Up until this morning, our poppy wreath we’d made for Remembrance Day was still hanging on our apartment door. It was time for a change. Truthfully, I had no plans to create a new wreath today, so we kept things really easy and made a simple tissue paper Christmas Wreath.
This is a little project Miss G and I have been working on ever since we went shopping for an event I was attending and Grae fell in love with some brightly-coloured bangles. Though it was a bit of a process, these wooden popsicle stick bracelets are really easy, fun, and inexpensive to make and my little accessory lover is very pleased with the results.
To start off, we soaked some wooden popsicle sticks in a covered mason jar of water for a full 24 hours.
Then, I gently bent them into ‘C’ shapes in order to fit them in tea light holders. One thing I noticed during this step is that there seemed to be a way that the sticks naturally wanted to be bent… Working with that made the job a lot easier. The one I tried to bend against the natural direction actually ended up snapping.
We could have left our popsicle sticks in the tea light holders to dry as is, but since they weren’t perfectly fitted to the edges of the containers, we filled them up with water and let them sit another 24 hours before draining them and letting them dry out.
After drying a full day, the bracelets held their shapes nicely.
When we popped them out of the tea light holders, they looked like this. Certainly not perfect, but a cuff shape nonetheless.
At this point, the bracelets looked really tiny, but they fit G (who will be 3 in just a couple of months) perfectly. The good thing is that you can always make the opening a little larger with a gentle bend.
These could be decorated a multitude of ways, but we opted for a tissue paper colour transfer for watercolour sort of look. In order to do that, we got out a few things… Water in a small spray bottle, some tissue squares, a toilet paper roll (which was quickly replaced with a chunk of a branch similar in size), and the bracelets themselves of course.
We started off by putting the bracelets around the paper roll just to make them easier to work on.
Then Miss G gave them a light misting of water to make them ‘sticky’…
And covered the entire stick in tissue paper squares, adding a spritz or two of water along the way if needed.
Then, when she was happy with her coverage, she sprayed the whole thing down once again, allowing the tissue paper to cling tightly to the wooden bangle.
My part of the job was carefully removing the bracelets covered in tissue from the paper roll / branch. Once removed, I carefully wrapped the excess tissue around the backside of the bracelet. One thing I did not anticipate is that the small amount of water sprayed onto the bracelets actually starting causing them to lose their shape.
So back into the tea light holders to dry it was.
After another day’s drying time, Gracen peeled away the dried tissue paper to reveal beautiful watercolour-eque designs.
I did contemplate using black Sharpies to add stripes, dots, and other designs, but I think these are perfect just as they are. ☺
For a slightly more involved but GORGEOUS popsicle bracelet project, check out these awesome DIY washi tape wooden bracelets by Mama Miss.
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This creative table set up had a good long run in our house… It’s been worked on day in and out for over a week now, and I’m sure Gracen would still be adding to it if there was any sticky space left on the contact paper.
When it began, it looked like this… A piece of clear contact paper, sticky side up, tacked down to one of our vintage apple crates (it could just as easily be taped down to a table top), and a few little jars of decorating goodies, as Miss G calls them.
Included were sequins, confetti, tissue squares, and a container of glitter.
Although I often set up Gracen’s creative tables while she’s sleeping, this time around she helped me set up, selecting the glitter (of course) and the sequins to be part of it.
When we’d finished gather our materials, she began creating without direction or instruction… Carefully adding each item, one at a time, and pressing them down onto the sticky paper.
The lovely thing about contact paper is that because everything sticks to it, projects (even when they include a full bottle of glitter) never get wildly messy.
Grae revisited it daily, adding a little bit each time, until today when we decided it was time to switch things up a little.
Now we could have easily called it quits at this point, because art like this is definitely about the process and not the finished product, but Grae had announced early on that she would be hanging her finished piece on her bedroom door. In order to preserve it a little better, we took out our contact paper once again and cut a piece the same size as the original one.
I then peeled the backing off of just the top edge of the new sheet, carefully lined it up with the art piece, and pressed the two sheets, sticky sides together, down. Afterwards, I pulled the remaining backing off in order to cover the entire piece.
Here’s what it looked like with everything sealed in. We could have left it as is, but Gracen chose to cut it into two hearts rather than keep it as one large rectangle.
Here’s the finished product. She very proudly hung it on her door turned art gallery, but it would be super pretty hung in front of a window where light could shine through too.
To learn a little bit more about how we do creative tables around here, visit this creative table post and this one too. Or, pop by Tinkerlab, where Rachelle, the creator of the Creative Table Project explains.
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