Easy Paper Flowers

I was shopping the other day at Michael's and I saw these new scissors from Martha Stewart.  How does she come up with this stuff?  Anyway, I had to have them even though I had no idea what to do with them.

Martha's new Fringe Scissors.  I feel like Edward Scissorhands using them!

I used a hot glue gun, a straw, the fringe scissors, and regular old tissue paper.

I folded the tissue paper in half about three times until I got a long skinny piece.

I glued all the loose ends together with a thin line of the hot glue.

Then I fringed the non-glued side on the whole strip.

I used a bead of glue to attach the straw to the end of the tissue paper like shown.

I put down a line of hot glue and then rolled the straw so that the tissue started

wrapping around the straw.

As I got to the end of the strip, I wrapped the piece slightly lower on the straw

to give the flower some fullness.

Trim the straw and fluff the ends a little and *poof!* you have a flower.

Ta Da!

Glittered Pumpkin Candelabra

I got the urge to do something different in my dining area this Halloween season.  One day the idea popped into my head to put pumpkins over the lights.  The hardest thing about this project was finding these "old-fashioned" pumpkin buckets.  I finally found them at my local Walgreens for $1.99 a piece.  I had already measured my lighting fixture to know how much space there was between the individual "candles" and how tall the bucket needed to be.  I almost always have a tape measure in my large purse, so I knew that these would work before I bought them.

The first thing that I did was to drill the hole in the bottom of the pumpkins so that they would slip over the lighting fixture.  I used a 1" paddle bit on my hand held electric drill and it was super easy.  Messy, but easy!

I decided that I wanted to apply glitter to the pumpkins.  I used a set of  Halloween micro-glitter from Martha Stewart that I have had for at least two years.  They have fairly large jars, as far as glitter goes.  In a bowl I mixed a about 1 part black glitter with about 4 parts orange glitter.  I spread Mod Podge onto the pumpkin with a sponge utility brush.  It works best if you do small sections at a time and only work in a up-down motion.  Sprinkle the glitter over the glued sections and then move on.  I avoided the black parts until the end when I used a paintbrush to cover those areas with glue and then put black glitter in those areas.

I absolutely LOVE how the pumpkin candelabra looks glinting in the late afternoon sunlight.  I did learn a few things though:

•  I think that the project would have been just as good (and better for the perfectionist) without the glitter.  It is very hard to apply a perfectly even coat of paint, so there are variations in the amount of glitter in different areas of the pumpkins.
• This project used a LOT of glitter.  I needed another bottle of orange because I was getting skimpy on pumpkins 4 and 5.
• You may want to get different light bulbs.  I was not happy with the regular lightbulbs, so I purchased white night light bulbs and I love the eerie glow.  Plus, I don't mind leaving it on as a spooky night light.
• I really was not pleased with the lighted result on the first night that I created this project, but their imperfection has grown on me.  Everyone who has been in my house has loved them.