Broke For Christmas: More Holiday Decorations

Hey guys! If you haven't checked out the first of my Christmas themed blogs check out it here. As I had mentioned previously, I said I would cover Christmas wall decorations, so here I am back this week with another Christmas themed home decor post!

DIY Window Stickers

Let’s start with some easy window decorations!

I remembered that when I was a kid, I had this art kit to make these window stickers and I thought trying to find a way to recreate those window stickers for winter would be a good idea.

In this picture is my old, cracking lamp shade that I've had since the 6th grade. I remembered that I had used some glow in the dark fabric paint to paint on some stars. It's been about 7 years and they are still intact and I am still using them. This is what we will be doing for the window stickers today!

All you will need is some fabric paint or 3D glue, a transparent silicone pad or page protectors (basically anything with a smooth surface will work), and some printouts of things you want to stick on your windows.

All you really have to do for this is place your silicon pad over the design you want to trace, trace it over with your paint, and just let it dry….. and then you’re done! 

NOTE: Try to make sure that you pick a design that doesn’t have too many little details and also try to make sure that the lines you are creating with the paint are thick. The window sticker might be more prone to ripping if the lines are too thin. The a piece of blue and white snowflake on the top left had ripped off because I made the lines too thin, so be careful and be gentle with your window stickers.

TIP: If your window sticker does rip, you can fix it by dabbing on a bit of fabric paint onto the ripped parts. The paint will act like a glue and once the paint has dried, the ripped bits should be reattached.

The “Technical” Stuff: Fabric Paint vs. 3D Glue

I’ve tried using fabric paint as well as the Elmer’s 3D paint/glue and I feel that the fabric paint may work as a better window sticker in the long run then the 3D glue. 

Elmer’s 3D paint was a bit harder to control because it was so thick (thicker and stingier than Elmer’s regular school glue) and it took 10x as long to dry then the fabric paint. I had to let the window stickers sit for almost 12 hours for them to dry completely. 

The fabric paint, on the other hand was more fluid and easier to work with. It also dried fairly quickly and they last pretty long as you can tell from my 7 year old lamp with the fabric painted stars. 

I felt that the 3D paint was too thick and more glue like than paint (makes sense because Elmer’s is a glue company) and I’m sure you guys have done this before, but when you leave glue out to dry and it dries completely, it doesn’t stick anymore. The same seems to go for this paint. It does stick on my windows for a little while, but once all the moisture from the 3D paint sticker is completely gone, it doesn’t stick as well anymore. My suggestion would be to apply a small amount of water to the back of the sticker before sticking it back on the window if it isn’t sticky anymore. On the flip side, I don’t ever seem to have this problem with the fabric paint stickers. After trying both, I prefer to use fabric paint, but the choice is yours :)

DIY Wall Christmas Tree

If you’re looking for a way to fill up a naked wall or if you would really like to show some Christmas spirit but don’t have enough much space to spare, then this project is something you should consider. It’s a very easy and space savvy way to bring in some festive decorations into your home to cover up those bare walls.

Here are a few things you will be needing:

All of the optional items I purchased were fairly inexpensive. The circle cutter was $3 from Ross and the mini clothespins and lace were both from Daiso (Japanese dollar store in Japantown) and were priced at $1.50 each item. As you can see from picture above, I have a bunch of circles already pre-cut. This part of the project might be a pain in the butt if you don’t already have a circle cutter, but it shouldn’t be too hard if you stack the papers and cut circles out all at once.

 

Here, you can see that I cut out 55 circles and one star. Lay out all your circles and arrange them into a Christmas tree ahead of time to get an idea of how you might want it to look on your wall. You don’t have to make it look exactly like mine. You can experiment with different shapes and sizes to make your wall tree more interesting.

Did I say that cutting the circles out was a pain in the butt? Maybe this part is a little more tedious. What you’re going to do now is attach each row of circles to a single thread and, using tape, stick them to the wall working from the bottom up. You can choose not to stick them to the thread and just stick each individual circle to your wall. I find that attaching them to a thread makes it easier to create straight rows of circles on the wall. 

TIP: If this is available to you, it might be better if you use painter's tape (a type of masking tape) because it won't leave residue on your walls when you remove it, so no damage will be done to the wall. If you use the clear scotch tape as I have used to tape the circles to the thread, it's more likely that the tape will leave a residue on your walls if you leave the tape on the wall for too long.

Here is the finished product! Although I’m not sure you can even see this, I also taped some lace to act as a garland for the wall tree. The addition of lace is a good way to display all your Christmas cards as shown below!

These projects are great for people who are tight on both money and space. Perfect for college students living in dorms because they don’t damage the walls, take up any space, and they also liven up your room.  Have fun and get creative with your window stickers and wall tree! Let me know in the comments below what you think of these projects and also anything else you may want me to cover.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Until next time!