thrifty finds: hanging flower frames

We have a small "mudroom" right off of our garage that needed some brightening up (as well as something to take one's attention off the fact that the walls in there badly need a fresh coat of paint!).  I found this idea over at a blog called Flamingo Toes and thought it was the cutest thing.

My mom just gave me a huge stash of old frames, so I dug out a few I liked.

Then I spray-painted them yellow to make them nice and cheerful-looking.

My original plan was to distress the frames once they had a couple of coats of paint on them (kind of like what the author of the blog did), but since I didn't use primer on these frames before I painted them, I ended up getting the distressed look I wanted with just one coat of the yellow.  Which meant less time on the back porch exposing myself to spray-paint fumes.  Awesome.

Then I grabbed some twine we had in the house and followed the directions on the blog in order to tie the vases to the frames.  I hung the frames on the wall (they're just resting on the nails), and then stuck some flowers in!

The author used fresh flowers, but I went with silk so I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning out the vases when they got gross.  The vases were all from Hobby Lobby's clearance section, so they were about a dollar each.  And the flowers were 50% off at Hobby Lobby this week so I snagged those too...they came in a bunch so I have most of them leftover for another project.

So now our mudroom is just a bit more cheerful.  This flower display will be the first thing I see whenever I walk in from the garage, so that makes me happy.  :o)

spring wreath

 

Spring has officially sprung here in Georgia, and I've been wanting to try my hand at making a simple, inexpensive wreath for our front door.  Grapevine wreaths and silk flowers were 50% off at Hobby Lobby last week, so I took advantage.

I didn't want to fool around with florist's wire, so I pretty much hot-glued everything right to the wreath.  The pink flowers (not even sure what kind they're supposed to be!) were more stubborn since they had thick stems, so I actually tucked those into the wreath itself:

The sunflowers were a little easier to manage so hot glue was all I needed for those:

I added some cute monarch butterflies and this wreath was pretty much done.  I had bought some ribbon for it too (also 50% off!), but decided I didn't want it on there after all.  Our front door has a very tight seal on it to begin with; good for child safety, bad for those over-the-door wreath hangers.  So I put my trust in the biggest beast of a suction cup I've ever seen and hung my wreath up with that.

So what do you think?

I've never been a fan of pastels or Easter eggs on a wreath, but these colors really say "Hey, it's finally spring!" to me.  Now let's see if the "world's best" giant suction cup lives up to its name.  :o)