As I said before, I decided to start writing this blog because I had been reading so many and I figured, hey, I can do that. Not too bad so far. I really enjoy the blogs about home decor and how to repurpose things and how to decorate on the cheap. Since we only moved in to our new home four months ago, I am trying to be very budget-friendly in my holiday decorating. Over the next few posts I will show you how I have decorated for Valentine’s Day.
To start, I am showing off our mantle. I have never had a mantle before so I had no idea where to begin decorating it. I really enjoyed what I did for Christmas, but you'll see that down the road. I have not found anything I want to keep up there permanently only because I like the idea of changing it up.
I really like this idea from over at Decor Adventures a totally cute and simple bulletin board. Hmmm, maybe it's because I've spent so many years in the schools. I enjoy how she changes it up for the different seasons, yet it is super easy and simple. I would enjoy something like that above my mantle because it would give me decorating freedom and it would use up all the space from having nine foot ceilings.
Anyhow, back to my craftiness. I had no idea how to decorate my mantle for Valentine’s Day. I wanted something, pretty, simple and not all hearts and flowers. I knew I wanted to make some sort of wreath. So I came up with this "rag wreath".
I used one of my husband’s shirts out of the good will box and started cutting. I also wanted to use an empty picture frame. I had seen an empty frame used before on another blog; however theirs was way bigger and much cooler.
Once I had finished making the wreath it turned out a lot darker because of all the folds in it. The fabric is a nice cranberry red, but almost looks black because of all the shadows. I played around with placement for a while and almost gave up.
The mantle was looking so silly, like I had no clue what I was doing, oh yeah, that's because I didn't! So I walked away from it for a while and sat down in front of my computer to find inspiration out in blogland, and there it was right in front of me! Next to my computer sits a large basket of folk art fruit. The apple caught my eye, it's a quilted pattern in two shades of red.
The darker color in the apple was a perfect complement to the red in the wreath! So I dusted it off and took it over to the mantle, I liked where this was going. Then I printed the phrase "you’re the apple of my eye" in a nice font, taped it to the underside of the glass in the empty frame and traced it with a dry erase marker. Looking good! I already had the candles (LED, no flames here) wrapped in extra fabric from the wreath project on the mantle too; however it was still looking sparse, good but sparse. I started looking around the house for red things to fill in the space, didn't like it. Then in a stroke of genius I remembered on a very top shelf in one of my cabinets I tossed a bunch of faux green apples- score! And there you have it: my" You're the apple of my eye" Valentine’s Day mantle.
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