What with everyone being at home things have been a bit busy lately! But after 2.5 weeks of it I just had to take a break from everything. I was determined to get the house decorated for Easter. I'm not sure when the last time was that we were at home for Easter. We usually get away from home for the 4 day weekend. This year we were supposed to be in Brisbane, Australia. Yes, we had a 4 month sabbatical planned starting April 1st. Biggest April fool ever. After one and a half years of planning we were all pretty bummed. The worst part is that it's not something we can ever do again as a family because of the kids schooling. Oh well, we'll find our way down under for a vacation some day!
So back to the window decor! I found this great site which had all kinds of great ideas
http://www.woohome.com/diy-2/cute-diy-window-decorating-ways-sure-amaze. And I fell in love with the umbrellas and the snow bunnies.
The site with the umbrella instructions was rather cryptic. Even more so if you don't understand German.
https://dekoking.com/regenschirme-aus-papier-basteln/ So here are a few tips. These are not stand alone instructions, you'll need to follow those on the above website and use these as added explanations.
- Use any paper you like. Don't use card stock.
- The circumference of the circle is approximately 7 cm. I used a spool of wire to draw around.
- You will need to cut out 7-8 circles.
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| I used some thick transparent paper that I had left over from making little lampshades for Christmas lights |
- When you fold them the "pretty" side should be on the inside (very counter intuitive but you kind of look at the umbrellas from underneath.
- I didn't have the nice thin double sided sticky tape that the instructions used. And as you'll know, going to the craft store was not an option. So I used Uhu. After a few failed attempts I figured out a good way to make it work that was not too messy. So after folding the circle into quarters I glued the upper side, pressed it together and let it dry using some bead boxes to weigh it down.
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| Here is where I put the glue |
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| And here they are drying |
- While they were drying I made the umbrella handles. These are just wooden skewers with wire attached to them so that they could be hung. In my case the wire was an old necklace. I took a wooden bead and thread the wire through it twice and then rammed it onto the top of the skewer (see pictures below). It worked well even without glue because the umbrella is actually rather light.
- By the time I was done with the handle the glue had dried on the "petals". Then I opened up the pockets a bit and checked to see how many I needed to make the umbrella.
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| As you can see here I needed 7. On another I needed 8. |
- I glued as show in the picture, to make two halves of the umbrella. This is necessary so you can put the handle in the middle.
- Then I glued the handle to one side with the pointy part sticking out at the top. After this dried I stuck both halves together.
And this whole project was inspired by a broken necklace that has been hanging on my cupboard door for over a year. I did a bit of upcycling and used it to hang the umbrellas.
