Anthropologie Monogram Ornament Dupe

As soon as I saw Anthropologie’s Monogram Ornaments, I was instantly in love, instantly inspired to create my own twist. So here is my easy Anthro ornament dupe. (I mean, I’m not saying mine are cuter than Anthro’s but they’re still cute!)

Since this was pretty similar to a Pottery Barn place setting dupe I did a few Christmas’ ago, I had a pretty good game plan of recreating these monogram ornaments.

DIY Shopping List:
– Plastic Large Ornaments
– Mini Trees (Gold or Silver)
– Wooden Letters
– White Paint
– Cotton Balls
– Ribbon
– Hot Glue

Step-by-Step:
1. First things first, you’ll need to cut an opening in the bottom of your plastic ornaments. This was a bit tricky to figure out, and should be done very carefully!  I used a sharp mini Philips head to poke a hole in the bottom. Once I had a hole, I used a Uline knife to cut a smaller circle for the opening, go slow and wear gloves to protect your hands. Repeat based on the number of ornaments you’re making – this is the least fun part of the whole project!

2. Before you get this started, you can start painting your letter. Make sure to paint both sides – pick fun colors that will coordinate with your metallic bottle brush trees. The bottle brush trees I recommend are also a bit too tall, so you’ll have to pull the bass off, cut about a half-inch off, and then reattach the base with some hot glue!

3. Using thicker paper, trace a circle using a drinking glass that is rounder than your ornament, trace, and repeat to cut the same number of circles as you have ornaments. These are your bases!

4. Once your letter is painted, and your tree is trimmed it’s time to hot glue your letter into your tree! You can try this out before committing with the glue, but just rest the letter in nicely. Then you can glue the tree to your base, pull apart a cotton ball and glue it down for your faux snow. Afterward, you can push this up into the ornament and glue it around the base at the seam.

5. With white paint, you can create a snow top, on your ornament – I needed to do about 3-4 coats of the white paint until it was thick and nice. You can then use pipe cleaner or ribbon to add a finishing touch around the base. Using ribbon and pom-poms you can dress your top however it works with your letter!

Gift to friends, family or trim your own tree with a fun keepsake ornament for the year! I may be making a few more of these – but for now, these are the finishing products.

Happy Holidaying!

DIY – Christmas Village Houses

Of course, I wanted to share this a week earlier – but I have been super behind on all things Christmas this year, we JUST got our tree and decorations up this past weekend. BUT – I have been crafting away and can’t wait to share my two latest Christmas crafts this week. The first one was inspired by social, and I just had to recreate my own – it’s using wooden birdhouses from Michaels and turning them into Christmas Village houses, the best part? Totally customizable to your Christmas decor and colors! Here is how I DIY’d a birdhouse in three different ways – because what started with a good normal idea, turned into some fun as the creative juices got flowing.

DIY Shopping List:
– Bird House of Your Choice:
– Brownstown from Michaels
– Corner Lot from Michaels
– Craft Paint & Paint Brushes
– Pipe Cleaners (I used Gold & Silver)
– Glitter (I used the colors ‘Sugar’ & ‘Gold’)
– Mini Trees (optional)
– Hot Glue & Modge Podge

Anything else that might be festive or ‘Christmas Village’ related could be used as a finishing touch to your Christmas birdhouse – I definitely got created and created my own pieces from what I had.

a Retro Christmas Birdhouse

I had the Corner Lot Birdhouse for some time, as I had big ambitions a few summers ago to do some birdhouse crafts – so when I was inspired to create, I was trying to work with the birdhouses I already had. I started somewhat bold with the color choice for my Corner Lot Birdhouse… and I quickly was regretting it and going to scrap it since I was able to secure two Brownstones. But, as I started to dig through my craft supplies, I found my silver pipe cleaners, had a mini silver bottle brush tree a silver, green and blue jingle bells. I was instantly inspired to create a retro Christmas birdhouse. And, oh my gosh I’m obsessed. The silver bottle brush tree also fit perfectly in the little corner behind the fence.

Painting Tip: For clean lines, I used tape to create a clear line between the fence and each house, the back houses as well. There are also a lot of nooks and crannies so take your time and be prepared to paint!

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Glam Brownstone CHRISTMAS birdhouses

My original plan for the Brownstone Birdhouse was to go white and gold, which goes perfectly with all of my other Christmas decorations. Painting this white, was definitely tedious, but also relaxing – I did have to do multiple coats with the white colors, at least 3 or 4. Darker colors only took about 2-coats. As I worked through my Gold Brownstone, I still wanted to do something colorful, but not so bold as the retro house, and something that would still fit into our decor – that’s when I was inspired to create a pink and gold Barbie Brownstone to go with my Barbie tree (she is definitely my favorite!).

Creating garland and the wreath’s for finishing touches was also fun and used with pipe cleaners. I wrapped at least 3-4 pipe cleaners to create fuller wreaths to hang on each of the houses. The garland was created with at least 3 pipe cleaners woven together and then I added some clear beads along for added detail and to look like lights. To finish off the pipe cleaners also really added a pop along the base and roof lines to really give these a finished look – and the mini bottle brush trees were extra that I had, that were a perfect finishing touch.

The last detail is adding some sparkly snow to your rooflines, stairs and landing – with modge podge I just went glitter crazy and added as a fun pop!

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Which birdhouse is your favorite? B loves the white and gold one… I’m a fan of the pink one but also really love the retro birdhouse, since I was about to give up on it early on.

DIY – Easy Festive Letter Ornaments

Eeek, it’s Christmas Eve! And normally I have a bit more of my sh*t together, but this year I was a bit behind in the craft ornament department. Ornaments are always my go to Christmas gift not only are they great year after year, they are sentimental and the perfect keepsake for moments or milestones in time.  Beyond a sentimental ornament, I always like to get letter ornaments, especially as a fun present topper.

This year I went the custom letter route with a fun holiday twist on something so simple and partially already made.  I found wooden letter ornaments in the dollar bins at Target and thought it would be fun to dress them up with festive jingle bells and colored pom poms. This project was about $15 in materials and took maybe a half hour of my time to make everything — so easy, so cute and super cost friendly!

What You’ll Need:
– Letter Ornaments
– 16mm Jingle Bells – 2 packs
– Colorful Craft Pom Poms from Target
– White and Red Craft Pom Poms from Michaels
– Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Step-by-Step:
1. After you have your supplies it’s really quite easy and fun! The goal is to cover your letter with your jingle bells or pom poms — I laid out the design and determined quantity before I started gluing to make sure I had enough to cover each ornament, while having a mini road map made.

2. A few of the letter ornaments I decided to color block with the jingle bells with all silver or all gold, I even had a little fun alternating red, blue and green on a third one! The fun part is they even jingle, it;s the perfect little bling and ring for the tree.

3. For the pom poms, I had a variety of sizes, I liked both size options and how it looked mixing and matching the two different sizes to fill in the letter. I went with reds, whites and greens and then some multi-color pom pom ornament for us.

4. Let dry and gift a fun custom ornament to your friends or family!

I’m definitely trying to cram it all in today — including a workout to start the day, some volunteer dog walking, squeezing in a few more of these ornaments and wrapping all of my presents before church! I am very much looking forward to relaxing a littler later and the next few days. Merry Christmas, Eve!