Autumn Decorations
6 Materials
$12
1 Hour
Medium
My first attempt at creating seasonal decor. The first one is for outdoors as a treat for the birds. The second one is a wreath to hang on the front door. I will post it separately.
I had original intentions to make a wreath and bought items from Dollar Tree for this project. For my outdoor arrangement, my Sunflower Seed head was actually saved from a unplanned Sunflower that grew in my little garden.
Original Sunflower head before.
I had covered the Sunflower with netting as it started to die, so that I could save the seeds to roast. When I looked at the dried seed head I figured that I should just let the wild birds have at it.
Getting ready to be creative!
But! Why not make it special! I already had stuff I planned to use for a Fall Wreath, so why not. I gathered up all the items I had on hand, including my glue stick
Colorful netting
This netting, plus a couple more were saved from the bags that onions, potatoes and my scented pine cones came in, I figured they would come in handy.
Baby Kitty
My distraction or help if you will. She was investigating everything.
Seed head and holder
Luckily for me, I had left enough of the stalk on the seed head to slide it tightly into this old Fireplace Match Holder I had which I thought would help me to hang it up.
I proceeded to make bows out of the mesh I had and some burlap ribbon. I used the burlap bow at the top, and made a loop to go through the handle of the Match container. The eyes, well on a last minute whim, I thought this would be cute if it had a face. I didn't have any of those cute google 👀 eyes, so I improvised. I had some round felt pads that I used on the bottom of our dining room chairs and first I tried melting a blue wax candle for the pupils, 👎. Then since I wanted them to be blue, and I did not have a blue marker or craft paint, so I found some blue decorating gel and painted the pupils.
Adding the leaves, etc.
This was really trial and error, as I used my hot glue to add the leaves to the base of the head. Since the stems were plastic, they melted! Boy did I have a few burned finger pads trying to do this! As my mind has a logical way of processing a problem, I thought to add my burlap ribbon over the leaves to help,hold them on, and I folded the ribbon as I went, to give it a ruffled effect. Again, I kept burning my finger tips! So, I had a note pad on the table and I cut a strip of it, which I put over the hot glue to carefully push down so everything would adhere to the head. This helped a bit, as well as a butter knife I had handy.
Here's looking at you!
Just a note here, I used one of the leafs for her mouth, trimming it to the shape of lips and using a thin permanent marker to draw in a slight smile.
Ms. Susie Sunshine
My finished project hanging outside. I hope she looks friendly enough to the birds and they find her to be tasty. I will share my attempts at the wreath in the next post.
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4 of 5 comments
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Oh how cute!!
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She's cute and funny. Hope she doesn't scare the birds away.
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I certainly hope not. I love birds. I may have to remove the eyes? Now that I think about it.
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