Watch out for snakes!

Happy Halloween!  If you get inspired by this post and want to recreate this project you better hurry because Halloween is only four days away!  I say this as someone who just barely finished this project in time for its intended holiday.  It is going to look pretty awesome for these next few days though.

Pretty sure this was originally a Martha Stewart idea but then again, what isn't now a days.  Martha, you wily dame.  This Halloween wreath only requires two things, a plain stick wreath and snakes of various sizes.  If either the wreath or snakes are not black, fix this with matte black spray paint.      

This snake close up is for my friend/nemesis Ed who hates snakes.  Though I don't think he even reads this blog.  Which makes it a lot funnier to me.  These pictures are just out in the world now, waiting to be discovered.

Hi, friend!

Pictured below is the now black wreath along with a package of already black tiny snakes that was also picked up from Dollar tree.  The large snakes are drying in the garage during this picture.

Again, this one's for you Ed.

Let's be BFFs!

Here the large snakes make their grand reappearance sans white stripes.  However, only two survived the spray painting process.  I have no idea why, since the snakes were spray painted at the same time in the exact same manner, but the paint on the third snake would not dry.  It just stayed tacky and gross.  Maybe primer would have helped.  So try that if you try this.

To add the snakes to the wreath, I wove them through the sticks that made up the wreath.  No glue required.

In this picture, you can see how the snakes are woven through the branches of the wreath to hold them in place.

AH!  Spooky snake wreath!  Taken at night to help add to the spookiness.  Or because that's when I took the picture and didn't want to wait till tomorrow since Halloween is already so close.

Close up shot of the wreath.  To hang the wreath, I used a clear 3M hook.  I was skeptical on these hooks only because the last time I used them to hang my belts up in the closet all my belts fell down.  Could be because I never waited the required hour before hanging something on them.  Directions, it turns out, are sometimes there for a reason.

Another closer up.  I hate you Ed.

So this turned out pretty cool, right?  I like the monochromatic look.  From far away, it looks like a regular black wreath.  Unassuming.  Unthreatening.  Then BAM!  Snakes all up in that door decoration.

Watch out for snakes.  

Lego Simpsons Shadow Box

In the midst of another cleaning session of the craft room (we recently acquired a king size bed so our old queen needed some space made for it thusly turning my craft room into a craft/guest room or as I prefer to call it my craft/napping room) I whipped up a quick present for my Simpsons/Lego crazy husband.  

After digging though my closet, I found this shadow box frame.  I don't really know where I got this from....but that happens a lot with the stuff I find in my craft closet.  

As you might have deduced from the title of this post, I recreated the Simpsons family out of Legos and put it in a shadow box. The minimalist Lego Simpsons idea originally came from here.  Luckily, we have an outrageous amount of Legos hanging around the house.  Seriously, ridiculous.  The husband's mom is an avid garage saler so she snagged bins and bins of Legos for us for a song.  After a few minutes, I had put my new little Simpsons family together.     

Since the inspirational beach backing that was originally in my shadow frame would make an unarguably odd background, I opted for this fake leather like material.  I thought something neutral that still had a bit of texture to it would help make the Legos pop out a bit more.  

Once the backing of the frame was removed and poetry removed, my fabric just had to be cut to size and glued on.  Easy peasy.  

Next step was gluing the Legos to the fabric using the glue gun once again.

A few minutes later, once the glue had dried, I reassembled my shadow box and was rewarded with this cool art piece.  Well, the husband was rewarded with it technically since I made it as a present for him.  But still, super cool spur of the moment craft.