. And it's meatless and good for the environment. (yeah, it counts. Doesn't it Joey?). What a nice way to reuse and recycle.


I hope you all enjoy this recipe.

Love,
M

Wire Shelf fix up

Hey!

Just another settling in story/project. This one involves our pantry.

The new place has a decent size pantry. Not huge but not tiny either. Sort of mama bear size. Which works for me for now. What it does have that I can't stand are wire shelves. I know they are easy to install, easy for the management company to maintain and all that but wire shelves are evil. Nothing stands up correctly. Things tip and spill. Then if they are in the least bit liquid they drip between the wires. Making not just a mess on one shelf but on all the shelves. See? Pure evil!

This was an intolerable situation. So, like any good librarian I started a literature search, i.e. a blog search on the best ways to fix this problem. They were helpful but the solutions were a tad costly. Some suggested lining the shelves with vinyl peel-n-stick floor tiles without peeling-n-sticking, cost on this option is about $37. Some showed DIY plexiglass shelf tops (I didn't even look at how much this would cost) or foam core board covered in fancy contact paper, cost on this option is about $30 plus the cost for the fancy contact paper. There are also suppliers of this sort of thing if I wanted to spend about $150 dollars.

Seriously, this was not going to work. I was looking for cheap. Okay, cheaper than cheap. Like free cheap. So here's what I did. I had JR bring home some of the thickest cardboard he could find from work. I scrounged around to find the rolls of contact paper that I had purchased on sale three rentals ago for about $1 per roll. For some reason I have ton of contact paper leftover. I must have found an uber-deal on it and I needed to find it anyway since I needed to line the kitchen shelves. I set up one of my craft tables and ta-da! Wire shelf liners.

First things first. I measured the inside on the shelves, taking into account the clips that hold the shelves and anything else that was in the way. I then grabbed my handy Exacto knife and went to work; cutting the cardboard to the exact size.

Turns out that the contact paper that I had bought was just about 6 inches wider than the shelf measurement. Sweet! I just cut the length 6 or so inches longer. Once again wielding the Exacto knife of love to cut the corners out. This little step is sort of important since it allows the contact paper to fold all nicely and to get rid of the bulk, making the liner sit flat.

Fold up the corners, press down firmly all over. Don't mind the wrinkles. Or if you do, you can always reposition the contact paper. Obviously, I don't mind the wrinkles as long as they don't interfere with the laying flat function. 

Set on the wire shelves and you are done.

You can load them up. Everything sits flat and level.

Let's go over the numbers.
cardboard: Free
contact paper: Free
(I have been carting this stuff around for over 3 years. I doubt if I paid more than $1 per roll. I used less than a roll. So if you want to get technical let's say that the whole thing cost $1.)
And, about 1 hour of my time.

This solution works really well for us. If one of these liners has a blowout it won't take much to replace it. I have lots of packing boxes left over from the move just sitting in the garage.

This weekend will be spent finishing up all the move in and straightening the garage enough to get the car into it and maybe if there is time, starting the commissioned painting I've got going.

Have you got a free storage solution?

Peace out,
M

My new favorite DIY site

I have totally fallen in love with this website.

It has supplanted just about every crafty/diy/art website that I have bookmarked. It really is sad how much time I spend on this site and all the ones that it links to.It is DIY porn.

Then again it could be worse. It could be real porn.


Love,
M