garlands garlands garlands!

wow, where did the last month go? we often say that time flies, or that time goes by very quickly, but honestly, this year has REALLY flown by!

i have great admiration for folks who can blog regularly, and folks who read blogs regularly, but i don't know how they do it - i can't even update my own blog regularly, much less keep up with others!

i've been working on lots of things the last little while, and kept intending to blog about them... that obviously didn't happen!!

i've been really overwhelmed lately, and felt like i had too many projects on the go, and that i was working on little bits and pieces without actually finishing anything.

some of the bits and pieces i've been working on were garlands, because i LOVE garlands, and they've been a good low key stress reliever type craft to work on periodically. i had a grand plan to post a different garland every day for a week - but now xmas is less than a week away, and most people are probably more organized than me, and actually have all of their decorating completed already.

i thought i'd post them all anyway, because they were fun to do, and i quite like them. maybe i'll repost them again next year, earlier!

the first bunch of garlands that i made were these snowball garlands. i found bags of small styrofoam balls covered in the iridescent clear glitter at the dollar store, and fell in love. i decided to pick up colours from the iridescence with beads, and string them into garlands. i still have a TON of the snowballs left - i think i need to make some garlands with no beads, just snowballs!









then i made super quick and cute ribbon using my much-loved ruffler foot, and spools of chiffon ribbon from the same dollar store. i like the turquoise one better - i think the fuchsia ribbon is a bit too wide.... the fun thing about these garlands is that if you don't want to use them for your tree next year, you can use them for your next sewing project!





i also made a few strands of card garlands, the same ones that everyone does cause they're so easy and cute. punch out the circles with a paper punch, and then use stickers to adhere them to your string. easy-peasy! i've seen them made with recycled xmas cards, and that's lovely, but i really wanted mine to be more cohesive, so i bought a half full pack of christmas cards from a thrift store, and punched all my circles and ovals from them.



and then i started playing with measuring tapes. i loooove measuring tapes.. i wish they came in more exciting colours, but i can't really complain when i only paid $1 for 4 of them! i learned the hard way a few years ago that the super cheap measuring tapes aren't actually accurate, which is so bizarre, but that just means you don't have to feel bad about cutting them up to make them into other things!

first i made a chain



i sewed the ends together on my sewing machine, using a teflon foot, since measuring tapes are plastic coated.



i used 3 measuring tapes to make a garland that measures about 70".



i cut the blue pieces about 7" long, and i don't think i would cut them any shorter than that. i tried cutting a yellow tape into smaller pieces, and the chains didn't hang as nicely, and they looked a little off.

so i chopped them into smaller pieces, and played around with that idea.



i sewed through them with bright blue thread, again with the teflon foot.



it gets tangled super easily, but the left over spools from the ruffled ribbon garland work perfectly for storage!



i played with a black and white tape as well - the result isn't as christmasy, but it would definitely look fun hanging in your studio year round!





sooo... those were my garlands. i had a few others that i was going to do as well, but garlands were pretty low on my priority list. the only reason i managed to get this much completed was because i started them super early, before i realized how much i had on my plate!